/vr/ - Retro Games

>Europe
there was no europe
every country has it own story and popularity on nes varied between countries

>>6580041
Europeans had superiour taste and preferred based SEGA.

>>6580059
More like they were too poor to afford Nintendo so they had to settle on the shitty alternatives.

>>6580041
They got the superior console and loved it. Only difference is that in America the marketing was so botched it was a wonder the thing sold at all.

Consoles were seen as expensive toys, so parents with dosh invested in a computer like a Commodore 64 or an Amiga. So Dad could work with it, you could learn with it but actually both dad and yourself played games with it.

Mario's gay

>>6580057
FALSE.

Europe loved:
master system
megadrive
snes
psx

>>6580041
Since we got the supperior computer version of it. (With the better games)

>>6580113
saturn was very popular in portugal
sega specifically was very popular in some countries and others not so much
the other anon has a point

What's a NES?

>>6580057
This
>Nintendo's sales in France during the NES and Super Nintendo era being propped by these fuckers
A blessing and a curse in equal parts.

Speccy
Amiger

>>6580059
Leave gaywad

>>6580041
Nintendo probably did not see much point in marketing on most EU countries since they were poor as shit. Marketing produced today's stereotypical Nintendofags in USA so we can say EU people dodged a big bullet.

>>6580128
>saturn was very popular in portugal

No way, José.
SEGA absolutely ruled the market starting with the Master System (I only knew a couple kids with a NES and a SNES, respectively), but as soon as the PS1 came out, everyone jumped ship.
The DC was also very popular, but only because of how easy it was to pirate.

>>6580041
Because Nintendo never gave a single solitary fuck about the European market. Games were either not localised or released years later than Japan/NA. And even if they were released, they were low-effort unoptimised 50hz hackjobs. Nintendo were still releasing 50hz games in Europe all the way into the Wii's lifecycle.

>>6580041
Because NES showed up in Europe late & overpriced, while Nintendo did their very best to provide worst customer service possible. They didn't get real traction until GameBoy Color.
Unless, of course, we count Famiclones into this, too. Then it's a different story, but it's about brand familiarity, rather than anything else

>be a kid
>sign up for mailing list from my local gaming store
>every month, Sega magazines, merchandise, promotion material, membership cards, flyers, Saturn demo CDs, even fucking backpacks
>all free (provided you had proof of purchase of a Sega console)
>only started getting Nintendo-related stuff when the GameBoy Color came out

Sega's marketing was out of this world.

NES was sold in department stores and did not gain the same level of popularity.

>>6580127
Dang, that’s cool.

>>6580041
because they're stupid and their games are below average

>>6580041
Because nobody wants to play PAL releases and that's all they had.

>>6580041
Because the ZX Spectrum had spread like the plague by the time Nintendo established itself.

Say what you want about Sega’s overall legacy, but they had England in their grip, big time. I remember going to SegaWorld London back in the late 90’s, and to this day it’s one of the most based arcades I’ve ever been to. A shame what ended up happening to it.

>>6580041
Why didn't the US love Genesis and Sega's future consoles the way Europe/Japan/South America did?

>>6580041
They're poorfags who can only afford ruskie famiclones

>>6580113
FALSE.

Europe loved:
Spectrum
Amiga
Nothing else

>psx
Not retro. Mods. Also anon is underage and a faggot.

We only got the scraps and Terranigma wasn't good enough.

NES clones was the only thing we had in eastern europe during the 90s. Before that it was either Nothing, a pong console, or the school computer.

>>6580041
FIFTY
HERTZ

>>6581268
>PSX
>Not retro
You are trying too hard

>>6581913
Clones =/= Nintendo being popular.
Quite the contrary, since the legit consoles were obscenely expensive for post-commie standards

>>6581930

Not paying actual Nintendo a cent doesn't mean the NES as a system wasn't popular. The clones were way more popular than the real NES ever was in the west during the 80s, since by the 90s the clones were cheap and had a massive library of really good games. Besides, the original NES was a discontinued product by then, so you couldnt buy an "official" one even if you had the money.

There were some entrepreneurial folks who would buy original consoles and set up a "gaming club" in a basement or office space where you'd pay to get in and play on them, often being billed per minute. I gotta say i've never seen a SNES or N64 in one of those, it was mostly Playstations, sometimes a Megadrive...

>>6581914
Why are you americans so obsessed with that

>>6580041
According to this map, Russia preferred Nintendo consoles, which is only true if you consider bootleg chinese NES clones Nintendo.

