Hiroshi Yamauchi inherited in 1949 Nintendo. As a first step, and to demonstrate his authority, he dismissed the only relative he had in the company (his nephew), and also all the managers loyal to his grandfather (from whom he inherited the company). In 1977 a boy who was then 25 years old was introduced to Hiroshi. Since childhood, this aspirant had a dream, and was to devote himself to the world of entertainment, and came to him because they had a friend in common and because he thought he would be happy working in a toy company. When the manager asked Miyamoto (the applicant) to bring a toy of his invention, he was impressed with its occurrence. Miyamoto created a hanger with hand-painted figures. With his work, he was hired as a graphic designer.
Without knowing it, Yamauchi had hired the person with whom, together they would change the world of video games radically.
Miyamoto had arrived at the Japanese company at a crucial moment. It was 1975 and the company had made its first foray into the world of video games with EVR Race, although the machine was a total failure. In 1977, while the Atari console fever was going on, it ran through all the houses of E.E.U.U. ; the only console available in Japan was the TV Tennis created by Epoch. It turned out to be a Magnavvox Odyssey tucked into a new casing. In this year, many copies of the Atari successes of companies like Bandai, Hitachi, or Epoch were released.
Nintendo opted for the Color TV Game 6 and Color TV Game 15. Two crucial machines for the current establishment of video games in the eastern country. At the same time, large Japanese companies known as Taito, or Namco were dedicated to creating recreational machines.
There was little reason to believe that the Japanese video game market could cope with the American titans of Atari and Bally Midway. And is that after the Second World War, Japan had gone from being the enemy country, to be one of the largest exporters of the 'yankies', although Japan's influence on the Western country was practically nil. Japanese cinema was associated with the Godzilla movie (for what was considered rather a joke).
However, the great creation of Taito with his Space Invaders (of which I already spoke) encouraged the creators of Japanese entertainment software to try the market that so much resisted them. The American market.
Hiroshi Yamauchi was among the entrepreneurs who thought that the future was in the video game industry, and so he told the directors of his company, ordering the cancellation of several projects to focus on the development of these.
Gumpei Yokoi was the creator of something very novel. It occurred to her to create a portable console with LCD technology that would make it easy to build and transport. The resulting device was the Game & Watch, low cost machines with LCD technology that, at the same time, served as a watch. The device sold a whopping 30 million in the 11 years following the publication of the console.
Yamauchi was not comfortable with the achievement, and decided to launch in the attempt to make Nintendo one of the biggest competitions for the Atari 2600. For this, he prepared the creation of a much more superior console.
The console that you see is the result of this Japanese idea, called Famicom (although it will change its name). A very innovative model, which had among its catalog, several versions of the great success of Nintendo, Donkey Kong.
The incredible sale of this device was so huge, that Nintendo was catapulted to success instantaneously; having such a huge demand that they were not able to satisfy all the demand for video games that existed for the machine. Yamauchi, once again, revolutionized the market with his new idea to fix this demand scandal for the Famicom, that idea was to create a licensing system for third parties. This license consisted of reserving the right to publish any video game that met quality standards, while charging developers to use their platform.
The success that he achieved was so huge, that in it appeared such emblematic games as Super Mario Bros, The Legend Of Zelda, or the very Final Fantasy.
Among the most successful developers harvested at this time, was Capcom creator of classics such as Street Fighter, Mega Man, or known today by mobile games. Sega also, with games like Out Run or Golden Ax. These, among others.
Nintendo was motivated to try it in the American market, that after the crisis of the videogame of 1983, the consoles had decayed a lot. And in 1985 it arrived at E.E.U.U. undergoing modifications, such as his name, by the name we all know. The great, NES or Nintendo Entertainment System. He harvested many other successes, such as the Super Mario Bros of which I spoke, a title that not only sold millions and millions of copies, but also thanks to him sold so many millions of NES to be able to play. And thanks to Nintendo, in 1987 the video game market was back to stay.
That is thanks to the great marketing maneuver by Nintendo, and whose products unconditionally took the podium of video games, and 6 years after its launch, the NES still held with 23% market share of the US territory.
Nintendo was criticized for all kinds of hypothesis, they were accused of being monopolistic, of having an anti-Japanese spirit for having left for the US market; and this among others ...
Ains .. How many times have we heard about this. And as you know, it's not the first time, but this was something innovative. In 1991 the first study appeared that "showed" the negative influence of video games on children. And also had to do with Nintendo, which in case it had not been criticized enough, the study focused on the videogames of the Japanese company; although the critics did not make a dent in Nintendo, in any sense.
In 1987 the NES arrived in Europe, at a difficult time for the consoles, when 16-bit computers such as the Atari ST, or Commodore Amiga, opened a gap in the market.
Sega, of North American origin, launched in 1985 its model based on the NES, which with inferior performance, was imposed in Europe to the NES, with a name of Sega Master System. And many companies of the old content went from videogame programming in computers, to consoles. As it is the case of Rare (recently bought by Microsoft at present) or Codemasters. However, that did not succeed in relaunching the market.
The decade of the 80 is over, and Nintendo just ploclamarse one of the best (not to say the best) developer of video games, and consoles, flooding the United States of their devices, and creating such iconic games as Super Mario Bros, plus to house in his NES the beginning of the endless saga of Final Fantasy.
