An okay video, but I take issue with a small bit of research; the Sega Master System wasn't just popular in Brazil, it did very well in the UK and several European countries. The NES didn't take off in the UK until it was bundled with a rubbish Hero Turtles game. Plus, using the "technical limitations" argument is irrelevant considering many NES games included special chips to bypass some hurdles in the base machine.

If they were too easy, people would beat them too quickly, especially considering how you could only fit so much content on an NES game.

Great video! The only flaw I have with it is the fact that the rental market was very underrepresented as a reason. Because Nintendo and other devs that made good games on the NES tried to combat the rental market by making the American versions of games harder then the Japanese versions, sometimes to an extreme degree. Still though you really covered this topic greatly and I really liked the late 2000’s and early 2010’s feel to this video.

Really depends on what games were talking about but in general to answer the question why 1. A lot of early Famicom and NES releases were arcade ports and while those games weren't hard per say you can really feel the influence a lot of them left with one of the most notable examples being Tower of Druaga being the blueprint for games with hidden secrets and of course Zelda 1 really highlighting how its done for adventure games. 2. The rental market wasn't a big issue in Japan as by the Famicom Boom era video game rentals were completely banned in the country to combat piracy and lost game sales, but in North America and Europe rentals were absolutely a thing and despite Nintendo's best efforts they never really died out until rental stores died in the age of streaming. So pretty much as a result of this third party developers started increasing the difficulty in their games and in a few cases not even Japan was safe from this. 3. It mostly came down to the limitations of the hardware but more specifically the cartridges that housed the games having only so much memory that you couldn't really cram in a huge game especially during the early years. Advanced mapper chips from Nintendo and third parties remedied a lot of these issues but even then you don't want someone to buy your game and then beat it 30 minutes after popping it in so you have to stretch it out and for RPGs you REALLY have to stretch it out by making your game grindy as hell. I wouldn't call the Famicom nor NES bad only because of a few LJN games that the Nerd has covered, if anything there are FAR WORSE games on the Famicom that the western world is lucky to not be aware of. If you know where to look then you can find some incredible games. Anyways Gimmick! is the best Famicom game don't @ me

Honestly the NES is kinda underrated. The Japanese Famicom in particular has some awesome RPGs, Action RPGs, and visual novels that didn’t get released over here. It also is the best console for 2D Platformers, with games like Castlevania, Super Mario Bros. 3, Ninja Gaiden, Getsu Fuma Den, Bionic Commando, Mega Man series, and all of the licensed games by Konami/Capcom which I would argue are much stronger than the platformers of the 16 bit generation. Not to mention that there’s tons of NES Metroidvanias like Adventure Island 4, and Goonies II where the only Metroidvania of the SNES was Super Metroid and Demon’s Crest.

I'm 41 and the nes is my all time favorite console. In all fairness, it's the era I grew up in and because of it I can beat most games in less than a week of only casual playing. I love modern as well as classics. I love a balance of the 2. I know the younger generation doesn't like the NES and I respect that. The noglastia and hard games keep me back.

I'd say Shovelware was worse during the 2600 era as it literally caused the industry to crash. I think the NES didn't have a repeat because the good games were much higher quality than even the good 2600 games.

Appreciate the 4:3 video render.

I’m not 40 yet, but we were poor so this was my first console. Because I grew up expecting video games to be difficult and challenging, I actually have trouble enjoying modern games as much. Beating modern games feels like less of an accomplishment. Less rewarding to me at least.

Ok but I feel like you got got a lot of your interpretation from AVGN. He’s far from the arbiter of nes facts. P.s. when he was crying over “the dragon in my dreams” I’m thinking about all the debaucherous things I’ve watched people do to it back in high school.

8 bit Hangar 18

to me it was never an issue. now i understand that in part it was necessary, otherwise the game wouldn't last long. a nes cartridge usually held a few hundred of kb of data, and only exceptionally few mega. but i liked the challenge as a kid. if anything, i'm surprised that many people nowadays seem to prefer them easy.

1:05 im sorry but 60k is insane! when I see people talking about nes classics it’s the same 50-100 games mario zelda arcade games ported to the nes mega man earthbound metroid can you seriously name something that people look back on fondly besides those mentioned and a few others I might be forgetting? is anyone gonna look back and call something like pictionary a classic? other than the fact that it has fire ass music? seriously go listen to that title theme and the whole soundtrack too it will be a meal to your ears. no. you havent! why get like 1000 games when only 50-100 are worth it?

8 bit hanger 18 was a banger.Also, arcade games were notoriously hard to gobble quarters, and they wanted to make games seem "like the arcade"

Loving your presentation

I'm watching this on my phone it hurts

Nice vid, and as someone who grew up in the 1980s yelling at Battletoads, TMNT, and Ninja Gaiden, I'd have to agree. Golgo 13, for example, is one hell of a game, especially given the platform limitations, and while it's not super difficult in terms of gameplay, it's so long (and has no way of saving progress) that I never finished it. If you haven't tried it yet, I'd highly recommend The Guardian Legend. Overlooked even when it was new, it combines Zelda-type gameplay with a top-down shooter, has a reasonable difficulty level, really makes the most out of the limited graphics, and is just one of my favorites of all time. It had continue codes, but now that you can use save states, it's even better.

It's true. AVGN not only got me into the NES but into retro gaming on a whole.

Reason why its hard because you don't want the games to feel like a cheap money grub but they want you to keep coming back

I grew up the NES era myself. One of the first games that was mine was Zelda II. Most people consider it the worst Zelda ever but I would disagree. I enjoyed the challenge and the large world in it. Of course it took me a long time to finish it being that Game Faqs did not exist and did not get Nintendo Power till after I finished it. The game was a gift from a friend after getting my own NES and for my parents considered it a heaven send being that they only bought me new games when I finished the old ones. I will say the rental market was handy to prevent getting stinkers in your game library with idea of try before you buy. A few year later I had a friend down the street that his Dad bought nearly every game for every console in sight so I got to try many games before before going to the local game store. It was about then, the pawn shop down the street got a large stock of NES games at $5 bucks a pop and that's when I started getting an allowance for doing my chores. So I built a library of NES games that I have to this day. I have a few stinkers in that pile but not all can be gems.

Also a lack of testing . Half of nes games have bad fisics , bad timming and bad plataforming . Tmnt in the middle of the jump seems your body gets lighter and the contrary happens to mega man for example and many more. Few games you feel were well tested and carefully designed. Like Mario Bros saga for example . I think by the 16 bit era many Nes design problems were solved. I think maybe with the NES limitation more work has to be done. Anyway there enjoyable gems like Batman Saga , felix the ct Flindsotnes, Platoon, F1 built Samson, Faxanadu, Crystalis. And many more just have to search

Like how you putted this video in 4:3

You know what grinding my gear is that Nintendo doesn't want me to use emulator to play games they don't resale and yet they shutdown they're previously eshop and wii channel

Very avgn inspired

So hard!

I think it's safe to say that the NES is my least favorite Nintendo console, with the N64 being a close second.

I think they’re easy compared to new games.

🤡 FORGOT TO MENTION IN THE 90s THEY MADE GAMES HARDER SO YOU WONT BEAT THEM WHILE RENTING THEM. THATS THE ONLY REASON THEY PUT PUZZLES IN RESIDENT EVIL AND DUKE NUKEM TOMB RAIDER GAMES. THEY COULDVE JUST MADE THE GAMES LONGER. They MADE EXTREME HARD PUZZLES WITHOUT SPENDING EXTRA ON GAME AND YOU DIDNT EVEN MENTION IT. You STATED NOTHING.

>See Furry avatar >Immediately stop watching.

I didn't even watch the entire video because he shows AVGN and literally tries to do the same thing but doesn't even show his face. I stopped watching because authentic videos are not common anymore. All we get is watered down saturation from someone who NEVER played these games as a kid. Means nothing to a true gamer. I hate players who rely on the internet to beat a game. I'm all about trial and error for ALL NES GAMES. Not some of them, all of them. Had enough, I'm out