Now I've really done it! Videoconsoles from the 3rd generation

I've been debating with myself wether I should or shouldn't continuing writing about old hardware in these parts... it's a topic that fascinates me and I enjoy writing, so...

On the other hand, I don't plan to keep going just forever. I have limits, there are many modern consoles I'm not familiar with, nor they have the same interest to me... but I'd still like to write some more pieces covering 1990s consoles.

For the time being, I'll just cover 3rd generation consoles. Mostly I'll be focusing on the Nintendo Famicom / NES and the Sega Master System, but we'll see.

 

The first section of this thread will be dedicated to the Famicom/NES, one of the biggest selling video consoles of all time. And there's plenty of stuff to tell...

The Nintendo Famicom / Nintendo Entertainment System (1983-2004)



The Famicom was the second console from Japanese manufacturer Nintendo. Their previous console was called Color TV-Game , and sold from 1977 to 1983. It was a very primitive device (didn't even have cartridges!) that allowed users to play Pong -style games on their TVs.

But their success allowed Nintendo, previously a manufacturer of mechanical arcades and cards, to become more ambitious. Too much, actually. Initially the Famicom was to be a 16-bit system, with optional keyboard and disk units. Luckily for Nintendo they ditched those plans in favor of a less ambitious machine inspired by the ColecoVision .

The decision helped Nintendo navigate the videogame market crash of 1983 . Around this year, the videogame console business faced a serious crisis. Reasons were varied: too many models and manufacturers, lack of proper quality control, the lowering prizes of home computers... as a result the console sales shrank as much as 97% during the next years, and some experts were of the opinion they would never recover.

It wasn't the best scenario for a new videoconsole, and the first years were harsh. But by the end of 1984 the Famicom had become the dominant videoconsole in the Japanese market. After all, it was much more advanced than the Atari clones that made up most of the competition.



Now it was the time to expand to the USA, which would happen from 1985 onwards. Nintendo took this step very, very carefully, and apart from redesigning the case and adopting the name Nintendo Entertainment System (or NES ) they took additional steps to ensure their success:

1) The console and the games were renamed to "Entertainment System" and "Game Paks" respectively, in an attempt to distance themselves from previous consoles. The videogame market crash of 1983 was still fresh in too many minds. This also helped them to sell the consoles in toy stores, whick impulsed sales.

2) Nintendo unified box and cartridge designs. They also made sure everything from advertising to instructions were accurate in order to regaign consumer trust.

3) Internal quality controls. Every game had to be approved by Nintendo, a messure which would eventually lead to the Nintendo seal of quality .



On top of that, every console would include a 10NES chip that wouldn't allow unauthorized games to launch.

4) Nintendo then decided that their image in the western countries was going to be family-friendly. This was a decision that would provoke many issues in the future. Until the 1990s, when external bodies were created to rate games, Nintendo applied their own standards, but only in the west. This meant that games such as Maniac Mansion had to lose some of their darker content in order to be approved for the NES:

But funnily enough, the same standards were not applied to Japanese releases, and sometimes comparing the Japanese and the western release of the same game can lead to surprises.

A well known example is Bionic Commando , and action platformer from Capcom. Its Japanese version is called Hittorā no Fukkatsu: Toppu Shīkuretto , and includes references to Hitler and Nazism that just had to disappear elsewhere:



(This also conflicts with my personal believe that everything -fictional- is funnier with Nazis, but whatever. Seriously. Consider Casablanca , remove the Nazis and what do you get? Some boring love triangle)

This revamped Famicom also arrived to Europe starting in 1986. Distribution was handled by other firms such as Bandai or Mattel, because Nintendo didn't have a proper European division until the 1990s.

The western NES was sold until 1995, while the original Japanese models were sold until 2005 (!). In both cases they survived against much more modern videoconsoles, as they were cheap, had an established user base and a wide selection of games available. By that time they had sold up to 62 million units. And this likely ignores the unofficial clones sold in places like Taiwan, South America or the former USSR.