Nintendo, at this time, was the champion in the world.
Along with the definitive consolidation of the industry and some stagnation in the creativity of videogame creators, due in part to the stabilization that the different genres had suffered, the decade of the 1990s was characterized by the definitive decline of 8-bit computers and the arrival by a new generation of more advanced computers.
The Commodore Amiga, a computer with high performance graphics and sound, had been presented in July 1985 and the developers were soon taking advantage of the capabilities of the new machine, well above those of any other competing machine, to present a new generation of video games technically much more advanced. One of the first companies to approach the market for the new computer was Cinemaware, which in 1986 published its Defender of the Crown, a game with some amazing graphics that got very good critical acceptance. The second title of the firm, King of Chicago (1986) continued a style that came to be called Interactive Fiction, with influences from the world of cinema and literature, and in which the player was part of a story in which he took active part, as if he were the protagonist of a movie inside his computer.
George Lucas had created Lucasfilm Games in 1982 as a division of Lucasfilm dedicated to the development of videogames. The first titles of the company, BallBlaster and Rebel Rescue were developed in 1983 for Atari, but at the end of the decade he was developing completely different titles. Maniac Mansion, from 1987 picked up the influence of the first video adventures and Cinemaware titles, and incorporated Lucasfilm's experience in the graphic and plot section and a new graphic engine called SCUMM. It was an immediate success and laid the foundations for the following video adventures of the firm, such as Indiana Jones and the Last Crusade (1989), Loom and The Secret of Monkey Island (1990), or Indiana Jones and the Fate of Atlantis (1992). Axlon, a company of Nolan Bushnell came to design in 1988 Control-Vision, a new console that used VHS tapes instead of the usual cartridges, and whose video games were going to be interactive movies, but the project did not come to see the light. However, the integration of cinematographic techniques in videogames was not an exclusive feature of American firms; Another World (1991), by the French Delphine Software, echoed this new trend inspired by the Star Wars universe as well as the classic science fiction and fantasy literature, and Simon the Sorcerer (1993), by the British Adventure Soft , He had a big success. Europe, in fact, in the middle of the decade became one of the most important consumers of graphic adventures.
Atari had presented its ST model in 1985, and at the end of the decade enjoyed a good penetration in the European and American markets. Thanks to its multimedia capabilities and its integrated MIDI port, the computer enjoyed the predilection of the community of musicians, but also faced the Commodore Amiga in the recreational field, and between both posed competition to Apple computers in the most professional sector . During the first half of the decade the machines of Atari and Commodore monopolized practically exclusively the market of ludic software, but with the massive arrival of the PC to the domestic market the number of titles published for both platforms was gradually decreasing. More than 25 years after the appearance of these machines, there is still a large group of fans who continue to edit video games, demos and other programs for both platforms
The world of consoles was led by the Sega Mega Drive, a 16-bit machine that had been launched in 1988 and had such popular titles as Sonic the Hedgehog. The leadership of Sega remained until 1991, year in which Nintendo markets its Super Nintendo to regain the market with titles like Super Mario Kart (1992). Sega's response did not wait, bringing to market the Sega Mega-CD, which, however, failed to snatch the SNES its supremacy.
The appearance of the Nintendo Game Boy in 1989 was a small revolution in its field. Created by Gunpei Yokoi, the same engineer who had designed the successful Game & Watch, the Nintento machine quickly positioned itself as a leader in sales in the portable consoles segment, thanks in part to its low price and partly to its huge catalog . The console underwent a series of changes throughout the years, eventually incorporating the ability to run games in color, and was imitated by a multitude of companies, including Atari with its Lynx, and Sega with its Game Gear. However, none of them managed to overshadow the commercial success of the Nintendo console, whose sales figures worldwide stood at a total of 118 million units.
Will Wright inaugurated a new genre, not with his first games like Raid on Bungeling Bay, that for the initial platform to which he took it (the Commodore 64) he did not sell the same as his version for the NES, giving him an injection of capital that would serve him to fully focus on the world of video games.
Wight joined The Game Of Life (a simulator of everyday life), with the creation of virtual worlds; and when he added an interface based on the Apple OS, and tools similar to image editing, he was creating the formula of the great game called SimCity.
The game first appeared on Apple's platform in 1989.
Later came games that continued to inspire in these mechanics, such as Civilization, published in 91; a game that was based on great games like Warcraft in 94, Age Of Empires in 97 or others ...
At the beginning of this decade, three great types of video games could be distinguished.
♦ Action Games (seen mainly in recreational)
♦ Narrative games (which used the computer for a greater possibility of interaction)
♦ Simulation / Strategy Games (with very large experimentation possibilities)
And although the bases of genres and types of video games were already well established, there was always a video game that redefined the genre.
The PC Gaming as it is called now, in the decade of 1990 began a decline that has not been corrected until a few years ago. The Commodore Amiga and the Atari ST were replaced little by little by the compatible PCs, which are the current ones that we have many people. The "created pieces" whose sales have continued to grow until the departure of new technologies such as tablets, smartphones and others.
The technological improvements led to try to recreate three-dimensional worlds in two-dimensional screens. This idea dates back to 1965 when Ivan Sutherland presented a report outlining the characteristics of a future capable visualization interface, not just making a video game look like reality, if not even being able to "feel" it. And that was a giant step for what now sounds so much to us, the famous virtual reality. And since 1990 virtual reality begins to work a lot, especially on the part of more advanced computer scientists.
