Did Nintendo save gaming with the NES?

[Mandalore76]

Nautilus said:

SvennoJ said:

Ever heard of a little title called Myst?

My introduction to Atari was from people (adults) being so in awe of it they let us play with it to show how cool it was.

I'm not trying to downplay the role of Nintendo. I simply grew up in that era and never got a Nintendo console until I bought the N64 myself. My first introduction to Mario was on the game boy. The console simply was not popular where I lived, nor did video games need saving. Sierra was doing perfectly fine without Nintendo.

The thread title is, Did Nintendo save gaming. No, but they did make console gaming popular (home computers without a keyboard) and I guess contributed to the demise of the Commodore Amiga. Commodore went bankrupt in 1994 :/

The Amiga 500 came out just over 30 years ago, seeing as many as 6000 games released across its lifespan and that of its two immediate successors, the Amiga 600 and Amiga 1200. / A total of 715 known licensed game titles were released for the Nintendo Entertainment System (NES) during its life span.

I do understand where you are comming from, but your example comes from a personal experience of a regional occurance, whereas this debate revolves around gaming as a whole, in the whole world.

Bolded: There were adults that were fans of gaming, for sure, but the perception of the general public was that games was for kids. And that's the whole point. Enthusiasts exist everywhere and have different ages, but these discussion, about impacts to the industry and overall perception, is regarded against the overall public and/or society.

So yes, not only did Nintendo save gaming, but it also made it more popular than it was.

This will get written off as anecdotal as well, but my grandfather owned an Intellivision.  He was an avid golfer and bowler and had won many trophies, and Intellivision was known for having the most detailed looking/playing sports games of their time.  Mattel was the first console manufacturer to seek out licenses from professional sports associations (NFL Football, NHL Hockey, NBA Basketball, etc.). 

Two of the games my grandfather enjoyed playing the most were PGA Golf and PBA Bowling.  He had other games of course like Snafu, Advanced Dungeons & Dragons, Microsurgeon, Atlantis, Dracula, etc.  Anyway, this was a console that he bought for himself and played frequently, not just something that he would pull out of the closet when his grandkids came to visit.  I think if you look at the crux of the Intellivision's library, and the games that made it stand out apart from the Atari 2600, you can clearly see that it was not a console just for kids.  I'm not talking about just the sports games.  Play (or look up videos of) Microsurgeon or Utopia (credited as being a precursor to Sid Meir's Civilization) and tell me which audience those games were specifically targeting.  Children with short attention spans, or adults looking for a deeper mental challenge?  The Intellivision sold over 3 million consoles between 1979-1983, and carved out 20% of Atari's market by the time of the North American Video Game Crash.  Even the Intellivision ad campaigns are reminiscent of tactics Sega (and later Sony) used against Nintendo to show that the opposing console was "kids play" compared to theirs.