well... I believe is the NES hadn't come out, maybe the sega master system would've been far more popular... Can you see sonic in mario's position now?

Um a little depressing. I mean no Mario, Zelda, Pokemon, ect haha. Hell I need that haha.

Gaming dissapear forever.

I think PC gaming would have flourished, and ended up with much of the games we see today

it wouldnt be as good as it is now.....it would be dead.
that simple.

it could have been poorer, i wouldn't play games that much as i do

...because consoles aren't computers hooked to TVs, right?

The good side of Nintendo's accomplishments - we wouldn't have a Japanese domination of the industry, which would be bad given how uninspired western games are for at least the last decade.

The bad side - home computers market. Had Commodore and Atari been more popular in their time (and they would, had Nintendo not existed), the all-purpose, "multimedia" machines would become a standard a lot, lot earlier than the latter part of the nineties, and maybe, just maybe, they'd evolve into what consoles are trying to become now (fully-fledged, easy to use enternainment systems with the full capabilities of a personal computer). No goddamn Windows anywhere near your home, how would that be a bad thing?

I honestly don't know. Someone else would have eventually done something similar to what Nintendo did with the NES as far as popularity. Who? I have no idea. When? I have no idea. The Commodore 64 would have increased in popularity. I will say that. I guess that it might be PC gaming world. Weird when you think about it. Gaming would be a lot different.

Ok, probably some other J-company would take the lead, but only for the J-market, Nintendo did bring back gaming to the american market... Now the influence of Nintendo in gaming is the real thing, only look:

1. Sega designed Sonic the Hedgehog as the mascot, and they made him "cooler and faster" because they wanted to compete with Nintendo and prove that the MegaDrive was better technically than the NES and even the SNES, all of us here have heard the "Genesis does what Nintendon't" campaign (i myself saw it back then), well, Sega was what it was because of Nintendo, and Sonic ow his life to Shigeru Miyamoto and his mascots...

2. Sony would continue making all kinds of electronic devices, but the Playstation would never see the light... The Playstation was made thanks to the idea of Nintendo of making the SNES-CD, and you know the rest, Sony screwed Ninty, Ninty screwed Sony, and Sony made the Playstation and dominated the market for over a decade, but Ninty was the company that came to Sony to build the console, and Sony used the R&D so far to make the PS, so the Playstation franchise is what it is thanks to Ninty

3. The XBOX would have never existed, the success of Ninty and Sony (and in minor scale, Sega) was the key for Microsoft getting interested in videogames, so without Nintendo fixing the damages in USA and Sega doing a competition interesting more and more people, Sony screwing Ninty, Ninty screwing Sony, and Sony screwing Ninty again, the VG business would have been something regional in some countries, and probably mute in USA, not the monster that it is today...

That's why I respect Nintendo, i saw what they did first hand back in the 80's, they fixed the damages done by Atari in less than 2 years, they revived gaming in the Occident, they brought the mascots (Not only the Ninty ones including Satoshi Tajiri's "Pokemon"but also the Sega ones, the third party ones, etc.), they came with the CD idea that gave Sony the opportunity of a lifetime, and Microsoft a reason to make a console, they brought us the gaming we know today...

I meant computing in terms of an electronic device with a fully usable operating system (BASIC, DOS, WINDOWS). I am fully aware that in terms of computing architecture that a video game system is very much a computer (only differences being that most computer processors use CISC instead of RISC instruction sets and computers tend to have a more sophisticated BIOS system).

My point being that most consumer would not have warmed up well to loading games from easily damaged or deletable 5 1/4 and 3 1/2 disks. (How would you like to type "Load "game.exe",8,1" everythime you started a game?)

AS for the point of view of consoles being multimedia centers, that is expensive enough now with the PS3, can you image if Sega's Genesis or Master System had made itself a multimedia hub back when multimedia technology was MUCH more expensive. (*Cough*3DO*Cough*)