In this context, the first video games appeared in 3D, which were some like Tailgunner or Battlezone. They used graphics that simulated the illusion of depth. Later the technique of the poligonado was used to give depth and form to the objects. The 3D graphics were made with some fairly simple calculations that all they did was to recalculate the position and size of each polygon depending on the player's situation.
Flight simulator video games were leading the idea but soon the technology of polygonal graphics was extended to racing simulators with games like Indianapolis 500 in 1989.
Alone In The Dark, the game of photography that you have over was the game that best knew how to use this technology; inaugurating the genre of Survival Horror. The game had a resounding success thanks to its graphic innovations and in terms of the setting.
John Carmak and Tom Hall had programmed a 3D version of the legendary Super Mario 3, which they called Dangerous Cave. The title achieved such a number of sales, and reaped such success, Romero (development manager) contacted Apogge, after a fruitful attempt to connect with Nintendo. Apogge was impressed with the work they did, so the first title that (Jbk93) saw the light of the company that formed these 3 men, called id Software was published by Apogge, and was called Commander Keen.
This game, which was published in 1990, was a huge success in the world of BBS, and with this success, id Software managed to move to Dallas.
In that same year, a colleague of Romero, was in a company that developed a game engine that allowed to add real photographs (textures) to the polygonal graphics, thus achieving a sense of realism. When Romero found out about his friend's studio work, he put Carmak to work on a similar game engine.
The result was Catacombs 3-D, a title that in 1992 initiated the shooters genre in the first person, and of which you have an image below this text.
Wolfestein 3D continued the idea of Catacombs 3-D, improving the graphic section and some aspects of the gameplay. He achieved enormous success selling more than 100,000 copies at the end of 1993 (in a year of sales). Until then, the company had developed its own programming tools for its titles, but id Software decided to license its graphics engine to other companies so that they could focus more on the design and artistic section, leaving aside the technical aspects.
The game of the image is Shadowcaster, published in 1993 with the id Software engine technology, which financed its graphic engine to Raven Software (creators of the title) and thanks to this, it encouraged many other companies to request graphic engine license .
Meanwhile, Romero was in the development of Doom a program that with its publication in 93 gave a great shock to the world of video games, changing the course that occurred after passing the story mode of the game thanks to many innovations.
Doom not only stood out for its graphic section and the strength of its graphics engine, but also for its unprecedented violence never before seen at the time.
However, it was the first game that officially allowed the modding, or the creation of mods that consists of the modification of its design and its levels by the players. Although Doom was not a pioneer in this, since the idea went back to 80, with pinball games.
Doom is perhaps the propeller of the great growth of online video games, since he popularized it by allowing the game through a local network or the Internet, or through network cable. This also supposed an advance in the field of marketing, in such a way that one could call the revolution provoked by Doom, demonstrating that shareware was perfectly feasible as a business idea.
The tremendous success that Doom achieved made John Romero a media star overnight, and was a turning point in the video game industry, which from that moment would almost completely abandon the world of 2D to move to the new technology of the 3 dimensions.
In the mid-1990s, the videogame industry suffered another crisis. The sale of consoles had fallen 17% in 94, and 19% in 95; the business was reduced due to recent scandals caused by violent games like Street Fight II, or Mortal Kombat that led to new rating systems, such as ESRB.
New consoles, such as the Atari Jaguar or the 3DO tried to compete in a market dominated by the Sega Megadrive and the Super Nintendo, however, they did not manage to snatch their place from the big ones. On November 22, 1994, one of the first 36-bit consoles was presented. This was created by Sega, and was called Sega Saturn, along with its star title, the Virtua Fighter (one of the pioneers in 3D polygonal technology).
To the misfortune of the Americans, Sony wanted to join the market by presenting the PlayStation, with a game called Ridge Racer, which would compete with the Virtua Fighter of Sega.
However, PlayStation was nothing new. Nintendo and Sony were collaborating for the creation of a platform that used CD-ROM technology, and due to the little influence that Sony had in videogames, not to mention that null, Nintendo gave up cooperation. At the same time, Sony created a division that would be responsible for video games, ordered by Norio Ohga, Sony created what they would try to be a rival platform to Nintendo devices, and the Sony PlayStation was presented on December 3, 1994 , and on September 9, 1995, it was presented to the United States; previously creating a very strong impression at the E3 fair last year.
In its publication, the PlayStation broke records, selling in a week what sold the Magnavox Odyssey in all his life, 100,000 consoles managed to sell Sony in a miserable week. And in 6 months they had managed to sell a whopping one million consoles; and the numbers kept growing, in 2 years there were more than 20 million PlayStation in the world; like this in 2001, the PlayStation occupied space in 30% of the North American houses, and Sony got totally, and completely in the world of the videogames
At the end of 1995, Sega had in its catalog a total of 7 incompatible systems, forcing the company to abandon old consoles completely to focus on the Sega Saturn, console that theoretically was more powerful than the opponent of Sony; but because of the chips that had the Saturn (of inferior quality) along with many rumors that developers found many problems to develop in the Saturn, made the public choose the PlayStation.
