freespeech

Also, to those who claim the seal still exists, it is no onger the Nintendo Seal of Quality, it is just the Nintendo Seal.

themissinglink_42

rainofwalrus

Aesteval

rainofwalrus

@mescalineeyes: you know he can't run Crysis, right? LOL.@

Zensation: an excellent post. kudos.

rainofwalrus

point09micron

Tcata

Tcata

[www.gamestop.com]

MURDERFACE

Click on the back of the box view the Seal is still there.

[www.gamestop.com]

MURDERFACE

Zensation

Greatest innovations though..
C64 for it's accessibility and introduction of real music to games.

IBM for it's exandability, which has allowed such growth in the gaming world... though i think has also been it's downfall. I mean, how many people can keep their pcs up to spec these days, really?

Optical Storage formats, for allowing much greater amounts of data to be used for gaming.

and the Wii, for bringing gaming to the mass market, and completely changing the direction of game design and control.

That's pretty broad, but they are the things that come to mind that really changed the way things are done.

Polite Society

mescalineeyes

astrixzero

EgoMonk

Unlike knockoffs, whose legality is sometimes questionable, anyone using the Seal of Quality unofficially is breaking trademark law, which is much easier to prosecute.

zdude255

It also did nothing to prevent another games crash - when the flood on Atari crashed the market and when Nintendo stealthily brought out their NES, treating it as a toy instead of a game console, they brought back the developers who had learned from their mistakes (sometimes) and created a more controlled stream of titles released.

By the time of the SNES, a development team would be large enough that there would be a significant difference in quality between most games made by one guy and most games made by a professional developer. So Nintendo's mandatory developer licensing (The Seal) ensured that only financially-sound companies developed games for the SNES and all consoles since then - preventing independents from publishing on the SNES, but also preventing crap from flooding the game shelves.

It's 2008, now, though, and the industry would now be better off without the seal, its approval process, etc. The truth is these things are in place so that Nintendo can control the public image of their consoles, not to ensure that the users are happy. If I were to sit down and put together my own unplayable, ugly game in two weeks, and for some reason a publisher picked it up and printed 1,000,000 discs of it (not gonna happen), and a retailer decided to carry this unheard of, crappy game (not gonna happen), the consumers would not buy it. The industry has matured to that point. However, if talented (but financially challenged) developers aren't open to develop on the Wii or DS, then those systems will miss out on a lot of potentially awesome and creative games. If you don't believe me, look to what the independent game developers have done on more open (or close-to-open) platforms like the PC or in Microsoft's XNA platform for XBLA and Community Games.

vinternet

Has anybody here actually seen some of the games for Nintendo's old systems? Watch the Angry Video Game Nerd, check some garage sales, and walk around suspicious alleyways for a while and you will find NES games that make today's shovelware look like Super Mario Galaxy.

Ninja-Z

To name two innovations;

Sims and soon to come Spore. In short, they have mister innovation on their team ^^

TakeoNinja

By the time I was about 8 though, I was the only one without an NES. The first time I saw it it was like video gaming suddenly leapt 10 years into the future. Eventually I got my own and it was awesome. Other than adventure games, the games I had on PC were pretty feeble in comparison (whatever you can get off a BBS in the mid-80s...)

I'd say the NES really brought gaming to the masses. It was at least 1995 before I heard anyone who wasn't a fellow computer geek actually talking about using a computer.

fuchikoma

@modeps:
No, now they've switched the text to read "Offiial NINTENDO Seal", but it's still essentially the same thing just with plausible deniability on any crap product that manages to get "sealed".

@themissinglink_42:
But perhaps that was one of the things that helped drive away all the 3rd party devs leading into the N64. They felt the regulations on the SNES were overly restrictive, and bailed for the Playstation.

