Was the NES 5 game/yr rule good or no?

[phart010 | 1,705]

14 minutes ago, DoctorEncore said:

The NES library is pretty strong, so... yes? It seems to have worked. I imagine if the rule wasn't in place, the library would exceed 1,000 games without much additional that is actually worth playing.

Or the system could have died before it even reached 400

[Tanooki | 4,930]

Funny thing mentioning that, about exceeding a 1000 games.  A decade after the NES that is what the PS1 did.  Sure the system like NES sold like disproportionate crack binge style levels compared to the other hardware, but did it really make for MORE percentage wise solid games?  Probably the opposite.  You got 1300~ games for the US and like maybe 10% of them are truly great and worth owning/playing depending on diverse tastes.  The NES had a little over 1/2 that, but it's not hard to find far more than 10% of that library being worth owning, and because they were more picky.  They didn't allow a lot of utter crap, some slipped in for whatever reason from the stank of LJN, Acklame, and a few others.  They also seemed to isolate and(were they approached?) cut off the third party disaster companies largely from the crash era that helped the meltdown happen.  Had Nintendo let those turd farmers shovel out their fast and loose developed crap like they did with Atari it would have been a smoldering mess of a rerun potentially killing off home console gaming in this country for years to come... the US could have ended up like Europe where they got really hung up on dedicated computers for gaming like the Amiga, Sinclair, etc.

[scaryice | 581]

I'd like to believe that without this rule, we would've gotten a bunch of great Famicom exclusives here. But, the more likely scenario is that removing it would've only resulted in just a small increase in the total number of games, since only a few companies released that many titles. Also, the number one company impacted by it, Konami - I can't see them releasing stuff like Getsu Fuuma Den and Lagrange Point over here anyway.

Edited October 14, 2021 by scaryice

[CMR | 519]

I don't think we really missed out on much.  There were some really good games we didn't get, but that could have more to do with a lack of confidence in the market rather than limitations imposed by Nintendo.  Does anybody have any examples, not just speculation, of a company not being able to bring a game to the US market because of Nintendo's policies?

[Tanooki | 4,930]

23 hours ago, scaryice said:

I'd like to believe that without this rule, we would've gotten a bunch of great Famicom exclusives here. But, the more likely scenario is that removing it would've only resulted in just a small increase in the total number of games, since only a few companies released that many titles. Also, the number one company impacted by it, Konami - I can't see them releasing stuff like Getsu Fuuma Den and Lagrange Point over here anyway.

That has been my concern over the yeas when I would think about this subject.  I really doubt much more would have happened.  Keep in mind, the only change here would be to drop the game limits/year, that's it, the censorship, the seal, the other bs is still intact.  Konami would be about it for impact, maybe Capcom in the 1980s, but by the early 90s they went for more quality over quantity and wouldn't have hit the wall.  I think Lagrange Point, given an earlier year, could have worked, but yeah the other would have been cracked out slim to no chance.  Guarantee you though they'd have put up some stuff from the FC and FDS converted even such as Gradius 2 and Arumana no Kiseki (Miracle of Kiseki) which is that indiana jones-ish looking adventurer game, easily would have made it among much of what got left behind.  I think Crisis Force would have had a chance, but Parodius and Twinbee would be too wonky, same with Kid Dracula despite a couple years later they did put the GB game out in the US (but by that time the NES was toast for the SNES.)  Konami had some other earlier staples we lacked that probably would have made it, but mostly thanks to ULTRA we lost far less.

[asmikace | 68]

I find it mixed. I know that it might limited the amount of NES being released but market wise it was probably a sound decision. If they didn't have that rule, I could have seen a lot of publishers bring any game that they could get their hands on and dump it into stores, not to mention the slew of existing Famicom games that could be easily brought over.

[fcgamer | 4,719]

It was only implemented as a way for Nintendo to gain control of a market that had just suffered a few years earlier from a video game crash.

The rule didn't prevent crappy games from making it onto the platform - heck, about 80% of all NES-exclusive games are utter crap. Similarly, there were tons of amazing games that never made it out of Japan due to the rule.

So yeah, it was all about control, and as such, it was definitely not a good move. 

[cj_robot | 540]

3 hours ago, fcgamer said:

So yeah, it was all about control, and as such, it was definitely not a good move. 

But what is so bad about Nintendo wanting control over their own console?

[DefaultGen | 5,399]

I'm not sure how much this "rule" actually stifled potential fun games from being released. I'm all about bringing on more garbage though. A bunch of old vintage games are so bad they're interesting. Escape from Atlantis on NES is a fascinating case study in how to design every single aspect of a game poorly.

What's the worst Playstation 5 game? Balan Wonderland, a boring rip-off of Super Mario Odyssey? That's the worst thing on the entire system (going by Metacritic anyway)? The worst games on consoles like 2600 and NES are pieces of media that seem unfit for planet Earth.

I'm sure Nintendo wasn't looking at it from the perspective of "more garbage is fun!" so the rule worked for them.

[TDIRunner | 2,725]

I haven't read the other posts yet, so this might have already been discussed.  But considering that some developers created fake companies to get around the limit, were there any companies that released 5 great games in one year, and then released another great game under a different company?  If the answer is yes, it's fair to say the rule had a negative impact.  But if the answer is no, it's probably fair to say the rule didn't prevent us from getting great games.  

[Tanooki | 4,930]

3 hours ago, cj_robot said:

But what is so bad about Nintendo wanting control over their own console?

Given the only experience they had to go on being what Atari, Coleco, Intellivision and Milton Bradley had largely caused on their own with their stuff, there was in perspective far more good than bad from allowing those limits to happen.  Even if (and Dave's wrong) 80% of the library is crap, that still has 20% of nearly 700 games would be about 130-140 games, and that's a lot, more than most would ever buy in the era easily.  That's nothing to snicker at, you won't find anything near that many non-bad games on the older hardware.  Even if the limit screwed us out of a lot of good games, I'd argue it kept a lot more god awful trash out as well that infected the previous generations into a NA market crash in 83.