I’m sure everyone of you heard about Pegasus (Gra telewizyjna) console. I’m also pretty sure majority of you heard about NES and know very well that Pegasus is in fact NES clone (well, actually it’s Famicom but let’s not get into details) distributed by Hoop Cola guys.
But do you actually know how many clones NES had in the past?
Well, neither do I but I’ll try to present you some of the most popular clones around the world (excluding China no-names you can buy on Aliexpress even now).
Short note for people born in previous age: NES is video game console released in 1983 in Japan and 2-3 years later in EU and US. By many it’s considered the best video console of all time.
Pegasus
Now, let’s get back to the topic. Of course, the first position in my list is Pegasus I mentioned before.
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| Our precious Pegasus |
It hit the market in the early 90’s thanks to Dariusz Wojdyga and Marek Jutkiewicz, who are currently on list of 100 richest people of Poland. It was distributed from Taiwan and conquered the market of Poland, Serbia and Bosnia. Unlike the original NES and Famicom, it also had TURBO buttons on its gamepad.
Dendy (russian: Де́нди)
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| Dendy - Pegasus clone |
Dendy was a famiclone very popular on Russian market. It featured very similar hardware to Pegasus, had TURBO buttons and was imported from Taiwan as well. Unlike our clone, though, its design was much closer to original Famicom.
Terminator
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| Terminator aka Pegasus |
Another famiclone hugely popular not only in Poland, but also in Serbia, Bulgaria, Romania, Hungary, India, Spain and many, many more. It’s been commonly mistaken for Pegasus, just as any other Famiclone in Poland.
Top Game
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| Top Game - Brazilian answer to Polish Pegasus |
Very sophisticated, Frankenstein-like NES clone very popular in Brazil. It contained dual cardridge slot, allowing both NES and Famicom to be played. The housing closely resembled Atari 7800 and controllers itself were clones of Sega Mega Drive. Unfortunately for South America businessmen, its existence came to an end with official Nintendo arrival to Brazil in 1993.
That's all for today. Since NES had as many clones as humans on Earth, I'm pretty sure your Pegasus looked completely different from the ones I mentioned above, so feel free to complain about it in the comments.
Questions:
- Have you ever had Famiclone? If yes, does it bring any memories?
- Do you believe today's video games are more “playable” than retro ones?
- Why do people still gather and play old consoles and games, even though they have already been remade many times? Is there any game you don’t like remake of?
Comments
Nowadays there are a lot of great games. You can find something special on every possible variant- online, offline or a console exclusive. Games industry is now way more popular than it used to be, so a side effect of it is a bigger number of bad games. Of course there were poor games in '70, but now when there are something like five new games every week (maybe more) it is more rare to find something special.
Answering to the third question, it depends. Sometimes a game developer studio/company just want to earn more money than they do now so they release a remaster/remake of a game that used to be popular and they hope nostalgia will make it. There are also people like me that loves old games so when one of my favourites game from childhood is remade with heart, not only for profit reason, that is no way I'm not buying it.
I think that all of this comes from that in the past game just tried to be fun. In modern world games despite buying fun focuses on selling the most dlc they can or having the most wonderful graphic they can, and that is not what matters in gaming.
Absolutely today's video games are more “playable” than retro ones. Our generation is not interested anymore in retro games, and kids now don't even know anything about retro games.
It depends on personality and company that you are spending time with. For instance, my friends and me are playing not old video games, but old "table" games like monopoly. And we find it more interesting and useful
The majority of the new games is not as playable as the popular 8-bit games, but on the other hand, there were many flops even back then, that you no longer hear about. The advantage of the new games is that they are way more advanced and immersive. For me one of the biggest advantages are the graphics, which are stunning and photorealistic nowadays. Also, the possibility of implementing realistic physics opens many new possibilities, especially for various simulators (for example car racing sims).