Technical specifications:

CPU: 8-bit, MOS Technology 6502 @ 1.79 MHz (NTSC systems) or 1.66 MHz (PAL systems).

RAM: 2 Kb. RAM. Although the figure is deceptive, because game cartridges can include extra RAM.

PPU: Made by Ricoh, with its own 2 Kb. of Video RAM. Capable of displaying graphics at a 256x240 resolution, with up to 64 simultaneous sprites and 25 colors from a palette of 54.

Sound: By default, 5 sound channels (2 pulse channels, 1 triangular sound generator, 1 noise channel and 1 low quality digital sound). Game cartridges can also carry extra sound hardware.

Media: Cartridges ranging from 9 Kb. to 1 Mb. in capacity. Most games use 128-384 Kb. capacities.

Many NES carts also include mappers , that is, chips that extend the memory and surpass other hardware limitations of the system. For instance, Nintendo's MMC5 offered extra sound channels, advanced graphics (16K tiles, color control, split-screen), large ROM support, and scanline IRQs.

Mappers made game manufacturing more costly, but were instrumental in bringing new game releases to the aging videoconsole. They also acted as anti-piracy measures.

Their importance carries on to Famicom / NES emulators, because only the best emulators support most mappers. And that's not easy, because unlicensed / pirated games also use their own types, and a complete list is unavailable.

The NES hardware also ended up in the arcades. First they arrived the Nintendo Vs. machines, where two players could sit opposite to each other and compete in the same games.

I'm more familiar with the later PlayChoice-10 system. These sometimes consisted of two monitors and a selection of NES hits. The upper monitor contained the list of games and displayed game tips, while the lower one showed the game themselves. Coins didn't buy lives or continues, but time , and players could switch games whenever they wanted, provided they still had time available.

Both arcade systems based on the NES can be emulated using MAME .

The Family Disk System:


The Family Disk System (or FDS for short) was one of the most interesting Famicom addons. It was a floppy disk unit that was sold only in Japan from 1986 to 1988. It used its own proprietary system; the floppies resemble those of PC 3'5, but are smaller.
The rationale behind it was to introduce a cheaper means of distributing games than cartridges. At first, they also had the advantage of size (64 Kb. per side), until cartridges added new mappers (yes, mappers again!).

Anyway, the system caught on and soon Japanese teenagers could go to their favorite shopping mall, buy games, have them copied on their floppies and repeat the process as much as they wanted to.

Technically, the addon also expands minimally the NES hardware. It adds an extra sound channel and enough RAM to load the games.

To emulation enthusiasts its main interest relies on its exclusive game library . In exchange, you'll need the FDS BIOS (typically renamed as disksys.rom ) and to map a key in your emulator of choice to swicth the disk sides .

The Sharp Twin Famicom was an authorized Famicom clone that unified the console and the disk unit. It was sold in Japan only from 1986:



When game cartridges allowed for bigger games the floppy disk subsystem started to wane. Still, Nintendo kept supporting it until 2003.

Despite never leaving Japan, the FDS was extremely popular, and sold around 4.5 million units.

The game library:

The NES/Famicom (and to a lesser extend the FDS) has one of the biggest game libraries of its time. Unlike many previous console manufacturers, Nintendo did allow third party developers to release the game for their system.

However, their terms could be strict. Nintendo personally manufactured ALL game cartridges, and developers needed to order at least 10,000 of them. They didn't sell? Not a problem, but Nintendo wouldn't refund them the money spent. Also, any developer working with Nintendo couldn't develop for other systems. Oh, and every manufacturer could only submit 5 games per year to Nintendo.

These conditions were met with resistance and later anger. Manufacturers reacted in different ways. Some of them worked to defeat the 10NES protection and manufacture their own cartridges. Others such as Konami with Ultra Games created subsidiaries so they could submit more than 5 games per year to Nintendo. And finally, others such as Electronic Arts decided to support the competition instead. EA would become one of the first developers to support the Sega Genesis / Mega Drive.