Nintendo, oblivious to all "war of consoles" presented in 96 its new console. It was the Nintendo 64, a machine that ran in 64 bits, and also had titles like Super Mario 64, had the support of well-known companies such as Rare. And is that the Nintendo console had a technology far superior to the rest of its competitors, although their games were still marketed in cartridges, instead of CD-ROMs; much cheaper
However, neither Nintendo with its Virtual Boy and its Nintendo 64, nor Sega with its Sega Saturn and Sega Dreamcast nor any other great firm managed to stop the giant that had been born out of nowhere called Sony. And is that in the last years of the twentieth century was without a doubt the console with the highest bidding in market share, sales etc ... And that was due to the good catalog it had, with games such as Ridge Racer, Tekken, Ace Combat, Crash Bandicoot, Need For Speed, Resident Evil, Final Fantasy VII, Tom Raider II, Gran Turismo etc ...
Sony not only had hit the table after Nintendo abandoned cooperation for the first prototypes of the PlayStation, but it had redesigned the market, changing the restrictions when making mature games; And it is that at the same time that the Sony console became the undisputed market leader, it was becoming the company that would decide how the market would behave. Everything depending on your movements.
Change of century, we left behind the 20th century to enter the 21st century.
Undoubtedly, the transformation of the videogame market in this century was brutal. We no longer only had to consider that the videogame was a multi-billion dollar industry, and that it was of unimaginable dimensions, but that in 2009, it was one of the sectors with the highest GDP in the United States. the industry among others. And in Spain, more money was generated with video games than with music and cinema JUNTOS. And is that the developer of video games was no longer a fan of electronics or programming that did what he could on his own, if not that it became a trade as such. And the video game, considered by many people more an art. In addition to the creation of teams, or studies that specialize in the development of the same.
The market of the recreational machines was in crisis for years, and is that what caught their attention was the greatest power with respect to personal computers and home consoles. And because of consoles like the Neo-Geo SNK that allowed you to play in your own home to the same quality as in the arcades (although at a high price), adding to this the new consoles such as PlayStation or Nintendo 64, they precipitated to the recreational machines to the absolute decay because the consoles and computers not only were better than the recreational ones that existed, if of a quality infinitely superior to these.
On the other hand, mobile telephony began to develop phones with enough power to play games quite acceptable. With this, the arcade machines had already been buried, and therefore, the arcades forcing the market to reorient their business style.
In 2000, Sony launched the successor to its first machine. They called it PlayStation 2 and it was a 128 bit console that would have a huge success, becoming the most sold console in history.
At the same time, Microsoft, the creators of Windows decided to enter the videogame industry by launching their X-BOX a year later, with features similar to the Sony console, but failed to achieve its huge success.
In that same 2001, Nintendo launches another platform called GameCube, which did not achieve great success among the adult public, and whose failure forced the Japanese company to reorient its market strategies. But still Nintendo would not be able to recover the lost audience, although it will not be long before that moment appears.
More discreetly, Nokia tries to enter the market with its Nokia N-Gage, and its launch was in 2003 and it was a telephone-console, which had both the typical buttons on the phones, and a crosshead among others things. It supported MMOs so you can take for granted that it allowed online connection. He even had a successor, the NG.
This stage is also very important for the PC, which managed to recover a large audience, thanks to games that achieved great triumphs (and continue to win) as Warcraft or Age Of Empires, and other action titles such as Call Of Duty or Battlefield.
In 2004 Nintendo releases its portable console Nintendo DS (it does not correspond to the photography), and later Sony would remove the PSP (it does not correspond to the photography either), although this one would not be able to reach the device of the Japanese company in question of sales.
Four years later of its first console, Microsoft surprises to Sony releasing in 2005 its Xbox360 an improved model of its predecessor, to try to compete against the PlayStation 2 that was resisting to him to the original console of the North American company. Sony wanted to respond, and as expected (but a year later) launched with all expectations, its PlayStation 3 but not enjoyed the success that the second console Sony brand, perhaps due to the delay in getting this. A good move by Microsoft.
Nintendo did not opt for a superior console technologically speaking, if not for innovation, publishing in 2006 its Wii. A console with an innovative system of movement and simple but fun games that returned Nintendo to the place it deserved. The console was not a failure, much less, years and years after it was published, it was still selling, and today more than 100 million Wii's have been sold.
E3 Fair 2013, there are rumors that a new generation of consoles will be unveiled at the conferences of two rival companies, Microsoft and Sony. And the rumors were true, Xbox One and PS4 are the successors of the respective consoles of each company, and today they have distributed about 8 million Xbox One, and about 11 million PS4. This generation has been criticized for cheating, for "offering dust" among other things.
It had already been promised in the previous generation the 1080p and 60FPS so loved, and it was understandable, but this time it was repeated, but it has not been achieved in its entirety.
Xbox One was presented with many disadvantages when connecting to the Internet, with the resale and sharing of video games among others .. Which PS4 did not have, and maybe that is the reason that today there is a difference of 3 million consoles sold.
To this day, video games are a lifestyle for many, and half a century after SpaceWar! great works of art are attended to in many games, technological innovation has taken us to a place where technical quality is preferred to innovation, something that is currently lacking, fresh air is missing, cheating on the part of companies such as Sony , Ubisoft among others etc ... And it seems that the game, half a century after the appearance of the first video games seems that the industry is taking its first steps.
Sources:
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Hiroshi Yamauchi inherited in 1949 Nintendo. As a first step, and to demonstrate his authority, he dismissed the only relative he had in the company (his nephew), and also all the managers loyal to his grandfather (from whom he inherited the company). In 1977 a boy who was then 25 years old was introduced to Hiroshi. Since childhood, this aspirant had a dream, and was to devote himself to the world of entertainment, and came to him because they had a friend in common and because he thought he would be happy working in a toy company. When the manager asked Miyamoto (the applicant) to bring a toy of his invention, he was impressed with its occurrence. Miyamoto created a hanger with hand-painted figures. With his work, he was hired as a graphic designer.
Without knowing it, Yamauchi had hired the person with whom, together they would change the world of video games radically.
Miyamoto had arrived at the Japanese company at a crucial moment. It was 1975 and the company had made its first foray into the world of video games with EVR Race, although the machine was a total failure. In 1977, while the Atari console fever was going on, it ran through all the houses of E.E.U.U. ; the only console available in Japan was the TV Tennis created by Epoch. It turned out to be a Magnavvox Odyssey tucked into a new casing. In this year, many copies of the Atari successes of companies like Bandai, Hitachi, or Epoch were released.
Nintendo opted for the Color TV Game 6 and Color TV Game 15. Two crucial machines for the current establishment of video games in the eastern country. At the same time, large Japanese companies known as Taito, or Namco were dedicated to creating recreational machines.
There was little reason to believe that the Japanese video game market could cope with the American titans of Atari and Bally Midway. And is that after the Second World War, Japan had gone from being the enemy country, to be one of the largest exporters of the 'yankies', although Japan's influence on the Western country was practically nil. Japanese cinema was associated with the Godzilla movie (for what was considered rather a joke).
However, the great creation of Taito with his Space Invaders (of which I already spoke) encouraged the creators of Japanese entertainment software to try the market that so much resisted them. The American market.
Hiroshi Yamauchi was among the entrepreneurs who thought that the future was in the video game industry, and so he told the directors of his company, ordering the cancellation of several projects to focus on the development of these.
Gumpei Yokoi was the creator of something very novel. It occurred to her to create a portable console with LCD technology that would make it easy to build and transport. The resulting device was the Game & Watch, low cost machines with LCD technology that, at the same time, served as a watch. The device sold a whopping 30 million in the 11 years following the publication of the console.
Yamauchi was not comfortable with the achievement, and decided to launch in the attempt to make Nintendo one of the biggest competitions for the Atari 2600. For this, he prepared the creation of a much more superior console.
The console that you see is the result of this Japanese idea, called Famicom (although it will change its name). A very innovative model, which had among its catalog, several versions of the great success of Nintendo, Donkey Kong.
The incredible sale of this device was so huge, that Nintendo was catapulted to success instantaneously; having such a huge demand that they were not able to satisfy all the demand for video games that existed for the machine. Yamauchi, once again, revolutionized the market with his new idea to fix this demand scandal for the Famicom, that idea was to create a licensing system for third parties. This license consisted of reserving the right to publish any video game that met quality standards, while charging developers to use their platform.
The success that he achieved was so huge, that in it appeared such emblematic games as Super Mario Bros, The Legend Of Zelda, or the very Final Fantasy.
Among the most successful developers harvested at this time, was Capcom creator of classics such as Street Fighter, Mega Man, or known today by mobile games. Sega also, with games like Out Run or Golden Ax. These, among others.
Nintendo was motivated to try it in the American market, that after the crisis of the videogame of 1983, the consoles had decayed a lot. And in 1985 it arrived at E.E.U.U. undergoing modifications, such as his name, by the name we all know. The great, NES or Nintendo Entertainment System. He harvested many other successes, such as the Super Mario Bros of which I spoke, a title that not only sold millions and millions of copies, but also thanks to him sold so many millions of NES to be able to play. And thanks to Nintendo, in 1987 the video game market was back to stay.
That is thanks to the great marketing maneuver by Nintendo, and whose products unconditionally took the podium of video games, and 6 years after its launch, the NES still held with 23% market share of the US territory.
Nintendo was criticized for all kinds of hypothesis, they were accused of being monopolistic, of having an anti-Japanese spirit for having left for the US market; and this among others ...
Ains .. How many times have we heard about this. And as you know, it's not the first time, but this was something innovative. In 1991 the first study appeared that "showed" the negative influence of video games on children. And also had to do with Nintendo, which in case it had not been criticized enough, the study focused on the videogames of the Japanese company; although the critics did not make a dent in Nintendo, in any sense.
In 1987 the NES arrived in Europe, at a difficult time for the consoles, when 16-bit computers such as the Atari ST, or Commodore Amiga, opened a gap in the market.
Sega, of North American origin, launched in 1985 its model based on the NES, which with inferior performance, was imposed in Europe to the NES, with a name of Sega Master System. And many companies of the old content went from videogame programming in computers, to consoles. As it is the case of Rare (recently bought by Microsoft at present) or Codemasters. However, that did not succeed in relaunching the market.
The decade of the 80 is over, and Nintendo just ploclamarse one of the best (not to say the best) developer of video games, and consoles, flooding the United States of their devices, and creating such iconic games as Super Mario Bros, plus to house in his NES the beginning of the endless saga of Final Fantasy.
Nintendo, at this time, was the champion in the world.
Along with the definitive consolidation of the industry and some stagnation in the creativity of videogame creators, due in part to the stabilization that the different genres had suffered, the decade of the 1990s was characterized by the definitive decline of 8-bit computers and the arrival by a new generation of more advanced computers.
The Commodore Amiga, a computer with high performance graphics and sound, had been presented in July 1985 and the developers were soon taking advantage of the capabilities of the new machine, well above those of any other competing machine, to present a new generation of video games technically much more advanced. One of the first companies to approach the market for the new computer was Cinemaware, which in 1986 published its Defender of the Crown, a game with some amazing graphics that got very good critical acceptance. The second title of the firm, King of Chicago (1986) continued a style that came to be called Interactive Fiction, with influences from the world of cinema and literature, and in which the player was part of a story in which he took active part, as if he were the protagonist of a movie inside his computer.
George Lucas had created Lucasfilm Games in 1982 as a division of Lucasfilm dedicated to the development of videogames. The first titles of the company, BallBlaster and Rebel Rescue were developed in 1983 for Atari, but at the end of the decade he was developing completely different titles. Maniac Mansion, from 1987 picked up the influence of the first video adventures and Cinemaware titles, and incorporated Lucasfilm's experience in the graphic and plot section and a new graphic engine called SCUMM. It was an immediate success and laid the foundations for the following video adventures of the firm, such as Indiana Jones and the Last Crusade (1989), Loom and The Secret of Monkey Island (1990), or Indiana Jones and the Fate of Atlantis (1992). Axlon, a company of Nolan Bushnell came to design in 1988 Control-Vision, a new console that used VHS tapes instead of the usual cartridges, and whose video games were going to be interactive movies, but the project did not come to see the light. However, the integration of cinematographic techniques in videogames was not an exclusive feature of American firms; Another World (1991), by the French Delphine Software, echoed this new trend inspired by the Star Wars universe as well as the classic science fiction and fantasy literature, and Simon the Sorcerer (1993), by the British Adventure Soft , He had a big success. Europe, in fact, in the middle of the decade became one of the most important consumers of graphic adventures.
Atari had presented its ST model in 1985, and at the end of the decade enjoyed a good penetration in the European and American markets. Thanks to its multimedia capabilities and its integrated MIDI port, the computer enjoyed the predilection of the community of musicians, but also faced the Commodore Amiga in the recreational field, and between both posed competition to Apple computers in the most professional sector . During the first half of the decade the machines of Atari and Commodore monopolized practically exclusively the market of ludic software, but with the massive arrival of the PC to the domestic market the number of titles published for both platforms was gradually decreasing. More than 25 years after the appearance of these machines, there is still a large group of fans who continue to edit video games, demos and other programs for both platforms
The world of consoles was led by the Sega Mega Drive, a 16-bit machine that had been launched in 1988 and had such popular titles as Sonic the Hedgehog. The leadership of Sega remained until 1991, year in which Nintendo markets its Super Nintendo to regain the market with titles like Super Mario Kart (1992). Sega's response did not wait, bringing to market the Sega Mega-CD, which, however, failed to snatch the SNES its supremacy.
The appearance of the Nintendo Game Boy in 1989 was a small revolution in its field. Created by Gunpei Yokoi, the same engineer who had designed the successful Game & Watch, the Nintento machine quickly positioned itself as a leader in sales in the portable consoles segment, thanks in part to its low price and partly to its huge catalog . The console underwent a series of changes throughout the years, eventually incorporating the ability to run games in color, and was imitated by a multitude of companies, including Atari with its Lynx, and Sega with its Game Gear. However, none of them managed to overshadow the commercial success of the Nintendo console, whose sales figures worldwide stood at a total of 118 million units.
Will Wright inaugurated a new genre, not with his first games like Raid on Bungeling Bay, that for the initial platform to which he took it (the Commodore 64) he did not sell the same as his version for the NES, giving him an injection of capital that would serve him to fully focus on the world of video games.
Wight joined The Game Of Life (a simulator of everyday life), with the creation of virtual worlds; and when he added an interface based on the Apple OS, and tools similar to image editing, he was creating the formula of the great game called SimCity.
The game first appeared on Apple's platform in 1989.
Later came games that continued to inspire in these mechanics, such as Civilization, published in 91; a game that was based on great games like Warcraft in 94, Age Of Empires in 97 or others ...
At the beginning of this decade, three great types of video games could be distinguished.
♦ Action Games (seen mainly in recreational)
♦ Narrative games (which used the computer for a greater possibility of interaction)
♦ Simulation / Strategy Games (with very large experimentation possibilities)
And although the bases of genres and types of video games were already well established, there was always a video game that redefined the genre.
The PC Gaming as it is called now, in the decade of 1990 began a decline that has not been corrected until a few years ago. The Commodore Amiga and the Atari ST were replaced little by little by the compatible PCs, which are the current ones that we have many people. The "created pieces" whose sales have continued to grow until the departure of new technologies such as tablets, smartphones and others.
The technological improvements led to try to recreate three-dimensional worlds in two-dimensional screens. This idea dates back to 1965 when Ivan Sutherland presented a report outlining the characteristics of a future capable visualization interface, not just making a video game look like reality, if not even being able to "feel" it. And that was a giant step for what now sounds so much to us, the famous virtual reality. And since 1990 virtual reality begins to work a lot, especially on the part of more advanced computer scientists.
