I remember when Nintendo first came out with its first console system--the NES...although I was ~5 years old back then, I still remember watching my older cousins play Mario...Zelda... and some other games I can't remember well...since I was living with my relatives in Korea back then, all of the games were in Japanese.

Small random fact: Game translation industry was basically non-existent back then in Korea (and to my knowledge, it still doesn't really exist even today)...what ended up happening was players had to refer to gaming magazines or websites for translations...why? I don't really know the reasoning behind it, but geographically, Korea is adjacent to Japan, so all the newest games out of Japan was available in Korea almost immediately (although they were at exorbitant prices; each game was ~$150...considering that standard of living and average salary in Korea was much less than of U.S.'s, games really were outside of many young gamers' reach)...so what ended up happening was that bootleg versions of games were sold widely in stores so that you can buy PSX/Sega Saturn games for ~$5 rather than ~$150. I don't really remember how much NES/SNES/Genesis game packs ran for since I was still ~7 years old and didn't care much about pricing or marketing...my cousins were trading games amongst themselves so that they didn't have to buy all the games they wanted to play


Of course, because I was ~5 years old, my cousin forbade me from touching and playing his precious NES since I'd potentially do something stupid and possibly ruin the system...all I got to do was get some Q-tip and clean game cartridges because dust usually accumulated in the cartridge. I grew up by watching my cousins play games (which wasn't really a bad thing--I like watching people play games)--they were huge fans of RPG games since RPG games arguably offered the most bang-for-the-buck (each game would take anywhere from 30 to 70+ hours to complete...not to mention you can always replay the games). Back in the days, RPG games required a lot of level grinding, so the chore of level grinding was given to me (woopydoo) and they would reap the benefits by progressing through the game. This trend basically continued to the days of SNES/Genesis, until I returned to U.S.


Since the game industry was still just a fledging back then, the games were pretty rudimentary (at least in comparison to modern games).
The following video, by laffer35, is a nice montage of all genres of NES games--sports, multiplayer shoot-em-up, RPG (Role Playing Games), etc



And just to inject something more interesting into this entry, here's a video of what's called a "speedrun"--basically, you try to beat the game as fast as possible

NES Mario Speedrun by joshyleearm:


Few years later, Super Nintendo (nicknamed SNES) and Sega Genesis entered the market. Suddenly the graphics were much better! These much more capable systems enabled game producers to produce much more quality games--more content, better graphics, better music...just better everything.

The biggest appeal for me were still RPG games--they offered solid storyline and long playtimes, not to mention they were extremely fun. I grew up playing/watching Final Fintasy...Dragon Quest...Chrono Trigger...Secret of Mana...etc

Again, here's another montage showing SNES games (again thanks to laffer35)


Now here's an interesting question for you gamers...do you remember Sega Saturn? If answer is yes...why did it fail so miserably in U.S. when PSX was dominating the competition? I'll answer this question for the next blog entry :)

Before I exit, here's food for thought--did you know that avg. age of gamers is 33 years old?
Here's a fun site you can visit to digest more gamer statistics

Gamer Statistics