But it doesn't end here. Nintendo had created itself many enemies, and from the Famicom / NES onwards their new machines would have to depend on their own releases rather than third party games.

As for game recommendations, we can think of the Super Mario Bros. (Nintendo), Mega Man (Capcom), Castlevania and Contra / Probotector (Konami) series. And for RPG fans, Legend of Zelda (Nintendo), Dragon Warrior (Enix) and Final Fantasy (Square).

But even this would mean forgetting hundreds of games from every imaginable genre. MobyGames logs 1,335 games for the system, and the figure likely ignores floppy games and unlicensed titles. The translation and hacking community for the system is also one of the most active.



Double Dragon II



Star Wars

The clones:

Just like it had happened with the Atari 2600, the NES / Famicom was cloned unoficially and saw release in many countries under a varity of names. Most contemporary clones appeared in the late 1980s and were manufactured in China or Taiwan, but also in Southest Asia and India.

Most of them cloned the Japanese version of the console and therefore used Japanese 60-pin cartridges. Since they lacked the 10NES chip they should be compatible with both official and unofficial game carts.

On the other hand, compatibility with the most sophisticated mappers or the ability to save games tended to be a problem.



Above pictured there's a Dendy, a Taiwanese clone of the system that made it big in the former Soviet Union in the early 1990s, where the Famicom wasn't officially available. It was extremely succeful despite only being able to use bootleg cartridges.

A similar situation took place in South America, where the official Famicom wasn't available either. There the Family, Creation and Super Creation became the standard alternatives:



But sometimes the official product and the clones were available in the same country and at the same time. I still remember the NASA ads and offers in Spanish computer magazines in the early 1990s:



And Nintendo didn't act? Well, it wasn't easy for them. See, most of these systems were not advertised as Nintendo clones, but as their own TV Systems. NES compatibility was suggested by cloning their design and advertising, but that was it.

And then there was the thing that most ot these systems were sold in markets were the Famicom wasn't available anyway, so it was hard for them to argue a loss in profits.

If that, what's remarkable to me about the famiclones is their resistance to die. Even today it's relateively easy to visit a dollar store around the world and find many consoles that are still Famiclones under a flashy design, usually modelled after more modern systems:



This for instance is called a PolyStation, because it imitates the exterior of the PS1.

But it is also possible to find famiclones under the guise of educational computers, computers for kids or even portable arcade devices.

 

The Sega Master System (1985-1996)



The Sega Master System was first released in Japan in 1985. It was the successor of the SG-1000 , an earlier Sega console that had the misfortune of being released at the same time as the Famicom/NES .

On the inside it was basically a Sega Mark III , the last of the SG-1000 variations with an improved video chip. This new video chip was developed in house by Sega and was based on the System 2 arcade board, the same that powered Choplifter , Wonder Boy and Wonder Boy in Monster Land .



A Sega Mark-III.

But the Famicom / NES was already too popular, so Sega rebranded it as the Master System for an US release. And eventually back to Japan, under the same name.

These two first iterations of the console are SG-1000 / Master System hybrids. They can load Master System cartridges, obviously, but also SG-1000 game cards.

They also have another peculiarity, an FM sound expansion based on the YM2413 sound chip. These were available as a separate add-on for the Mark III, but came built-in on all Japanese Master System units.

The Master System was the introduced in Europe around 1987. And while it didn't have it easy, it proved more successful there than in Japan and the USA. The reasons were two. First, Nintendo had been less successful in introducing the NES in Europe. And second, some European developers started programming games for the system. Previous to this, Nintendo monopolistic tactics had prevented the Master System from obtaining a game library attractive enough. Until 1990, when Nintendo started to gain ground, Sega effectively owned the European console market.

Brazil was another success for Sega. There the Master System appeared in 1989 distributed by Tectoy, and it benefitted from the absence of Nintendo and a strong advertising campaign. When Nintendo finally arrived to Brazil in 1993 it faced an 80% of Sega users, but also the presence of unofficial NES clones.