I loved Nintendo bootleg consoles . In EX-Yugoslavia countries famicom bootlegs were really common . The consoles resembeled the famicom and the games too . I remember playing Battle City and Tetris . So atleast here Nintendo was popular but too expensive so the bootlegs were great .

>>6580041
In my country (Portugal), Nintendo had an exclusive deal with a toy company that had some really shady practises, as a result, a lot of video game foccused stores wouldn't have any Nintendo related stuff up until the N64 era.

>>6580113
Where I lived most people preferred Nintendo.

I know that people love to shit on the micro computers, but back in the day you could pick games up for about £2.99+. NES games started at £34.99+

I can remember SMS games also being a lot cheaper. This would have been a big deal for a lot of people during the mid to late 80s.

>>6580759
Ah, so they pissed all their money away on pointless marketing.

Good work getting all that free schwag though. If you kept any of it it might be worth a few bucks.

>>6581965
Wouldn't you just go to an arcade and not some creepy dude's basement?

>>6581148
Ur stupid

>>6581965
>If you buy Dendy or Pegasus, you are clearly big fan of Nintendo
Wrong. In fact, most people to this day consider both to be something entirely divorced from Nintendo.
Like so many people stated already, until GameBoy Color showed up, Nintendo was pretty much absent from Europe in sense of both following AND support. And the support side of things is a joke to this day, because the company just can't be arsed to work on multitude of markets with multitude of languages. Which leads to situation where a call center for central Europe in in Germany, in German or how Italians used to have their call center in France, of course in French.
Part of the reason why Nintendo never was "wow" stuff is the fact they never even tried to work with the fact there is more than some fuck-huge universal market, like in case of States or native Japan. Which translated to poor financial performace, which in turn made them double-down on having just terrible operation as a whole, creating a vicious cycle.
And the only reason this is changing is because they can lean on the fact that as long they keep things in English, people will buy it, which wasn't so obvious 35 or even 20 years ago.

>>6582229
Not him, but that never was "creepy dude's basement". The idea was to create an environment where people would return and parents would feel safe, too, while the kids could be fleeced with the bar. Think internet cafe, but with two consoles and people paying for playing, while being charged extra for other stuff.
VHS rental in my neighbourhood had bunch of consoles, with bunch of games for each, set up in one of the two rooms they had. It was making them more money than the rental, to the point they eventually turned into a full-blown "gaming club" (read - internet cafe catering to LAN parties and similar)

Also, arcades in post-commie countries were and still are mostly related with tourist resorts, rather than being a thing on their own.

>>6580128
>saturn was very popular in portugal
It was more popular than is some other countries but 90% of people still had a PS1. If nothing else then because Sony was already slashing PS1 prices by the time the Saturn was taking it's last breath.

>>6582292
>>6581965

My bad, should have realized you were talking about kids in Eastern Europe.

>>6580113
master system & mega drive were mostly a UK thing

>>6582326
>master system
They called it the powerbase over here in the states

>>6580070
no Nintendo just never bothered to support the region much, people in the Soviet Union liked Nintendo games but Nintendo ignored them so everyone just played pirated bootleg carts on Dendy

>>6582329
>American education

>>6580759
Clube Sega?

>>6582332
They renamed it because they felt “master system” (or Mr. System) was too close to the established brand, Mr. Coffee

>>6580041
Millions of people bought, played and loved the NES and SNES in Europe. It was just more niche. Doesn't mean there was less love. And you don't have to be mainstream to deserve some.

>>6580723
this

>>6582334
Based ecofilmes.
Sega had such a crazy marketing campaign that even my elementary school photos around 1996 came with a sega saturn promotional thingy as the photos binder.

>>6581260
Genesis & SNES were neck and neck in America, when you look at overall sales number of both systems, the only reason SNES has a good lead is because of Japan, because SEGA was in 3rd there behind PC Engine, in America Genesis was getting games released for it until 1998

>>6581929
well the psx is post 1999 so against board rules

>>6582118
based and Dendy pilled

>>6580041
because sega mega drive is fucking superior

>>6582336
That seems a bit silly.
Who would mistake a game console for a coffee maker?
Tho I wouldn't pass on a console with an inbuilt coffee machine, mind you.

