Japan with its mentality wanted to make good products not like the US with its E.T shit etc.   thats why I feel like todays gaming is shit again. Its way to westernized and completely forgetable (with some random coincidental sparks of creativity)  and the biggest disaster here is that japan tries to mimic the western style because they think its the right thing to do (thank god sometimes stuff like BravelyDefault shows up and reminds japanese developers that being japanese is great)

I've been a gamer for as long as I can remember--well before the Nes era and the feeling games gave me then is virtually the same as the feeling I get now. Satisfaction, an engrossing experience, and the feeling that I'm experiencing cutting edge technology. I have no idea when it all began but I'm looking forward to the answers in this thread.

The base of the modern gaming business model was born on the NES:

3rd party royalties and exclusivity contracts galore to make your platform look more interesting than it really is (The Sega Master System was more powerful, offered better sound and more colors, yet it could not gather much 3rd party attention).

Obviously, the Nintendo first party games made it awesome too!

Before that the home systems were too limited to offer "modern" gaming, maybe the Coleco Vision was an exception...

Yeah, that's kind of what I was thinking.

But I just checked, and apparently the Magnavox actually used "a type of removable printed circuit board, called a game card, that inserts into a slot similar to a ROM cartridge slot".

What?  The Magnavox used removable media?  The first video game console ever?  Now, that does surprise me.  I thought that all games were dedicated platforms back then!

1- Not Sure

2- Modern gaming is not just the hardware but the software and market structure, NES is universally seen as the first modern console because of all 3 of the above, it perfected some previous ideas and brought in some new ones such as the controller layout with the D-pad and different type of games like SMB.

3- As a European I can tell you it would of caught on here like everywhere else but the gaming market was a far different place, EU has always been a harder place to release because of the multiple languages, tastes and differing laws now picture going back to the early 80s when non of what's about today is around. No localization teams, no HQs set up on different regions etc...

Most of the 80s and early 90s was companies trying to get set up and finding a manageable system to operate with. If you were a gamer in the EU before 2000 things could become very painful as we missed out on a host of gems across 2 decades and what we did get would often arrive a year or two later a bit like how Namco operates today. Don't even talk about importing back then.

Heh!  I guess so.

*checks Mnementh's profile*

YES!!  Someone who's actually older than me!

I think you are right about learning from previous failure as is a common theme with a lot of innovative ideas.  That being said, wasn't the first true Nintendo hit an arcade cabinet with Donkey Kong?  Again, I'm not sure of the chronological order of all these things as so many crucial elements of this industry are probably only years apart.

The problem is that Japan still has an outsider mentaity imo.  They know that certain Western trends do need to be copied, but they seem to not be so meticulous about what that is.  A perfect example is with Nintendo trying to be more mature with marketing the Wii U and therefore losing the mainstream user base.  They are starting to get up-to-date with good Western trends like online multiplayer, a better e-shop, and synced account systems.  But you see they they copy both the good and the bad at the same time.  That's just my slant.

This is very interesting as I think the cultural landscape of Europe is something that must effect all big entertainment phenomenons that become big hits in America.  I imagine it's not as much of a barrier now as it was back then simply because global society is more unified today

Have to remember in the 1980s Japan was seen as this unstoppable machine that would become the dominant global economy and buy up everything. Why in film fiction of the time it is Weyland-Yutani in Aliens and it is Nakatomi Plaza in Die Hard or Marty's boss in Back to the Future II.

Japan was the electronics juggernaut with televisions, radios, and walkmans so video games seem to be a good fit. it may seem odd in 2014 given Japan has experienced 20 years or so of stagnation and witnessed rise of Korea and China as well as resurgence in the west. Not surprising that past decade has also witnessed the decline of Japan's relevance in gaming world wide, especially compared to the 80s and 90s. It is quite remarkable such a small country had the impact it did for a generation or two.

Yeah pretty much, only things that only made it to EU were games from home grown studios or massive hits, we were lucky we had a good number of studios over here. Any EU based gamers who started after 2000 count yourselves lucky.

1st gen standard was releasing a new piece of hardware for every game.
2nd gen standard was exchangeable game cartridges, but the questionable business practices of most the companies almost destroyed the market. (Atari and Mattel were the worst offenders.)

NES was the first successful modern game platform with licensed 3rd party games and such.