I mean, that’s part of why I preferred the Sega & NEC ecosystems in the 16-bit era, and why I preferred the 3DO later, but never bought the full console (I did have the 3DO Blaster). With a Genesis (not a Nomad), you could use the Power Base Converter to play SMS games, plus if you wanted, there were the CD & 32x setups as well. If Sega had looked at the CD & 32x the way they did the Mark 2 & Mark 3/SMS, and hadn’t been so damn beholden to Yuji Naka, it would have been much better. Then again, if they had done the SG-1000 / SC-3000 thing with the Genesis, we could have had another PowerPC based OS in the world.
Plus, the SNES was initially planned with backwards compatibility, but they ripped it out late in development. So, why should I give them money? It’s not like Ninja Gaiden Trilogy plays so much better than the NES carts.
They ripped it out because their “backwards compatibility” was literally just grafting an NES to the SNES. I think it even had a toggle switch you had to flip between the two. It was going to make the thing cost tons of money and nobody was ever going to use it, and anyone who cared could just plug their old NES back in whenever they wanted to use it.
But the people who didn’t upgrade never got to play Star Fox. Man, I love Star Fox.
Personally speaking, I find Star Fox (and most on-rails shooters) incredibly boring. Visually for the time it’s impressive, but I’ll play Corncob on my PC or any of the Jane’s games because they provide more gameplay.
As far as “nobody was ever going to use it”, that’s incorrect (as the success of the Retron series shows). My parents among others were highly resistant to buying me any console because we were a PC family - Genesis was the only one I could get them to even budge on because it had access to a library of cheaper games in addition to the expensive stuff. Part of the reason I didn’t get a 7800 was because they’d picked the TRS-80 CoCo over the 2600 and we didn’t have the library of software at the ready. If they’d included an NES on a chip, and I could have convinced at least two of my friends to let me borrow their NES carts in addition to SNES stuff, I might have had a SNES.
It wouldn’t have been just an NES chip. It would’ve had to also include a separate PPU (in addition to the two already in the SNES), a NES cartridge I/O slot, a whole different video out architecture (the NES didn’t support composite out), and maybe more. Those are just the ones I know for sure.
Besides, the SNES was already going to cost significantly more than the Genesis. They were wary of widening that price gap still further when the owners of the older system still owned the older system and could easily plug it back in. Further, they were launching the SNES in North America with five launch titles and eight more on deck over the following month, with a total of thirty games coming out before that Christmas. I don’t think they were worried about having enough content for people to play on that new system.
What Nintendo was worried about is almost inconsequential compared to what American parents were worried about. And parents were very worried about the investment they’d made into games that still worked.
I mean, that’s part of why I preferred the Sega & NEC ecosystems in the 16-bit era, and why I preferred the 3DO later, but never bought the full console (I did have the 3DO Blaster). With a Genesis (not a Nomad), you could use the Power Base Converter to play SMS games, plus if you wanted, there were the CD & 32x setups as well. If Sega had looked at the CD & 32x the way they did the Mark 2 & Mark 3/SMS, and hadn’t been so damn beholden to Yuji Naka, it would have been much better. Then again, if they had done the SG-1000 / SC-3000 thing with the Genesis, we could have had another PowerPC based OS in the world.
Plus, the SNES was initially planned with backwards compatibility, but they ripped it out late in development. So, why should I give them money? It’s not like Ninja Gaiden Trilogy plays so much better than the NES carts.
They ripped it out because their “backwards compatibility” was literally just grafting an NES to the SNES. I think it even had a toggle switch you had to flip between the two. It was going to make the thing cost tons of money and nobody was ever going to use it, and anyone who cared could just plug their old NES back in whenever they wanted to use it.
But the people who didn’t upgrade never got to play Star Fox. Man, I love Star Fox.
Personally speaking, I find Star Fox (and most on-rails shooters) incredibly boring. Visually for the time it’s impressive, but I’ll play Corncob on my PC or any of the Jane’s games because they provide more gameplay.
As far as “nobody was ever going to use it”, that’s incorrect (as the success of the Retron series shows). My parents among others were highly resistant to buying me any console because we were a PC family - Genesis was the only one I could get them to even budge on because it had access to a library of cheaper games in addition to the expensive stuff. Part of the reason I didn’t get a 7800 was because they’d picked the TRS-80 CoCo over the 2600 and we didn’t have the library of software at the ready. If they’d included an NES on a chip, and I could have convinced at least two of my friends to let me borrow their NES carts in addition to SNES stuff, I might have had a SNES.
It wouldn’t have been just an NES chip. It would’ve had to also include a separate PPU (in addition to the two already in the SNES), a NES cartridge I/O slot, a whole different video out architecture (the NES didn’t support composite out), and maybe more. Those are just the ones I know for sure.
Besides, the SNES was already going to cost significantly more than the Genesis. They were wary of widening that price gap still further when the owners of the older system still owned the older system and could easily plug it back in. Further, they were launching the SNES in North America with five launch titles and eight more on deck over the following month, with a total of thirty games coming out before that Christmas. I don’t think they were worried about having enough content for people to play on that new system.
What Nintendo was worried about is almost inconsequential compared to what American parents were worried about. And parents were very worried about the investment they’d made into games that still worked.
And as we all know, Nintendo suffered for their terrible decision. /s
I mean, yeah, it wasn’t the most consumer-friendly choice. I’m just saying I get why they made it.