>>6582392
Americans are notoriously tough to market to, perhaps it followed suit with contemporary prevailing wisdom

>>6582084
Because you played Sonic IN SLOW MOTION

It might have been a bit niche in the NES days because of home computers, but even then I've seen/played a few of them in the wild over the years. Even my dentist had one in the waiting room for kids to play. Unsurprisingly, I actually loved going to the dentist to play some games from the fuckhuge collection. SNES was already widespread and I know plenty who owned one at the time besides me. People who say Nintendo didn't get popular until GBC (fucking 1998 or whenever) are probably too young to know what they're talking about.

Might have been different in Britain, but at least in Germany OG Nintendo was popular as far back as the early 90s.

Snes and nes had loads of RPGs which in turn has loads of text. Since europe has lots of languages which they cant fit on the cart ergo they dont find it worth the effort to localise much of these games

>>6580041
NES titles just didn’t shine at 50hz

Like a mirror of the United States , in my country kids with a nes/snes were the outsiders. The release of the GBC and Pokemon changed that mentality, tho.
But even today Nintendo consoles are not that popular.

>>6582326
I'm Finnish and I can remember several friends from my childhood who had a Mega Drive.

>>6580041
Because home computers were more common than in the US at the same time. Games were commonly pirated as well which was far simpler to do, so it was harder to compete.

>>6582431
They did when they were properly converted, like SMB.

>>6582480
Naw, that's not really the reason.
Gaming was just more niche in Europe.
All sales of 8-bit home computers and 8-bit consoles in Europe combined were less than the sales of just the NES in the USA.
Add to that Europe being a lot bigger population wise and the only you can say for certain is that gaming was simply less common.

>>6582685
>Add to that Europe being a lot bigger population wise
It's about the same population size as the US, southern Europe is pretty poor and was quite more so back then. Plus most of Eastern Europe was behind the iron curtain at the time of the NES.

>>6582690
>iron curtain
Sounds like something you’d tell a woman to do, am I right fellas?

>>6582326
Was the Master System really more popular than the NES in the UK? In my area everyone I knew had an NES, you rarely see secondhand Master Systems anywhere. If they were so numerous where are they all?

>>6582685

i strongle disagree with you, at least as far as UK is concerned. Why buy a NES when you have an Amiga?

>>6582690
>It's about the same population size as the US
Not really.
1990 the US population was 250 million. Western Europe alone was over 350 million at that time.
Always thought the "Europeans are poor" thing kinda doesn't add up.
Home computers in general were not cheaper than game consoles (except for the spectrum) but there was enough money to buy more micros than consoles?
Regardless of the reason (it's for homework, mum!), money does not seem like the main issue.
The gaming scene was simply smaller.

>>6582734
>Always thought the "Europeans are poor" thing kinda doesn't add up.
Southern Europe is poor, not Northern Europe. I don't think home computers where that common in Southern Europe at the time either.

>>6582706
>when you have an Amiga
What if you didn't?
In 1987 with A500 and NES coming to market in Europe it was not that easy to choose. The NES was a lot cheaper and had a proven games library already.
Funny thing is that in the UK the amount of systems sold made it pretty much an even chance to see either machine in any given household.
See this: https://vgsales.fandom.com/wiki/Third_generation_of_video_games
Amiga, Master System and NES sold pretty much the same in the UK.
Now, I know Speccy numbers are much higher, but that was a whole generation earlier and I don't know if you could still call it a contender in '87.

>>6582820

be interesting to know how much each system retailed for at the time, and more importantly where. Department stores ruled 80s retail

>>6582835
Easy for the UK at least.
All prices 1987:
Amiga - £500, tho bundles with monitor and printer quickly appeared for about 600
NES - £80
Master System - £100

>>6580170
>Implying that you're from Europe and not from Arstotzka

>>6582309
>It was more popular than is some other countries but 90% of people still had a PS1
Absofuckinglutely not
We don't really have sales numbers to confirm but during the 3 years that saturn was alive and well it was definitely neck and neck with the PS1 just by going with personal anecdotes (which to be fair it's not a great marker) and the ubiquity of the saturn on the reseller market here.

>>6582475
Eihän tuohon tehoa vittu mikään!

>>6582851

strange. i remember a few friends had master systems, but only one friend with a nintendo. maybe it was that 20 pound difference making master system appear "premium" or something

>>6582331
>no Nintendo just never bothered to support the region much
this, only when the SNES was released Nintendo finally gave a shit about Europe

>>6580723
Exactly this.

>>6580041
Their minds were warped by shitty computer games

>>6580041
Europeans were, and still are, extremely poor. This massively limited their ability to buy consoles.

