Oh I know Yokoi did tons and tons more, but I think his biggest contribution was hardware, for my 3-pronged super attack theory anyway.

I think his games works so well in his own ways is because he's not a gamer.
If I design a game, it would be way too complicated and only I would understand how to play.
That certainly will not sell, regardless of how awesome it could be.

I think he contribute greatly to the Wii with the concept of pick-up-and-play. Luring more people into gaming and then they will eventually pick up and be able to play all those complicated/niche games that we (long time gamers) love.

Did the internet survive the bursting of the .com bubble?

The videogame crash of 1983 was the exact same situation. It only affected America and it was the direct result of over-eager investors and their goldrush mentality.

Any industry that experiences such rapid growth is bound to crash eventually. Such expansion is just not sustainable.

Also, it is fair to say that the NES would have been just as successful with or without Miyamoto. Their was certainly no cult of personality around developers then like there is now, and the NES didn't have any significant competition until the Master System arrived on the scene.

@ BringBackChrono
Games on the 2600 may have been inferior to games on the NES, but Nintendo didn't make "better" games than Atari. If you look at the arcade games Atari were making at the time you will see that they were considerably more innovative than Nintendo, or pretty much anyone else for that matter. In those days the arcade side of the business was the biggest earner and got all the best games.

@Played_Out

are you sure those games were cosiderably more innovative than super mario bros or the legend of zelda?

if yes,have those innovations had the same influence on modern gaming as miyamoto's?

i agree atari had the most innovative games in arcades pre-nes, but SMB was truly the next step gaming took back then

I agree with you, certainly--nothing can be put at the feet of any one person in any company, much less as multi-faceted a video game company as Nintendo. And it wasn't really fair on my part to put Gamecube propriatary optical disks as something that falls under the withered technology doctrine. But I do think that is what was behind N64's cartridges (seting aside Nintedo's creating their biggest competitor with the whole SNES-CD debacle.*)

It's interesting the way you can track most of Nintendo's quirks as a company back to specific lessons learned and possibly never really gotten over. The distrust of the video game industry after the crash led to the Seal of Quality, which lead to an almost authoritarian control over 3rd party titles. Hence N64 era seeing a hell of a lot of 3rd parties jumping ship once another truly viable option came up. I think it was defining philosophy of Yamauchi's because of the circumstances of the crash that he never realy got over. Itawa has seen the errors of that line of thinking, and is attempting to right it accordingly. Similarly, the prolifiration of terrible porn games for Atari by Mystique was looked upon as another cause of the crash, hence the family friendly mature that became doctrine (though that's looking a little too narrow possibly--they might jut be an uptight company--but again this is something that has slowly changed ith time, more rapidly under Itawa. I doubt Yamouchi would have ever let Manhunt II come out for the Wii). I don't say these things by way of saying they're a bad company, but hey, as a hardore gamer I want to play, say, Resident Evil 4 as much a the next guy, and I'm glad things are changed in recent years to allow such a thing to happen on Nintendo consoles.

*For those of you that don't know (which may be some, may be none, I have no idea), an amazing story from video game land: Nintendo wanted to create a CD-ROM add-on for the SNES. To this end they enlisted two companies-Phillips and Sony. However, after much development time with both companies seperately, they announced, without telling Sony beforehand, that Phillips was creating their peripheral. The SNES-CD died in devlopment, with all there is to show for it thoe awful Phillips CD-i Zelda games as part of the deal. Meanwhile Sony, feeing betrayed, had done massive development towards a Nintendo Cd-ROM based console and were no left holding the bag. so they decided fuck it, we'll finish it and release ourselves, and that's how the Playstation was born.

It's pretty hard to say Nintendo would have been just as successful without Miyamoto considering the way things went.

The game that put Nintendo on the map was Donkey Kong, which was of course the first game Miyamoto created. It was the first ever game with a story (howevertiny that story seems nowadays) and the first ever game with different stages. Those are both pretty fucking huge.

The phenomenon that was the NES was largely based around Super Mario Bros. Obviously other games became big as well, but that is what made the Famicom/NES the system it was. Without it, the NES probably languishes on the shelves back in those aforementioned days at the one NY store. Of course the cult of personality didn't exist back then. SB is what created that cult in the first place.

If the arcade was the biggest earner, why did Atari go backrupt and have to be sold a few times before eventually disappearing into nothing? Hell, considering the bath Atari took with the 2600, I'd say arcade was the bigest earner by default. And really, since we're basicaly talking pre-NES it's pretty much besides the point.

In the mid-80s, I had a 7800, not an NES. The 7800 was known for how good it's arcade posts were, but even at 7 years old I knew I was missing something by having it instead of the NES.

They made video games cool.  They ared annoyingly good at making kiddy games.