Such was the success of the Master System in Brazil that it spawned several exclusive games based on Brazillian animation characters, and Master System clones continued to be sold as far as 2016.

In 1990 Sega introduced yet another variation on the system, the Sega Master System II :



Rather than an improved version, it's a cut-down version of the system sold at a reduced prize. It ditches SG-1000 compatibility, the 3-D glasses port and has no FM sound available, not even as an option. Ironically, it's the only version of the console I remember being sold in Spain, were it was introduced at the same time as the Sega Genesis / Mega Drive . Somebody must have thought there was a market for both consoles, and apparently they were right.

There's even a fourth variation of the Master System, but this one was sold exclusively in Brazil. It's the Sega Master System III :



It adds some of the hardware improvements from the Sega Game Gear , such as a bigger color palette and cartridges with a higher capacity. This model and variants are the only ones which can run the Brazilian port of Street Fighter II , which is another exclusive:

The Master System and variants stopped being sold in Japan around 1991. North America followed in 1992 and Europe in 1996. It sold a total of around 12 million units, which is pretty good considering the aggressive presence of the Famicom / NES.

Hardware specs:

CPU: Zilog Z80A 8-bit CPU @ 3.58 Mhz.

RAM: 8 Kb. RAM, plus 16 KB. Video RAM.

Video: Sega custom video chip, capable of resolutions of 256×192 with 32 colors on-screen.

Sound: Texas Instruments SN76489 PSG, and in some models, also a Yamaha YM2413 FM chip.

Media: ROM cartridges (with up to 512 Kb. in capacity) and SG-1000 game cards (with up to 32 Kb. in capacity).

It's worth noting that the Sega Master System hardware was much more powerful than the Nintendo Famicom / NES. However, what turned the tide in favor of Nintendo was not the hardware, but the exclusive deals they signed with many game developers. This deprived the Master System of the game library it deserved.

The game library:

The Master System game library consists of around 314 games, most of them arcade ports. Of those 314 games, more or less half of them are European exclusives such as the Asterix games, Double Dragon or Renegade .



Renegade

However the most popular games for the system are likely other arcade conversions produced by Sega themselves: Golden Axe , Space Harrier , Out Run ...

The system had a mascot of sorts in Alex Kidd. Its game Alex Kidd in Miracle World was sometimes bundled with the system:



It's a great platform game somewhat reminiscent of Super Mario Bros. , which is likely why it was chosen.

Emulation.

There are many good Master System emulators out there. An updated version of the veteran Meka by Omar Cornut and others is a good first choice:



The reason why it's still being updated is that some cartridges for the system keep appearing, especially Korean bootlegs.

Something more modern? Try Gearsystem by Ignacio "drhelius" Sánchez:



However, there is something else to consider when emulating the system, and that is the series of patches that restore FM music to western games such as Sonic the Hedgehog , Wonderboy III or Ys: The Vanished Omens . FM music was disabled in western releases for these games because only Japanese machines had the option of the FM module.

You can obtain these patches from websites such as Romhacking .

 

There are a few more third generation video game consoles, but most of them are insignificant or I already covered them on the piece I wrote on the first and second generation consoles.

I'm referring to stuff like the Atari 7800, the Casio PV-1000 or the Epoch Super Cassette Vision.

Intead of dealing with those, I think I'll finish off this piece speaking of two consoles that were derivates of 8-bit computers, the Commodore 64 Games System and the Amstrad GX4000.

 

The Commodore 64 Games System (1990)



Sometimes I wonder if in order to become a CEO people undergo lobotomies. That's the reasonable most explanation that I've come up with in order to explain stuff like this console.

The C64GS was the pet project of Commodore UK, who came up with the idea of a cut-down Commodore 64 in order to compete with the video consoles from Sega and Nintendo. The idea was that families would accept a cheaper console version of the home computer, even if it would only be good for playing games.