>>6585320
Is this true? I always heard Europe was great because it had no air conditioning and had brick houses to keep the heat in for the hotbox.

>>6580723
>Nintendo were still releasing 50hz games in Europe all the way into the Wii's lifecycle.
Wait what? I always thought that ended in the GameCube/PS2 era.

>>6585429
Almost made the mistake of buying it

>>6580070
>>6580041
hungaropoor here
We imported used consoles form germany . So we had what germans had i assume .
(I didnt live in those times but) i think it was more popular to spend your money in arcades .

But the most popular console here was this nes clone with yellow casettes .

>>6582685
Awful post. Almost nothing is true in this.
>>6582705
You and your circle of friends were in the minority. It was all about Master System, which as it happens, is the better machine.

Because that area was much more micro computer and Sega dominated back then.

>>6585481
>Awful post. Almost nothing is true in this.
You can have evidence, if you like.
https://vgsales.fandom.com/wiki/Third_generation_of_video_games
Sales in Europe:
NES: 6 million
Master System: 7 million
C64: 10 million
Speccy: 5 million
Together 28 million 8-bit systems
USA sales
NES: 33 million
Also: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Demographics_of_Europe
Population Western Europe 1990: 350+ million
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Demographics_of_the_United_States
Population USA 1990: 250 million

>>6585481
>Master System
You mean the Sega PowerBase

>>6580127
Dutch detected

>>6582331
>people in the Soviet Union liked Nintendo games
You mean Russia? As far as I remember Taiwanese/Chinese companies started exporting famiclones to Russia after the Soviet had collapsed. We fucking loved Nintendo games. We even had a TV show called 'Dendy, the new reality' with gameplay footage of the latest SNES/N64 games (which we would never play since they were expensive as fuck and could only be afforded by fucking criminals but anyway)

>"Europe" is a country

Every fucking time.

>>6585803
We recognize the greatness of the MSX

>>6585773
OK it was an exaggeration to say almost nothing in it were true, but I have to disagree with use of the term 'niche', even after qualified with 'more'. Your own sales figures show that computer gaming was not niche in Europe.

>>6580215
I am reading this in Seb's voice.

>>6585773
To claim the Master System sold the same number of units in the UK as the NES is complete and utter nonsense, and anyone around back then will tell you the same.

I did some digging on the sources of these numbers, and they're apparently from a Neogaf thread. Except when you click on the archived Neogaf link, the figures are nowhere to be found.. That's how reliable your data is.

>>6580041
Nintendo is for babbies. We aren't Nintodlers.

>>6580041
Reminder for lard-laden Burgerinos: this is what a proper ESS ANY ESS looks like

Japan didn't like Nintendo consoles, and for a good reason - they're shit. Nintendo is more or less a company that works for the American market since the NES times.

>>6582363
Imagine going out of your way to look like a retard on 4channel.

>>6587478
>I'm going out of my way to look like a retard on 4channel.

>>6587423
Uh, no.
There was no claim of that kind. The numbers are not the same.
The source (reference number 4) links to pages from Screen Digest, 1995, Indiana University.
Who do you think you are fooling?

>>6587469
ok revisionist

>>6587478
>"evidence" is non-official nickname
>y-you're the retard!
Inb4 "but muh codename!"

>>6580041
I actually read a few French articles about that.

Nintendo of Europe didn't really exist.
NES consoles were distributed by a limited number of parties, essentially.

1) Bergsela: Scandinavian smooth talker traveled to Japan in 1983 while Nintendo has had setbacks due to a faulty first print run of the hardware in Japan, and a botched deal with Atari to commercialize it in the USA rebranded that ended up delaying its debut in America three years.
He basically set up a parallel communication channel from the rest of the world, but was ultimately restricted to just Scandinavia. Some NES games were exclusively imported there. He still enjoys a VIP status as a Nintendo distributor to this very day.

2) Bandai France: and those partnered almost exclusively with TOY shops. There were cases where they tried to discourage supermarket chains from ordering too much because they tried to protect their margins as overpriced import toys. Some publishers like Namco tried to release games like Soul Blazer and Whirlo there but the distribution was limited and chaotic. Once SMB3 got popular, local distributors were competing against each other. The best thing: when Nintendo tried to head hunt Bandai employees for when they'd found Nintendo Europe formally in 1993, some of the employees would then somehow join Sega of Europe.