In this context, the first video games appeared in 3D, which were some like Tailgunner or Battlezone. They used graphics that simulated the illusion of depth. Later the technique of the poligonado was used to give depth and form to the objects. The 3D graphics were made with some fairly simple calculations that all they did was to recalculate the position and size of each polygon depending on the player's situation.
Flight simulator video games were leading the idea but soon the technology of polygonal graphics was extended to racing simulators with games like Indianapolis 500 in 1989.
Alone In The Dark, the game of photography that you have over was the game that best knew how to use this technology; inaugurating the genre of Survival Horror. The game had a resounding success thanks to its graphic innovations and in terms of the setting.
John Carmak and Tom Hall had programmed a 3D version of the legendary Super Mario 3, which they called Dangerous Cave. The title achieved such a number of sales, and reaped such success, Romero (development manager) contacted Apogge, after a fruitful attempt to connect with Nintendo. Apogge was impressed with the work they did, so the first title that (Jbk93) saw the light of the company that formed these 3 men, called id Software was published by Apogge, and was called Commander Keen.
This game, which was published in 1990, was a huge success in the world of BBS, and with this success, id Software managed to move to Dallas.
In that same year, a colleague of Romero, was in a company that developed a game engine that allowed to add real photographs (textures) to the polygonal graphics, thus achieving a sense of realism. When Romero found out about his friend's studio work, he put Carmak to work on a similar game engine.
The result was Catacombs 3-D, a title that in 1992 initiated the shooters genre in the first person, and of which you have an image below this text.
Wolfestein 3D continued the idea of Catacombs 3-D, improving the graphic section and some aspects of the gameplay. He achieved enormous success selling more than 100,000 copies at the end of 1993 (in a year of sales). Until then, the company had developed its own programming tools for its titles, but id Software decided to license its graphics engine to other companies so that they could focus more on the design and artistic section, leaving aside the technical aspects.
The game of the image is Shadowcaster, published in 1993 with the id Software engine technology, which financed its graphic engine to Raven Software (creators of the title) and thanks to this, it encouraged many other companies to request graphic engine license .
Meanwhile, Romero was in the development of Doom a program that with its publication in 93 gave a great shock to the world of video games, changing the course that occurred after passing the story mode of the game thanks to many innovations.
Doom not only stood out for its graphic section and the strength of its graphics engine, but also for its unprecedented violence never before seen at the time.
However, it was the first game that officially allowed the modding, or the creation of mods that consists of the modification of its design and its levels by the players. Although Doom was not a pioneer in this, since the idea went back to 80, with pinball games.
Doom is perhaps the propeller of the great growth of online video games, since he popularized it by allowing the game through a local network or the Internet, or through network cable. This also supposed an advance in the field of marketing, in such a way that one could call the revolution provoked by Doom, demonstrating that shareware was perfectly feasible as a business idea.
The tremendous success that Doom achieved made John Romero a media star overnight, and was a turning point in the video game industry, which from that moment would almost completely abandon the world of 2D to move to the new technology of the 3 dimensions.
In the mid-1990s, the videogame industry suffered another crisis. The sale of consoles had fallen 17% in 94, and 19% in 95; the business was reduced due to recent scandals caused by violent games like Street Fight II, or Mortal Kombat that led to new rating systems, such as ESRB.
New consoles, such as the Atari Jaguar or the 3DO tried to compete in a market dominated by the Sega Megadrive and the Super Nintendo, however, they did not manage to snatch their place from the big ones. On November 22, 1994, one of the first 36-bit consoles was presented. This was created by Sega, and was called Sega Saturn, along with its star title, the Virtua Fighter (one of the pioneers in 3D polygonal technology).
To the misfortune of the Americans, Sony wanted to join the market by presenting the PlayStation, with a game called Ridge Racer, which would compete with the Virtua Fighter of Sega.
However, PlayStation was nothing new. Nintendo and Sony were collaborating for the creation of a platform that used CD-ROM technology, and due to the little influence that Sony had in videogames, not to mention that null, Nintendo gave up cooperation. At the same time, Sony created a division that would be responsible for video games, ordered by Norio Ohga, Sony created what they would try to be a rival platform to Nintendo devices, and the Sony PlayStation was presented on December 3, 1994 , and on September 9, 1995, it was presented to the United States; previously creating a very strong impression at the E3 fair last year.
In its publication, the PlayStation broke records, selling in a week what sold the Magnavox Odyssey in all his life, 100,000 consoles managed to sell Sony in a miserable week. And in 6 months they had managed to sell a whopping one million consoles; and the numbers kept growing, in 2 years there were more than 20 million PlayStation in the world; like this in 2001, the PlayStation occupied space in 30% of the North American houses, and Sony got totally, and completely in the world of the videogames
At the end of 1995, Sega had in its catalog a total of 7 incompatible systems, forcing the company to abandon old consoles completely to focus on the Sega Saturn, console that theoretically was more powerful than the opponent of Sony; but because of the chips that had the Saturn (of inferior quality) along with many rumors that developers found many problems to develop in the Saturn, made the public choose the PlayStation.