Purple Dave

I know this is going to sound retarded, but 3d gaming is what is destroying the pc market. Before three-dee, the type of hardware used for other computing tasks, namely logic and 2d acceleration, was the same as what was needed for gaming. So even if you didn't buy your pc with gaming in mind, as long as it was a modern machine it could play most games. But 3d acceleration is a completely different beast. Most applications have absolutely no need for it, so you really have to specifically request it when buying a pc. Integrated graphics is more than enough to play DVD's and Flash programs, but even the most advance GMA processor has trouble running Half-life 2 (a nearly 4 year old game) at minimum resolution. A return to 2d would make the pc relevant again, but I don't think anyone is willing to suggest something so radical. This is even depspite the fact that from a traditional non-gaming view of aesthetics, 2D games from 10 years ago are still more beautiful than Crysis. Once 2D hit 16.7 million colors and nearly infinite sprite counts, 2D became only limited by how well you're artists could draw. 3D gamis are still restrained by poly counts and texture resolution.

labrats5

rainofwalrus

1. It's Text-based Adventure Game. There's no such thing as a Text-based Video Game.

[en.wikipedia.org]

2. NES/Famicom wasn't the first D-Pad.

rainofwalrus

GenericDude

subnet6

AkumaX

Estel

Anyways, here's mine:

1. Text-based video game - Started the whole "video-games-can-be-created-and-enjoyed-at-home" craze)

2. The D-pad (first created for NES) - Without this innovation, perhaps the analog stick would never have been created. And would we be playing Bioshock with an Atari-type joystick and/or mouse?

3. Pong - Is this the first ever non-text based video game to reach the mass population and be a hit? I say yes.

...l

*EDIT* aha! found the article (Top 50 Game DESIGN Innovations):
[www.next-gen.biz]

onomeister

The IBM PC was not even a good gaming machine and PCs had only become half-decent gaming machines by the end of the 80s. Until '85 only about 5.5 million PCs were sold, including clones, and that is hardly bringing it to the masses.

Arcades, Atari, Commodore and Apple all did much more to bring gaming to the masses.

TrekVogel

Go Team Venture

@SchoolBusDriver: The nintendo seal of quality was not a logo. It was a promise. A promise that the game you just purchased was well made and deservied to be played. You might not necessarily like the game, based on your tastes, but you know that the developers put the time and effort in to make sure their game was worthy of a nintendo console

themissinglink_42

themissinglink_42

Loyal2none

Mantra_

In an ode to Nintendo's seal of quality, my 3 pics are:

1 - Power Glove (crappy gimmicky peripheral that attempted to blind people's judgement)

2 - Virtual Boy (crappy gimmicky console that just blnded)

3 - Wii (the crappy gimmicky peripheral that blinded people to the fact that they would never make more than 5 good games that actually sold)

Sincerely,
A bored Wii owner "

-Quoted for being lame.

subnet6

@tofoomeister: His. His field of journalism. Unless "Stephen" is a she. That's what I get for being an internet tough guy.

tofoomeister

tofoomeister

rainofwalrus

Sounds like somebody's never played Seven Cities of Gold, M.U.L.E., or even keeps current in her own field of journalism.

tofoomeister

On the Atari, any one could release any piece of crap they so pleased. There was no standards, and it was destroying the industry. People were constantly undercutting each other, in both price and quality, to such an extent that people just weren't paying for the games any more.

Nintendo's seal of approval isn't just saying "good game inside" but much much more. First of all, Nintendo manufactured ALL games for the system (with the exception of some Chinese knock offs, but its not like they were selling those in every k-mart country wide) and to have your game manufactured it had to go through a very strict approval process by the people at Nintendo. So that basically meant that no, you weren't going to have 8 progressively shittier versions of pacman like the Atari did.

The games release today on wii might not be anything special, but their quality is most definetly much higher than the majority of the crap that was released on the Atari during the early 80s.

Spenze

(* insert your own indie-rawk / pun-crock sellout and run with the joke.)

rainofwalrus

rainofwalrus

rainofwalrus

How about the modem (and thus remote multiplayer gaming)?

I assume he's talking about VIDEO gaming and not gaming in general though, otherwise the humble dice may make it to the list.

Rajio

My List would be:
1) Commodore (RIP)
2) Game engines (such as DOS-Doom Operating System)
3) Gamepads (Joysticks were horrible on consoles and PCs, first gamepad btw was the colecovisions controller, it was kind of a cross-over from joystick to gamepad)

cduran

1 - Power Glove (crappy gimmicky peripheral that attempted to blind people's judgement)

2 - Virtual Boy (crappy gimmicky console that just blnded)

3 - Wii (the crappy gimmicky peripheral that blinded people to the fact that they would never make more than 5 good games that actually sold)

Sincerely,
A bored Wii owner

Ndogg550

1. Game Saves
2. Laser Disc Games
3. SNES controller - PERFECT design, awesome Dpad, yeah, so maybe it's not an "innovation" but it was definitely 2D perfection.

Tiger-Fever

gamadaya

CaptLtrl

xboxsab

Wolfers

The Nintendo Seal of Quality is rather strange. The whole reason it was created was because there were third party products for the NES that operated by sending a current directly into the NES. Pretty much every single game that wasn't directly manufactured by Nintendo had to use this method to get it to boot their code. Naturally this was both a huge blow to Nintendo as they were not reaping in the profits and a potential blow to the consumer as it could potentially destroy their system.

The Nintendo Seal of Quality meant you were getting a product that would boot normally (using the system Nintendo had put in place) and as such wouldn't screw up your system.

Perhaps the first actual "licensing" for a console and it set the stage for most modern consoles where games can only be authorised by the console manufacturers.

It's got a pretty interesting history:

[en.wikipedia.org]

[en.wikipedia.org]

Dioxen

ErskinPig

Not that EA is some perfect angel of gaming or anything, they've certainly done their best to stifle things down to 'This is as good as you're gonna get!' levels, but I think that's mainly because of the previous direction of the company. They over-inflated themselves well before the market was so booming with cash, and had to make everything brainlessly safe just to keep themselves from toppling into failure.

Ampillion, Dayman. Fighter of the Nightman.

BtownDesignGuy

modeps

If I was judging EA on past merits, I'd be in love with them -- they've made some of my favorite games ever (Archon and Mail Order Monsters come to mind) ... but, in the long run, they're doing the entire industry a disservice by removing diversity.

jayntampa

PhantomSpaceman67

ktseymour

Krellie

@jayntampa: While I agree to some extent, they (EA) has lately shown that they atleast let their bought up companies keep their creativity, and dont push their release schedules etc.

Dont get me wrong. Im not saying EA is the BEST company out there, but I dont think they are any worse than SquareE or Nintendo either. (And I say that being a big fan of named companies.)
I buy very few games from EA, but still..at least I dont judge them on past merits.

Krellie

MURDERFACE

Seal of approval? Forshame as this allows for abuse of the said seal. And the clubbing commences...(btw, this is like the Microsoft approval...just means you paid into the club.

Would the game, Life, be foremost, at creating? I would think Adventure was a foremost "thinking" game. Forget about graphics and go North and look.

SigmundTheSeaMonster

Sherlock_the_Barbarian

I honestly can't name one extraordinarily creative product to come out of EA in years.

jayntampa

ErskinPig

Nintendo Seal of Quality a great innovation? Uhh I don't think so. Stickers saying AWTHOME PRODUCT INSIDE were invented along time ago.

Sid ... sit down. That's like saying the Ferrari logo is the greatest invention in the auto industry?

SchoolBusDriver

But 2008? Not anymore. EA is a _good_ company today. They make and publish great games (well, good AND bad games, like just about any company besides Valve). Anyone with a bit of a clue would see this.

Hating on EA is very old, kids. Try something else.

Krellie

Snappywave

ADAM

gusiskirby

I understand what your going at, but thats two completely different kinds of "crap", which you should be aware of if youve been around longer than since the 360 was released.

Meant as a joke? Not very funny im afraid. 5/10 Showelware

Krellie

ban_hammer

jayntampa

Corner of shame Meier! Get thee haste!

ErskinPig

jayntampa

xboxsab

My list:

1. Laserdisc gaming
2. D-Pads
3. GPU

rainofwalrus

ProfWho

Nintenboy01

Modus_Operandi

Old-school Sonic fanboy

Dragonzigg