The Nintendo VS system is back in the U.S. market
By the beginning of 1985, 2.5 million Famicoms had been sold in Japan. Nintendo announced that it will release an overseas version of The Familycom in North America, called: Advanced Video System, an advanced video entertainment system. In Nintendo's product planning, the American version of The Family includes: Famicom host, keyboard, tape data logger, wireless control, and keyboard cartridge.
However, this plan did not have a chance to be implemented, and the United States did not recover from the 1983 game market crash, and no one was interested in the Nintendo family console program.
What Americans don't know is that in 1984, The Familycom hardware entered North America through arcades under the guise of Nintendo VS. System: Nintendo VS. The U.S. retailer rejected The Family, and Yamauchi believes that the road to the family console is blocked, but the arcade machine is still there. He decided to bring Famecom to North America through the arcade business.
The VS system is an arcade system developed and produced by Nintendo, and it is the same as most of the hardware of The Family. The VS system achieved significant results in the North American arcade market, with 1985 being the highest-paid arcade system in the United States. The VS system was first modified with: Donkey Kong, Donkey Kong Jr., Donkey Kong 3, Popeye and Mario Bros. games. The hardware uses the same Ricoh Ricoh 2A03 processor as The Family, and new games can also be installed by switching ROMs.
The picture shows the Nintendo VS system, which supports a dual arcade design, shares a set of processors, and can support four people to play at the same time.
Nintendo was not the first company to propose a convertible arcade system, as early as October 1980, Date East proposed the DECO Cassette System. This is the first standardized system that allows arcade owners to convert games. Developed in 1979, released in Japan in 1980, and released in North America in 1981. Arcade bosses buy an arcade cabinet and the game is stored on a standard tape. The arcade owner inserts the cartridge and key module into the cabinet. When the machine starts, the programs in the tape will be copied to the cabinet's RAM chip, a process that takes about two to three minutes. After that, you can play the game freely until the machine loses power.
The DECO Cassette System was revolutionary at the time, but because tape was easily degaussed, key modules were easily broken, games were loaded for too long, and game quality was poor. DECO was discontinued in 1985 and has a very short life. It is also a typical example of getting up early in the morning and catching up with a late set.
American family consoles lost too quickly, but the arcade business did not collapse at the same time. Because the VS system adopts the same hardware platform as Famicom, Nintendo can easily convert high-quality games on Famicom into arcade games. Arakawa recruited Jeff Walker to promote the VS system, and at the ASI exhibition in February 1984, the VS system officially entered the United States.
After the launch of the VS system, it was well received in the arcade industry. Easy to convert games, affordable, multi-game, multiplayer support. Since the iVS system, in 1984, Replay magazine reported that Nintendo had become a "big man." However, Japan was already the world of Famicom at this time, the audience of arcade machines was decreasing day by day, in 1985, Nintendo VS system stopped selling in Japan, Yamauchi decided to withdraw from the arcade market.
In North America, following the arcade success of sports games such as Konami's Track & Field (1983), Nintendo used arcade and VS systems to launch a series of sports games to occupy the U.S. arcade market. Such as: Punch-Out, Vs. Tennis, and Vs. Baseball, Punch No Hair, VS Version Tennis, VS Version Baseball.
The picture shows the Nintendo arcade game fist without false hair.
Pictured is Nintendo VS Tennis.
According to the 1984 press, the VS system was an "overwhelming blow" whose results were attributed to "good games and low prices." Nintendo sold 20,000 VS system arcades in 1984 and reached 50,000 in 1985, making it the most sold arcade machine in 1985. In 1986, when the American version of Famicom was introduced, sales of VS systems had exceeded 100,000 units.
The business that my father-in-law did not look up to, Arakawa really saw.
The goal of running the VS system is certainly not to be the arcade business that Yamauchi has long been looking down on, and his idea is to throw away this business while everyone is still rejoicing in Nintendo's achievements in arcades. Did the arcade crash after Nintendo left? Not really.
The success of the VS system gave Nintendo the confidence to pick up the Advanced Video System again. To suit American tastes, the American version of Famicom was named: Nintendo Entertainment System (NES). Nintendo's game release strategy is implemented according to three stages of rockets: the first stage is to release the Famem version, the second stage is to release the VS version, and the third stage is to release the NES version.
The strategy of the three-stage rocket makes the NES release, there is a high-quality and stable game camp, which is a world away from the Atari 2600. Many Americans find that the NES games they buy have already been played on the arcade of the VS system, such as Super Mario Bros. Compared to the bluff posters and game content of the Atari period, comparable to the contrast between the packaging of instant noodles, Nintendo Games strives to be consistent in graphics and content.
The VS system became the dragon that helped the Nintendo NES ascend to the Iron Throne of the family game console.
NES officially debuted in the United States
At CES in June 1985, Nintendo launched the American version of The Family: NES. The NES was redesigned by Lance Barr, an employee of Nintendo USA, and was equipped with a "no resistance" game card slot. The game card was loaded from the top to loaded from the front, making the NES more like a VCR recorder. 1985 was the time when VCRs were popular, and this design set the NES apart from competitors. In this regard, Masayuki Uemura explained that Nintendo technicians believe that the top loading is more likely to hurt children, and the front loading is a safer design.
The design of the resistanceless front-end loading brings a lot of trouble to the NES, and the resistanceless is not really resistanceless, but adopts a VCR-like loading method. When the game card is dry and the device is brand new, it will work just fine. When multiple plugs and pulls, the resistance-free design will fail frequently. In subsequent versions of the NES, such as the Super NES, Nintendo changed to top loading. Because of the hardware defects, the "Nintendo Authorized Repair Center" has sprung up in the United States, and the so-called authorized repair center is to pay Nintendo to buy parts.
The picture shows the NES.
For the Nintendo NES, there are many different names. In Japan, it is called a red and white machine because of the red and white design. In the United States, NES adopts a gray design, so it is called a gray machine. And in Shanghai, China, it's called flat machine, because Nintendo will also launch Super Nintendo, which is called "stereoscopic machine".
There are also two unauthorized versions of the Nintendo NES in Chinese mainland, the Little Bully Learning Machine and the Yuxing Learning Machine, which refer to the 8-bit family game console of Nintendo, no matter what it is called.
On October 18, 1985, NES officially went on sale in New York City. It entered Los Angeles in February 1986 and began nationwide distribution on September 27, 1986. During this period, Nintendo released 17 high-quality titles: Duck Fighting, Motocross, Golf, Kung Fu Masters, Pinball, Soccer, Super Mario Bros., Tennis, Wild Gunners, and Sabotage Crew.
For the U.S. market after the crash, Nintendo made many very different changes on the NES. The product was named Enterprise System, entertainment system, not gaming system. Replace the name "Console" with "Control Deck". Game cards are called: "Game Paks" instead of :"Video Games". This allowed Nintendo to effectively enter the toy market first, distinguishing it from the previously infamous family consoles. The game card packaging has a picture very close to the actual game screen, in order to reduce the difficulty of consumer understanding, the game packaging will indicate the game type. For licensed games and accessories, Nintendo also bears an official seal: this seal promises you that Nintendo has approved and guaranteed the quality of this product.
The picture shows the earliest Nintendo product seal, which was later renamed "Nintendo Quality Seal".
Learning from Atari' lessons, Nintendo went to great lengths to prevent the production of non-third-party games without Nintendo's authorization.
10NES and Atari Games
The 10NES system is a game license locking system designed for the North American and European versions of the NES, and the 10NES system is implemented by a chip called Checking Integrated Circuit (CIC) and an NES host computer. Where the "lock" is stored in the game console, the "key" is stored in the game, and the "key" is used to check whether the game card is really authorized.
One chip in the NES will check the inserted game card for authentication, and one microchip in the game card will provide 10NES code as needed. If the correct authentication is not provided, 10NES resets the CPU every cycle until a game with a licensed chip is inserted. Constant resetting of the CPU will prevent the NES from booting. In some cases, if 10NES fails to verify the licensed game card, it will also reset the CPU. 10NES has been granted a U.S. patent number US4736419A, the source code is protected by copyright, and only Nintendo can produce licensed chips. The patent for 10NES expired in 2005, but the copyright is still valid.
10NES can also verify that the game is in the same region as the console, such as the UNITED STATES/CANADA (3193 lock chip), most of Europe (3195), Asia (3196), and the United Kingdom, Italy and Australia (3197).
The picture shows the chip of the 10NES system.
Nintendo was the first game company to start locking zones, although it used hardware locks.
The 1983 Family did not have the chip, resulting in a large number of unauthorized gaming cards in the Asian market. Yamauchi said in 1986, "Atari went out of business because they gave third-party developers too much freedom, and the market was full of junk games. ”
The 10NES system has three main uses:
Give Nintendo full control over the software released for the platform.
Prevent unauthorized (pirated) game cards from running.
Prevents game cartridges from being channelled (zone locking).
This business practice, which seems very normal today, was at the time a risk of the world. There's a company called Tengen: Tianyuan that stepped up to Nintendo and operated like crazy.
In 1984, Atari was split into two companies: Atari Enterprises, which was responsible for computers and home game consoles, and Atari Games, which was responsible for Atari arcade machines. In order to enter the home game console market, Atari Games needed to create a brand new brand, so it was named: Tengen, Tianyuan. The word Tianyuan is also a Go term, referring to the center point of the Go board.
Nintendo's requirement for third-party game manufacturers is that in order to ensure the quality of the game, only 5 games are allowed to be submitted each year, and the game cards are submitted to Nintendo to be produced, and the games submitted to the NES are exclusive for 2 years. Atari Games negotiated with Nintendo as a result and was refused. In December 1987, Atari Games signed a Nintendo standard license without any additional treatment, and Tianyuan was founded on December 21, 1987.
In 1988, Tianyuan released three licensed games: Baseball, Pac-Man, and Gauntlet. But what Nintendo doesn't know is that Tianyuan is planning to bypass the 10NES restrictions and make a separate game for the NES. Atari's later corporate culture is really difficult to say. Tian Yuan will bypass the 10NES chip called Rabbit, when some gamers through voltage breakdown to crack the 10NES limit, and Tian Yuan's engineers worried that this practice would damage the NES host. If Tianyuan wants to bypass the restrictions of NES, it must obtain the source code of 10NES.
Pressed for time, Atari contacted the U.S. government and asked it to provide a copy of the source code for the Nintendo game lock, claiming it was a lawsuit. As a result, at Atari got the code. In 1988, Tian Yuan claimed to release game cards that could be applied to NES.
Because Atari gained access to the OWNER of NES without Nintendo's permission, Nintendo's motion to suppress Atari's alleged infringement of its copyright was approved by the District Court. Subsequently, Atari Games sued Nintendo for $100 million in claims, claiming that it unfairly monopolized the multibillion-dollar family game market each year.
The process of the lawsuit is extremely complex, and given the huge claim of $100 million, we can see how arduous it was. As a result, the court found that Atari Games had infringed Nintendo's copyright by creating a copy of the protected elements of the 10NES chip that was basically similar. Atari failed to claim that such a copy was fair use or that Nintendo had abused its copyright. Atari lost.
It is estimated that at that time, Atari Games' idea was that a large number of third-party game companies led by Activision at that time gave Atari 2600 to make games, and Atari sued Activision and lost the lawsuit. Now that Atari Games is a third-party game company making games for Nintendo NES, shouldn't Atari Games win the case? How did you lose the case?
Does this still need to be said? Atari 2600 itself does not have any non-authorization mechanism, and it does not have strict authorization conditions. Atari Games has signed a 10NES licensing agreement with Nintendo and is doing everything it can to bypass the NES restrictions. Sima Zhao's heart is well known to passers-by.
Although the Atari Games lost the case, the entanglement with Nintendo was not resolved until 1994.
The Iron Throne of NES
Nintendo has been so successful and has caused countless troubles, and the 10NES is just one part of it.
Yamauchi said: Everyone thinks that there is something particularly secret about Nintendo's strategy, and it seems to have the ability to predict the future, but it does not. No business lasts, no longer, what to do next, no long-term strategy.
In 1988, the NES grew at a very fast rate, and Nintendo's game cards were larger than all the PC software combined. In 1988, the United States sold 7 million NES units, which is comparable to the Total 64 personal computer Commodore in 1984-1988.
In June 1989, Peter Mayne, vice president of marketing at Nintendo, said that 37% of households in Japan use Famicom. By 1990, 30 percent of U.S. households had a NES, compared with 23 percent of PCs. By 1990, NES sales had surpassed all previously released consoles worldwide.
As of 2010, NES had worldwide sales: 61.91 million units. Among them, Japan sold: 19.35 million, the United States sold: 34 million, and other countries and regions sold: 8.56 million.
Nintendo invincible!