Nintendo, oblivious to all "war of consoles" presented in 96 its new console. It was the Nintendo 64, a machine that ran in 64 bits, and also had titles like Super Mario 64, had the support of well-known companies such as Rare. And is that the Nintendo console had a technology far superior to the rest of its competitors, although their games were still marketed in cartridges, instead of CD-ROMs; much cheaper
However, neither Nintendo with its Virtual Boy and its Nintendo 64, nor Sega with its Sega Saturn and Sega Dreamcast nor any other great firm managed to stop the giant that had been born out of nowhere called Sony. And is that in the last years of the twentieth century was without a doubt the console with the highest bidding in market share, sales etc ... And that was due to the good catalog it had, with games such as Ridge Racer, Tekken, Ace Combat, Crash Bandicoot, Need For Speed, Resident Evil, Final Fantasy VII, Tom Raider II, Gran Turismo etc ...
Sony not only had hit the table after Nintendo abandoned cooperation for the first prototypes of the PlayStation, but it had redesigned the market, changing the restrictions when making mature games; And it is that at the same time that the Sony console became the undisputed market leader, it was becoming the company that would decide how the market would behave. Everything depending on your movements.
Change of century, we left behind the 20th century to enter the 21st century.
Undoubtedly, the transformation of the videogame market in this century was brutal. We no longer only had to consider that the videogame was a multi-billion dollar industry, and that it was of unimaginable dimensions, but that in 2009, it was one of the sectors with the highest GDP in the United States. the industry among others. And in Spain, more money was generated with video games than with music and cinema JUNTOS. And is that the developer of video games was no longer a fan of electronics or programming that did what he could on his own, if not that it became a trade as such. And the video game, considered by many people more an art. In addition to the creation of teams, or studies that specialize in the development of the same.
The market of the recreational machines was in crisis for years, and is that what caught their attention was the greatest power with respect to personal computers and home consoles. And because of consoles like the Neo-Geo SNK that allowed you to play in your own home to the same quality as in the arcades (although at a high price), adding to this the new consoles such as PlayStation or Nintendo 64, they precipitated to the recreational machines to the absolute decay because the consoles and computers not only were better than the recreational ones that existed, if of a quality infinitely superior to these.
On the other hand, mobile telephony began to develop phones with enough power to play games quite acceptable. With this, the arcade machines had already been buried, and therefore, the arcades forcing the market to reorient their business style.
In 2000, Sony launched the successor to its first machine. They called it PlayStation 2 and it was a 128 bit console that would have a huge success, becoming the most sold console in history.
At the same time, Microsoft, the creators of Windows decided to enter the videogame industry by launching their X-BOX a year later, with features similar to the Sony console, but failed to achieve its huge success.
In that same 2001, Nintendo launches another platform called GameCube, which did not achieve great success among the adult public, and whose failure forced the Japanese company to reorient its market strategies. But still Nintendo would not be able to recover the lost audience, although it will not be long before that moment appears.
More discreetly, Nokia tries to enter the market with its Nokia N-Gage, and its launch was in 2003 and it was a telephone-console, which had both the typical buttons on the phones, and a crosshead among others things. It supported MMOs so you can take for granted that it allowed online connection. He even had a successor, the NG.
This stage is also very important for the PC, which managed to recover a large audience, thanks to games that achieved great triumphs (and continue to win) as Warcraft or Age Of Empires, and other action titles such as Call Of Duty or Battlefield.
In 2004 Nintendo releases its portable console Nintendo DS (it does not correspond to the photography), and later Sony would remove the PSP (it does not correspond to the photography either), although this one would not be able to reach the device of the Japanese company in question of sales.
Four years later of its first console, Microsoft surprises to Sony releasing in 2005 its Xbox360 an improved model of its predecessor, to try to compete against the PlayStation 2 that was resisting to him to the original console of the North American company. Sony wanted to respond, and as expected (but a year later) launched with all expectations, its PlayStation 3 but not enjoyed the success that the second console Sony brand, perhaps due to the delay in getting this. A good move by Microsoft.
Nintendo did not opt for a superior console technologically speaking, if not for innovation, publishing in 2006 its Wii. A console with an innovative system of movement and simple but fun games that returned Nintendo to the place it deserved. The console was not a failure, much less, years and years after it was published, it was still selling, and today more than 100 million Wii's have been sold.
E3 Fair 2013, there are rumors that a new generation of consoles will be unveiled at the conferences of two rival companies, Microsoft and Sony. And the rumors were true, Xbox One and PS4 are the successors of the respective consoles of each company, and today they have distributed about 8 million Xbox One, and about 11 million PS4. This generation has been criticized for cheating, for "offering dust" among other things.
It had already been promised in the previous generation the 1080p and 60FPS so loved, and it was understandable, but this time it was repeated, but it has not been achieved in its entirety.
Xbox One was presented with many disadvantages when connecting to the Internet, with the resale and sharing of video games among others .. Which PS4 did not have, and maybe that is the reason that today there is a difference of 3 million consoles sold.
To this day, video games are a lifestyle for many, and half a century after SpaceWar! great works of art are attended to in many games, technological innovation has taken us to a place where technical quality is preferred to innovation, something that is currently lacking, fresh air is missing, cheating on the part of companies such as Sony , Ubisoft among others etc ... And it seems that the game, half a century after the appearance of the first video games seems that the industry is taking its first steps.
Sources:
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