The console would load C64 cartridges only. There was already some supply of them, because the format had some importance from 1982 to 1984, until disk units for the system became more reliable and affordable.

But there was a problem... since those old cartridge games had been developed for the C64 , many wouldn't work with the console. That the game expected at some point for a key to be pressed was enough to make it completely unusable, because the C64GS didn't have any keys.

Some game developers did support the system. Ocean software, for instance, but also Domark, System 3 and MicroProse. It wasn't exactly a big gamble for them, because they could also distribute the same games or the C64 with little or no changes.



However, the system was doomed for the start. Here are some reasons for it:

1) It was 1990! By that time, anybody who wanted a C64 had one already. And if they didn't, the difference in meant prize that they could get the real thing for just a bit more than the console.

2) Why buy a C64GS when you could get a C64 and play the cassette versions of the same games?

3) Not enough software. The C64GS had no killer apps, and most of its games were already available for the C64 . Even their game cartridges could be played in the C64 . In the end, only 28 C64GS labeled games appeared.

4) Obsolescence and market saturation. The C64 hardware first appeared in 1982, and it had an 8-bit architecture. The system was not rival for the NES/Famicom or the Sega Master System , and much less for the upcoming Nintendo SNES and the Sega Genesis/Mega Drive .

So there's little surprise that the C64GS was a complete failure. It only sold 20,000 units out of the 80,000 that had been produced, and likely costed Commodore a good deal of money.

 

Is there a problem with the formatting in this phorum? It seems to have some kind of trouble with my paragraphs, blending them into big chunks that are hard to follow.

 

@Neville,
Everything looks OK on my end.

 

Thanks for answering. It all looks OK now... but before the list at the end of my last post was all mashed together, among other fragments.

I have Chrome set up to translate Russion to English in this site, maybe that is screwing up the format?

 

The Amstrad GX4000 (1990).



Just like the Commodore 64 Games System , the Amstrad GX400 was an offshoot of an earlier 8-bit computer line, this time the Amstrad CPC . At least it was based on their CPC plus , which allowed for some hardware improvements: the graphics got their palette upgraded to 4096 colors and got sprite handling, and the sound could now be DMA controlled, which reduced CPU usage.

But despite this ameliorations, the Amstrad CPC hardware was pretty much the same as it was in 1984. While the hardware was technically more powerful than the NES / Famicom or the Sega Master System , it was designed for a multi-purpuse 8-bit computer and not a gaming console. Plus it certainly couldn't compete with newer 16-bit systems such as the Genesis / Mega Drive , the SNES or the Commodore Amiga .

The GX4000 could still have been a minor success with a proper game library, but lack of investment left it with a selection of just 27 games. To make things even worse, most of them had already been released for the Amstrad CPC in either disk or tape format. Sure, some featured small improvements, but hardly anything that justified the difference in cost. A cartridge game for the system sold at 25 pounds, while the same game in cassette format could be bought for as low as 4 pounds.

Finally it came to Ocean Software to release a few CPC plus / GX4000 exclusives: Burnin' Rubber , the racing game that shipped wih the console, or a few games only available before for 16-bit machines, such as Pang , Navy Seals or RoboCop 2 . French developers Titus and Loriciels also contributed with some "enhanced" titles such as Dick Tracy or Panza Kick Boxing .

The GX4000 was only sold in Great Britain, France, Spain and Italy. These were countries where Amstrad had a significant presence, but it failed nevertheless. At first the reviews were positive, focusing on the low price and the console design, but eventually interest waned when it became obvious that the games were arriving too slowly, weren't widely available and that most of them had little or no improvements over their disk / tape versions.

The final sales figures show that Amstrad only managed to sell around 15,000 units, and the console died down without much repercussion during 1991.

 

I just saw it again. I'm not sure if it's a phorum problem or a browser problem. I'm attaching a capture so you don't think I'm hallucinating: