A historical icon of video gaming passes from us.

Iceberg · Post by **Iceberg** » 2003-07-25 01:15pm

The Nintendo Famicom - known to us in the United States as the Nintendo Entertainment System - is scheduled to cease production on 2003 September 17, the longest-lived video game console in history. The Famicom outlived its younger brother, the Super Famicom, by nearly five years.

Here is a partial list of contemporary or later consoles (the date of death listed is when either the last licensed game was released or the manufacturing stop date, whichever came later):

DEARLY DEPARTED:
Atari 7800 (1986-90)
Sega Mark III/Master System (1984-94)
NEC PC Engine/TurboGrafx-16 (1986-93)
Sega Mega Drive/Genesis (1987-97)
Nintendo Super Famicom/Super Nintendo Entertainment System (1991-99)
Sega Saturn (1991-2001)
Atari Jaguar (1991-94)
3DO (1993-96)

STILL KICKING (even if only barely):
Sony PlayStation (1993-)
Nintendo 64 (1994-)
Sega Dreamcast (1998-)

SURVIVING AND THRIVING:
Sony PlayStation 2 (1999-)
Nintendo GameCube (2000-)
Nintendo GameBoy (1988-)
Microsoft XBox (2000-)

Mitth`raw`nuruodo · Post by **Mitth`raw`nuruodo** » 2003-07-25 01:23pm

Hrm, I used to own a Nintendo... and an Sega Saturn... and a (Sega) Genesis... damn.

Brother-Captain Gaius · Post by **Brother-Captain Gaius** » 2003-07-25 01:24pm

The NES was still in production?!

Iceberg · Post by **Iceberg** » 2003-07-25 01:28pm

JediNeophyte wrote:The NES was still in production?!

Indeed. A large number of the Famicoms sold after 1994 were sold to replace broken American NESs (the unreliable "toaster" cartridge mechanism tended to break very easily) - since the cartridge pinouts were identical, you just took off the top, used a file to scrape away everything in the cartridge slot that didn't look like the business end of an NES cartridge and you were good to go.

Straha · Post by **Straha** » 2003-07-25 01:43pm

Where can I buy one, and how much?

Col. Crackpot · Post by **Col. Crackpot** » 2003-07-25 01:48pm

of all the game systems i ever had, nothing will outlive my original circa 1979 Atari 2600. that fucking thing still works after 24 years. NES, while wonderful, was about as well put together as a yugoslavian economy car.

Iceberg · Post by **Iceberg** » 2003-07-25 02:25pm

Straha wrote:Where can I buy one, and how much?

Look around online, and 6,000 yen. Not quite sure how much that is in dollars, I think about 45 bucks or so.

TrailerParkJawa · Post by **TrailerParkJawa** » 2003-07-25 03:01pm

Dont forget the Atari 2600 ( mentiond by Col Crackpot ), Intellivision, and the Colecovision. There were others to be sure but none come to memory.

I never did own any of those. The only console I ever had was a Sega Genesis. Still have it too, but it sits in the corner of a closet.

Iceberg · Post by **Iceberg** » 2003-07-25 03:14pm

TrailerParkJawa wrote:Dont forget the Atari 2600 ( mentiond by Col Crackpot ), Intellivision, and the Colecovision. There were others to be sure but none come to memory.

I never did own any of those. The only console I ever had was a Sega Genesis. Still have it too, but it sits in the corner of a closet.

The 2600, Intellivision, Colecovision belonged to the first video game market (pre-1984), though. Videogame history can be set into two eras: Pre-crash, and post-crash; and the only thing that pre-crash video games have in common with their post-crash counterparts is that both are played on a TV.

Darth Garden Gnome · Post by **Darth Garden Gnome** » 2003-07-25 03:31pm

Wow, they were still making the SNES. That's crazy stuff. I hooked mine up in the basement the other day and played Shining Force 2. Ph34r the Centurion!

Iceberg · Post by **Iceberg** » 2003-07-25 03:43pm

The truly sad thing about the Atari 7800 was that it was so weak that the Sega Master System was what truly killed it. Now think about this: One console has 90% of the market, leaving the other two to fight for an extremely distant second place (The NES had an even greater percentage of the mindshare, when you consider that many kids who had a Sega Master System probably also had an NES). Now, the 7800 could have survived if Atari had had programmers good enough to counter what Sega was developing in Japan, but instead, the majority of American programmers were working for Nintendo licensees - certainly nobody who wanted to show his face in public wrote games for the 7800.

Net result, Sega could count on bringing over a large percentage of its games from Japan (and they did - including classics like Space Harrier, Wonder Boy in Monster Land, Zillion and Phantasy Star, even though they also brought quite a few wretched games over in the process, mostly ports like After Burner and a truly doggish port of Falcon 1.0). Atari couldn't, because they were an American-based company, and had suffered terrible attrition from the crash of '84.

TheFeniX · Post by **TheFeniX** » 2003-07-25 04:34pm

Memories of Bad Dudes, River City Ransom, and Final Fantasy flood my mind. Man, I've been gaming too long.

Good times.....

Hamel · Post by **Hamel** » 2003-07-25 05:02pm

NOA stopped production of the NES in 95.

Post by **Dalton** » 2003-07-25 08:59pm

Hamel, I think he's referring to the Japanese Famicom.

I still have my old NES. Still working, if you clean out the games a bit and use that special trick.

And I'm betting my sister'll want to break out the Super NES soon...we just got Chrono Trigger back.

Iceberg · Post by **Iceberg** » 2003-07-25 09:03pm

Dalton wrote:Hamel, I think he's referring to the Japanese Famicom.

I still have my old NES. Still working, if you clean out the games a bit and use that special trick.

And I'm betting my sister'll want to break out the Super NES soon...we just got Chrono Trigger back.

Indeed. The Famicom is still in production (though only for two more months), although the NES was done in '95.

mauldooku · Post by **mauldooku** » 2003-07-25 09:19pm

One word.

Emulation

Gil Hamilton · Post by **Gil Hamilton** » 2003-07-25 09:21pm

I thought Sega discontinued production of the Dreamcast when they became strictly a game maker.

Iceberg · Post by **Iceberg** » 2003-07-25 09:43pm

Gil Hamilton wrote:I thought Sega discontinued production of the Dreamcast when they became strictly a game maker.

Games are still being produced for it (in Japan), ergo, not dead yet.

LT.Hit-Man · Post by **LT.Hit-Man** » 2003-07-25 10:14pm

That sucks I had a nintendo and one of the first sega's to come out.

Hamel · Post by **Hamel** » 2003-07-26 02:00pm

Dalton wrote:Hamel, I think he's referring to the Japanese Famicom.

I still have my old NES. Still working, if you clean out the games a bit and use that special trick.

And I'm betting my sister'll want to break out the Super NES soon...we just got Chrono Trigger back.

Yeah, I knew that, but I just felt like throwing that tidbit out for anyone that would go 'wtf'

I should've gotten a Dreamcast when I had the chance

Everyone says it has some excellent games

Iceberg · Post by **Iceberg** » 2003-07-26 03:09pm

Hamel wrote:
Dalton wrote:Hamel, I think he's referring to the Japanese Famicom.

I still have my old NES. Still working, if you clean out the games a bit and use that special trick.

And I'm betting my sister'll want to break out the Super NES soon...we just got Chrono Trigger back.
Yeah, I knew that, but I just felt like throwing that tidbit out for anyone that would go 'wtf'

I should've gotten a Dreamcast when I had the chance

Everyone says it has some excellent games

The Dreamcast had some of the best games ever - games that took everybody's expectations of a genre, drop-kicked them in the jewels and set them even higher.

StarshipTitanic · Post by **StarshipTitanic** » 2003-07-27 01:56am

Shouldn't the GameBoy Advanced be considered as its own console? You did it with the PS1 and it's basically the same relation.

EDIT: You also neglected to put the console the thread's dedicated to on the list.

StarshipTitanic · Post by **StarshipTitanic** » 2003-07-27 02:00am

What's with Japan and making games for extremely old consoles, anyway? Why don't people buy in America, too?

Iceberg · Post by **Iceberg** » 2003-07-27 02:04pm

StarshipTitanic wrote:Shouldn't the GameBoy Advanced be considered as its own console? You did it with the PS1 and it's basically the same relation.

The GameBoy and GameBoy Advance are handhelds - "console" in this context means a video game system that plugs into a TV (although the GBA blurs this distinction with the GBA Player attachment for the GameCube). You'll notice I also didn't mention marginal players like the Amiga CD32 (which was an Amiga computer disguised as a game console; although I forgot to mention the SNK Neo-Geo (1990-3)) or other handhelds like the Atari Lynx (1989-92) or Sega Game Gear (1991-8). I tried to keep things to consoles that got major national or international media push.

EDIT: You also neglected to put the console the thread's dedicated to on the list.

True.

Darth Yoshi · Post by **Darth Yoshi** » 2003-07-27 02:44pm

Shit. They were still making Famicoms? Wow, now I wonder about the Game and Watches.