Commentary: EGM #1 shows NES “hardcore” lineup
Tuesday, April 22nd, 2008 at 11:37am by Jack
Racketboy has a .pdf up today of the very first Electronic Gaming Monthly. The issue, conveniently for us, is a preview of the “HOT NEW Nintendo games” coming soon (in 1989). You can see them in the pic above next to the insanely retro boxart from timeless classic, Mega Man 2.
It’s a pretty eclectic list, which got me thinking. Operation Wolf? Shooter. Bubble Bobble? Action puzzler. Ultima? One-of-a-kind RPG. Super Sprint? Retro racer. Mega Man 2? Power-up platformer. These games cover many genres and appeal to many tastes. That’s a pretty hardcore list, wouldn’t you say?
What I started thinking about, thanks to the NES, is that it is never the player that’s hardcore, or even the games. It’s the system they’re played on (”hardcore” is a marketing myth). The NES was the hardcore system of the late 1980’s. No player was more hardcore than any other, because every player had their likes and dislikes, and could find them all in one spot and excel at them. This post is brought to by backward thinking consoles and history repeats.
April 22nd, 2008 at 1:11 pm
awesome box artwork ;P i seriously remember that issue i started reading egm when it first came out thanks to one of my older friends. aaahhh the nostalgia
April 22nd, 2008 at 2:46 pm
Hey simple fix… let the guys that did contra 4 on the DS go crazy with a contra 4 reveng on the Wii! Where is mega man well we have zak and wiki so the only thing left is to use the graphic style to pop out a sweet mega man. Hell even if it’s not 3d then give us cool mech guys to take down! Seriously final fantasy 3 is still my fav! Every one forgets about that devil king game also by capcom. A star fox by factor 5 would be sweet wouldn’t it! Or really a cool 2.5 d shooter would be sweet. I mean dang god of war sold so well because it made you forget about 2.5D! Every one thing FPS are the answer. Even id knows thats not true! The very guys that grew up on their games don’t even like them any more.
Since the arcades in japan are drying up why not move those ideas over to the Wii?
The funny thing about this article is this is the sole reason why gaming is starting to suck period. Where are these games!
April 22nd, 2008 at 8:55 pm
Excellent post! I couldn’t agree more with what you said—”hardcore” is nothing more than a marketing myth, a huge lie that unfortunately many people have bought into. I miss the days when games were just games and people didn’t complain about things being too “kiddy” to their liking.
April 23rd, 2008 at 1:04 am
Megaman had a pistol? Blasphemy!