The year the Famicom came to market in Japan, the video game crash of 1983 occurred in the U.S. . Two years latter the Famicom was released in the U.S as the Nintendo Entertainment System (NES).

They looked different, had different features, and even different hardware expansions.

These systems are technically the same so why are they so different?

While in America, consoles and gaming in general were suffering from the 1983 gaming market crash, which was caused by lack of public trust in the quality of video game consoles and games on those consoles.

In Japan the crash was called “Atari Shock”.

While the trends toward console games and consoles themselves being made mostly in Japan, the crash made it so Japan had almost the entire console gaming market.

Soon after the NES was released in the U.S. it outgrew amount personal computers in U.S. homes almost overnight.

Though despite the Famicom only coming out two years earlier and the NES being the same hard ware the two became very different products.

The Famicom: A Personal computer and a console.

The Famicom was a colorful, capable and smaller console.

Game consoles and personal computers were not to different in the 80’s. In fact the Famicom, the Apple I, II, and the Comodore64 all used the same 6502 CPU.

The Famicom is the shortened version of Family Computer and its purpose was not just to play games, it was the computer in the home.

So the design was fun looking, and it was made cheap to get it into as many homes as possible.

The Controllers were wired directly to the system, and the cartridges were smaller than their NES counterparts.

The Famicom also had much more functions and expansions compared to the NES, it includied a microphone on the second controller, a keyboard add on, and even a floppy disk reader and writer to attach to it.

These expansions seam to make the Famicom more what we would consider a computer than console

The Nintendo Entertainment System: A Game Console to gain trust

The NES’s design choices comes from attempting to appease a paranoid and untrusting market.

The NES while the same system internally for the most part was much larger. It looks and feels solid, this is perceived quality is helped by some tricks they used to make it feel more premium.

The controllers were made removable. This not only got rid of the awkward entrance into the plastic moulding that the wire made, but it also assured customers that if their controllers did break they could just replace it

Instead of having to repair it themselves or even buy an entirely new console.

Human interaction was the next problem that needed to be solved.

There was an issue with using a top loading slot because people began to ask “How hard am I supposed to push this down?” and the follow up question after they were too rough with it “is it supposed to wiggle like that in the slot?”

So to solve this human problem they decided to emulate VCR players of the time.

They made the NES cartridge reader front loading and used a push down locking lever mechanism to assure users that they need not mash the cartridges in to the console.

Considering the problems they later had with the cartridge slot endurance, this was a good choice.

The cartridges themselves were made larger to fit this new design style. This change also had the bonus of making them harder to break, loose and the added heft made them appear as higher quality.

The NES had only a few notable expansions such as the light gun, and a joystick both for specific game titles.

This was solidly only to play Nintendo games.

Conclusions

The NES is what I would consider one of the first “Consoles” in the modern sense of the term. It is a closed system where you can only do things that the manufactures intended for you to do.

It was no longer just a computer with the 6502 chip. It was The Nintendo Entertainment System, designed for you to play Nintendo approved games.

With software and programs that you can’t share or copy. Unlike a personal computer can not make your own programs or games on it. You can only enjoy curated experiences.

It was for entertainment, not personal computing.

Due to the market crash caused by the lack of quality control in this category of products at the time, we demanded nothing less.

After all to ensure quality, you want to control all parts of the products manufacture and use.

If you ever wonder why Nintendo or any game company locks down their hardware or software. Look no farther than that fateful year 1983.

Thank you for reading.