The thing is that legend thinks Nintendo is getting the ENTIRE credit for saving video games, and no one is doing that, save for fanboys. Yet he's using a source of people who aren't fanboys, and seems to think their comments are literal, and not hyperbole.

It's Wikipedia, you fail for even suggesting it is in any way a credible or tie breaking source. 

Would you also care to explain how this text backs up what you said anymore than what I said, or are you just  going to cop out on the "I provided quoted quoted text so I win" defense?

Legend 11's sure fire way to win an argument.

1. Make a claim.

2. Back said claim with a Wikipedia article regardless its relevance.

3. Insist that Wikipedia article made you the winner even though you refuse to defend it or explain why.

4. There, victory: no logic, burden of proof or relevancy needed.

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I remember the good old days when major game magazines talked about how greatly Lara's "positive attributes" were planned to be "increased" in TR 2 and whether the old "real" Lara Croft model would need to get a boob job to mirror that or whether they should replace that old and used model with a new model who naturally could display the "positive attributes" of Ms. Croft in a more "natural" way and whether it should be model A, B, C or D. With pictures included of course.

And wasnt there the one game where someone claimed you could play with Ms. Croft naked by using a certain cheat code?

I waited until the N64 came out before diving into the 32/64 bit era. My first 3 games were SM64, Wave Race, and Killer Instinct Gold. I kept going to the video game stores, but there were never any new games out. So my neighbor has Tekken 2, and I'm trying hard to convince myself that Killer Instinct is as good as what he has....... I gotta get a Playstation!!

So the PSX was still sold out everywhere. I'm so sure that I want one that I go ahead and buy 2 games for the system I don't even have. I buy Resident Evil & Tomb Raider. RE won't do it, but I was able to put TR in my CD player and listen to audio from the game. I was so excited. Two weeks passed, and I was able to finally buy my Playstation. It even came packed with Battle Arena Toshinden (rated 98 out of 100 at the time). I beat Tomb Raider without codes back then. It sucked. I even wrote a letter to Eidos suggesting how to make the game better (AND THEY WROTE BACK). My point: Tomb Raider AND Battle Arena were over rated back then. Everyone knew it. Watching Lara back into a corner did provide a certain "thrill", though.

Nintendo reinvented the industry in the early/mid 1980s.

Video gaming was essentially dead. I know, I was there (see my login).
People had moved on from the Atari 5200 and Colecovision (which came after the Atari 2600 and Intellivision and Odyseey 2 and other machines) to "home computers."

"Home computers" meant a lot of non-compatable competing formats, from Atari 8-bit series (400/800/XL) to Commodore Vic 20, then C-64 to Texas Instruments TI-99/4A, etc.

The PC as we know it was only 3-4 years old and generally had four-color graphics at best. It was not a gaming machine, per se -- though the PC Jr tried to be -- and was among the "etc." listed above for home computers.

Too much quantity and too little quality led to people moving from consoles to computers. Games were sold for pennies on the dollar. I remember buying a game or two each week from the discount table at JCPenny (I bought so many, the lady signed me up for a store card).

Of course, given the nature of the computer market, it was niche at best. Most people were afraid to type LOAD "*",8,1 or something like that to start a game (that is the actual Commodore 64 to load off the disk drive).

By this time, Nintendo was become a successful arcade machine company in the US and had developed a home unit (the Famicom -- Family Computer) for sale in Japan (which easily overtook a market which had systems like the Atari 2800 and the Bandai Intellivision). It sought a US distributor, but Atari declined and instead tried to release its its Atari 7800.

About the same time, Jack Trammel bought Atari from Warner Communications and the former Commodore boss took Atari out of the video game market. Coleco also had gaven up the ghost in favor of Cabbage Patch Dolls and there was no one doing consoles in the US.

Nintendo decided to "go it alone." They had to convince people that this was a viable product. As such, they made sure it didn't look like the previous video game systems (hence the awful top-loader) -- and wasn't even called a video game. ROB was part of the gimmicks used to differentiate the NES from all that came before.

Finally, the NES went on sale. And the system started selling, and selling, and selling. Then Sega joined the game. About a decade later, Sony joined the game. A few years after that, Sega left and Microsoft entered. Which is where we stand today.

Yes

Does Nintendo get too much credit for saving video games? Yes.

Do people that weren't around back then have a clue how it really happened? No.

Do us older guys telling you the truth matter to you? No.



Point blank, it crashed. Atari buried E.T to commemorate the death of it. Nintendo drove a truck of NES's to NYC and convinced them to stock the system. Any unsold units would get bought back. At that point, no retailer in the US would order video game consoles because of the crash in 1983. Once those stores in NYC proved they were successful, they got orders across the country and the video game market was reborn.

Nintendo doesn't get ENOUGH credit for saving videogames.

Mark my words guaranteed if Nintendo ever leaves videogaming the industry dies right behind them.

Others contribute, others participate, others enrichen it, but Nintendo IS the videogame industry.

Videogames = Televideo games = Games played from a Television screen as opposed to Arcade and Computer.

The reason videogaming's capital is in Japan is because of the Famicom/NES and nearly every significant addition to the playing experience came from Nintendo.

Gaming would be all computers today if not for Nintendo in 1985. Review the Crash of 1983 for yourself. Sega wouldn't be able to resurrect it. No one would have.

And because of the NES gaming became a greater cultural force that allowed it seep into cell phones and a host of varied devices. Anime's influence on US culture was partially brought about by Nintendo's existence in the gameworld. Cultural exchange.

Sony saw gaming as a fad and Kutaragi saw the potential of v-gaming watching his daughter play a Famicom.

The handheld market IS Nintendo because it was started and designed up and down the line by Nintendo.

And Nintendo has even influenced the computer gaming world with controls and game design.

Nintendo's praises seriously are not sung enough and this is why the Wii was so important. If Nintendo didn't create the DS or the Wii the videogame industry was headed for another crash. Perhaps the final one.

Look at the only developer to survive throughout all the time making a healthy profit to stay afloat as a company. Only Nintendo has done it from generation to generation. They wrote the bible on how this industry is really run and it was inevitable that their ruling time was to return. Large money pockets from megacorps and Nintendo's attitude towards 3rd party are the only reasons they dropped a little from the console throne.

Guaranteed Nintendo will be here long after Sony or Microsoft or any other johnny-come-lately enter this difficult biz. There's a reason for that and I've just detailed why.

John Lucas

Nintendo is not the Holy Grail and it is not God.

The folks who make the video game industry great aren't the console manufacturers; it's the video game developers of which Nintendo is only one of, if one of the oldest/most successful ones.

Nintendo has done a lot of innovative things in the past but I don't think they have a monopoly on creativity.  It's not as if only Nintendo can be creative and it's a mistake to think that.  Though I will say that Sega, the way it was back in the Genesis/SNES era, felt far more creative than the entirety of the MS-xbox division and Sony put together. 

I think very highly of Nintendo and its accomplishments, but one can't be objective while wearing a fanboy T-Shirt.  It's sad so many people are wearing them...