Argument No. 1 against including the NES in a list about America:
The Nintendo Entertainment System (NES) is not American. Nintendo is a Japanese-based and -owned company.
Argument No. 2 against including the NES in a list about America:
How could you include the NES in any discussion about American gaming before Atari or Colecovision, or even the Sega Master System or the arcade culture? Nintendo was not the first “big thing” in gaming.
Not so much an argument, per se, but a collection of ramblings from parent advocacy-type groups and disaffected revisionist critic-types on why the NES should not be included in a list about America:
The NES console, along with MTV, was partly responsible for the “dumbing down” of our children. It spawned a generation of inactive kids who would grow to be inactive adults. I hope you aren’t going to get sentimental about the NES; everyone knows that the original PlayStation is the best console ever. The NES was one of the tipping points (Nike shoes and Cabbage Patch Kids along with other fads) that saw children become legitimate and uber-coveted demographics by all large corporations within the consumer product industry. The NES is partly responsible for the rampant consumerism that affects kids at gradually younger ages. Without the commercial appeal of Mario and Link, Nintendo was a lucky company that came around at the right place at the right time.
Counter-argument to points 1 and 2 and subsequent ramblings from parent advocacy-type groups and disaffected revisionist critic-type groups:
No offense to Atari, the people who obstinately and dogmatically cling to Atari’s greatness, the arcade culture, the people who thought that the NES was the downfall of children, and the people who have, in hindsight, forgotten how truly incredible the original NES was I have only one point to offer up: The original NES was so thoroughly unbelievable in every aspect that it transcended entertainment and video games.
Sure, I could plumb through and bring up various aspects of Atari’s history and their undeniable ahead-of-the-curve insight in bringing arcade-quality games to people’s living rooms (and actually making it work). I could provide the reader with a summary of the history of pre-NES gaming, complete with highlights and opinions on which events were the greatest. I could do all of this but I will not, mostly because the NES console was the first to change everything. Atari, like Elvis Presley in any real conversation about rock, will always be seen as the “originator” and the “groundbreaker” of the gaming industry. And that is fine. I spent many days in my childhood playing Pac-Man, Maze Craze, Megamania, and Missile Command. Those games were wholly addictive… but they were not Super Mario Bros. or Castlevania or Mike Tyson’s Punch-Out.
It is one thing to be ahead of the curve graphically (which the NES games were) but to also be ahead of the curve in terms of gameplay was what set Nintendo apart from everyone else and, in turn, caused an army of former employees and embryonic, creative kids to start pushing the boundaries of video game graphics, characters, storylines, and game play. Almost anyone could pick up a controller and play Pac-Man and within minutes know exactly what to do and how best to advance to higher levels. But Metroid, The Legend of Zelda, Metal Gear, or Castlevania II? Those games demanded a level of intuitiveness that eclipsed what the television networks were even producing at the time—trying to find Ganon was more mentally stimulating than every episode of Miami Vice, Dynasty, and Moonlighting combined.
Every generation has a something that creates its own societal divide. The NES console, its games, and Nintendo Power magazine was an instant outsider-creator and insider-enhancer. If you were a certain age, Nintendo was the greatest thing ever. Additionally, if you were a certain age, Nintendo was an anomaly—something entertaining to watch but required too many intangibles that age could not keep up with like quicker hand-eye coordination and an ability to use a small controller with no joystick and added buttons. The NES made the young younger and the old older. Add to this, you could rent games for $1 or $2 at the video store and seemingly every title was yours to try–no purchases were mandatory.
The ’50′s had bebop and the Beats, which fit nicely within the context of post-war confusion and the search for new and different identies (especially masculine ideals and identities). The ’60′s had an expansion of this but the use of drugs and the political involvement also signified a yearing for something transcendental which is why psychedelia, alternative spirituality, and avant garde cinema was so fertile. The ’70′s saw Americans becoming self-aware of impending disillusionment—between the Watergate scandal, the legalization of abortion, the rise in divorce and single mothers, the rise in crime, and the seemingly meteoric rise in interest rates, this provided a fertile ground for “revenge” films and the roots of hip hop to fluorish. The ’80′s was a decade in which excess was manufactured and you could make the argument that it set up the foundation for our current environment of globalization.
If you were in middle school in the mid- or late-’80′s you most likely grew up with classroom environments of D.A.R.E., political correctness, and the embrace of all global countries being indirectly preached to you. The ’80′s were, to a degree, about facade and was socially constructed on a sketchy swampland. “Don’t do drugs!” implored the drug-using celebrity on the poster, and so on. Every generation and decade has this; it is unavoidable.
What the simple, elegant NES console brought to the table was not only escape from daily life (which is obvious—I mean, locating the upgraded shields for Link was way more important than something uncool like math) but also an unintentional voice for our generation. The NES games were not being developed by white American guys; they were made by the Japanese, Germans, Koreans, and a whole slew of other international geeks. When you won a game it was chocked full of foreign names, which had more impact on me than my fifth grade teacher trying to make us realize that “Hands Across America” was supposed to be important.
The NES also indirectly helped make my generation produce better movies, television shows, and music. Almost every American male or female who is least twenty eight years old probably grew up finding out that Samus was a girl; that, yep, there is a second quest in Zelda; that each level in a fighting game should have mini-bosses who progressively get harder; that up, up, down, down, left, right, left, right, B, A, Start may as well be Darwinian in how to describe our childhoods; that even the soundtracks to video games should be treated like movie soundtracks.
When you slipped a cartridge into the NES (but not before you carefully blew into the slot in such a way that you did not get any spit on it because you heard from a cousin of a friend that the spit will ruin the chip and then the game, and possibly the system, may be forever ruined) the real world essentially became smaller. Your own life could not compare to Simon’s Quest and the fascinating side effect to it is that the kids who grew up with it now demand more complex forms of entertainment. (And we got it—think of how amazing it is that shows like The Simpsons, Seinfeld, The Sopranos, and Lost are actual moneymakers on TV, the same medium that brought other generations Dragnet and The Partridge Family.) To be sure, the kids who were into comics and Dungeons & Dragons were probably the trailblazers for modern-day hip entertainment but Nintendo opened the door for everyone else to get in to the party. By defeating King Hippo, the geeky kids and the jock kids were now on a somewhat level playing field. Nintendo chipped away at social barriers amongst kids and it did so in a manner that was much more plausible than via public service announcements (which were a staple of the ’80′s). Sure, we are sometimes more ironic and smarmy because of it but this is what happens when you find out that certain drain pipes contain coins that the Italian plumber you are controlling needs to collect. You either get it or you don’t—the mantra of every generation of youth.