When Nintendo Europe formally started, they brought their heavy handed tactics to try and pressure retailers to accept unfavorable deals (over ordering) or punish them for supporting Sega too much. They didn't put much effort into localization for the local market until it's too late (or screwed it up, like the finished but unreleased Final Fantasy VI) and their German/French localization department in particular were unprofessional (gay porn incident by FR tl), not passionate (in the words of the Pokemon team from the recent leaks, and they managed somehow to make German Pokemon Gold/Silver BOMB, they were all fired)

>>6588565
>Reality is now revisionism

>>6590172
>or screwed it up, like the finished but unreleased Final Fantasy VI
Lol i've never heard of this before. How incompetent do you have to be to spend shitloads of money translating an RPG into several languages and then NOT release it?

>>6588565
ok ninty cultist who just coincidentally happens to be from America

>>6587469
>Famicon in 40% of japanese households
>Super Famicon not far behind
>Japan didn't like Nintendo consoles
Someone did you dirty, Anon.
They fed you bullshit.

>>6580041

Pooland here. Late 80ties were all about atari/spectrum/commodore 64, if you could afford it of course. Poor kids were left with sticks and stones. 90ties meant amiga (early 90ties), and pc/psx (late 90ties). Poor kids moved from sticks and stones to famiclones tho.

>>6587478
There's an extended version of this somewhere that includes "but developers didn't..."

>>6590815
>>6587478
Ah, here it is

ate Mario
luv me Zniggy tapes
simple as

I think I only started to get curious about Nintendo when they showed Mario 64 in one of those Saturday morning videogaming shows.
Everyone was 100% Sega up to the PS1.

>>6580041
another amerimutt rewritting history.

>>6587469
lmao, they literally call theur generation the famicom generation you stupid mutt

>>6585425
nah, a lot of americans like to project this shit onto every other country, meanwhile they have no gun control or free health care like a real first world country should have

>>6585425
Nah. It's the pithair and no hot water in the sinks that really makes it great. Also the no go zones.

>>6580041
no rpgs because every rpg developer hated Europeans until 1997

>>6580041
I guess this made them based starting with the N64. Too bad Europe's irrelevant.

>>6585481
>It was all about Master System, which as it happens, is the better machine
I know this is bait but can anyone give a reason for SMS being superior to the NES without bringing up trivial shit like it being slightly more powerful?

>>6592696
Phantasy Star and Final Fantasy came out the same year.

>>6592696
Best shmup and best jrpg

>>6585468
>i think it was more popular to spend your money in arcades
There were no arcades until the late 90s in Hungary.

>>6580723
same as south america. the nes came out in brazil around 1992

It ran slow as fuck.

>>6582705
I can only speak of my own experiences but I still don't think I've ever seen an actual NES in person in Britain, plenty of clones were about in the 90's though. And everyone i knew got a Megadrive after having the master system, only saw a snes years after they were out of date. N64 was reasonably popular though.

>>6580127
Didn't know the MSX looked this cool.

>>6592764
And FF was better. Your point?

>>6580041
Why do you think it was not popular?
NES was very popular in France.

>>6593667
MSXs were made by a lot of companies since it was more of a standard, Which gives you a lot of nice styles to choose from

>>6580041
Mattel.

>>6585429
>I always thought that ended in the GameCube/PS2 era.
Not really, there were games that offered a 60Hz mode (on GC you had to hold B while booting, iirc) and PS2 just gave you a screen regardless where you could test whether your TV supports 60Hz but the majority of games were still 50Hz.

>>6595236
This. The fuck do you mean Europe didn't love Nintendo consoles ? Is that a new meme ? The only problem we had was getting cucked with PAL signals even though most of our TVs could accept a 60hz signal.

>>6590731
Amiga lasted a bit longer. The real breaking point was the post-commie kids reaching komunia. That single event of kids born in 89 and later getting their first PC had bigger impact on gaming and general "computerisation" of the country than any other thing.

>>6580041
Because gaming in Europe throughout the 80s was dominated by the Commode 64 and the Zedex.

>>6600257
>because youropoor were poor

>>6580128
>very popular
hahah you kidding?

>>6601137
No?

Portugal has always been very pro-Sega, our first gaming magazine was Mega Force, a mag dedicated to nothing but Sega consoles.
Even when it because Mega Score, you could feel some heavy Sega inclination.
Also, this >>6580759 >>6582334
Only the release of the PS1 broke the chain.

>>6580041
'Cause SEGA always wins baby