As for the last question - people gather to play old games because of their charm, but also because of one thing, that the majority of new games is missing: local cooperative play. This is an issue, because back in the times of old 8-bit consoles, but even Playstation 1/Playstation 2 people would meet up and play games against each other on a split screen, and have fun together. Now there are way less games that make this possible (more and more online gaming) and that is a big reason for the increasing prices for old consoles and games. People really like to meet and play games sometimes, instead of playing online. I think too few game devs take this into consideration, and release too few couch co-op games nowadays, which are great for siblings, couples or playing with friends.
I don't beleavie that todays games are more "playable". It's a tie for me. There are many retro games I could turn on and play (even today sometimes with my friends), but also there are many good modern productions that in the future will become retro, and I belive that I will occasionally play them.
Gathering and playing old games is a nostalgic/hobby aspect. I don't gather myself because I prefer emulators, it's more comfortable. As for the remakes of old games. There are also good and bad remakes. One developers make a remake only to earn money, like HoMM 3 HH, overpriced and only basic version (without expansions). But there are also great remakes, for example Crash Trilogy that had it premiere not long ago, where you have a nice price for 3 games.
Like in every media industry, the older it gets, the worse are more of the products in it. But, in comparision with bad and just ok games, the best ones are looking even better. I'm not really a fan of retro games, except one or two titles. For me, a decent game has a strong harmony between atmosphere, gameplay, visual and sound parts.
Oh, how I wish that some of my favorite games has been remaked. Of course, gather around some good old game with friends is bringing fun and joy anyway, but with all the technologies and respect to the old fans a remakes can breathe life on the old titles.
New games totally immerse us into the so-called virtual reality that led to the problem connected with the lack of self-control. In short, I would claim today's video games are much more advanced and it's obvious for everyone.
Actually, many of us link great memories with this games console and, to my way of thinking, they want to keep a part of their childhood ( I mean our generation).
Nowadays old games that'll make you nostalgic. I think you rember how were you play in your favorite games with your friends. When you after school were going to home to your one of friends and played with him ( 1 by 1 ) to Mortal Kombat with friends on speed ( who quickly pass location ).
It was the best time.
I think that good quality games won't give you better experience than playing with friends
I'm probably a bit older than most of you guys. My brother and I owned Pegasus and we play it at times for days like addicts. We went through Contra, Mario Bros, Tank, Duck Hunt and Donkey Kong.
My friends from Pink Machine Tattoo studio in Warsaw have a chill room with Pegasus. It was an awesome experience to play Contra again after so many years.
I can't comment on modern video games, because the last game I played was Counter-Strike. Back them, when I went to PJWSTK, our group's party idea was to play CS together and drink beers on Friday nights :)
Game industry in general become more forgiving and less challenging. It can be perceived as a bad thing and I agree with that for the most part.
Nostalgia is the driving point for such people. Every time you want to create a remake of some game and it may be 100 times cooler graphics and better level design or monster AI yet most of the players don't like those remakes just because they loved feelings from back then they were kids and the world around them were brighter due to novelty of it.
As a kid I didn't even know that it's borderline legal in the first place :). Especially those pirated bootlegs such as 9999999 in 1.
I belive todays games are more playable. Everyone can find the title which will fit to him. Another advantage is that we don't have to leave the house to purchuase the game.
I think that today’s video games are more playable but I’m not exactly a gamer type so I might be wrong.
I think they play old console games just to remind them they childhood memories. I think its caused by nostalgia than the fact that old games are particularly good and playable. I don’t really play video games so there isn’t any video game remake that I didn’t like.
However now i am a proud PC Master Race and i no longer respect console peasants even tho i grew on one;)
I've never been so interested in such games, maybe because I was surrounded by girls who preferred dolls rather than games.
Nowadays I don't play games, so it's hard to say anything at all about it for me. But i can understand that it can by kind of a
pleasure. Different pepople have different ways to relax or they have different hobbies.
I once heard that earlier games had a simpler plot but the pleasure of playing was bigger. Maybe the reason was that it was something new and rarely available. I think taht now we miss oldies things becouse of this first impression that they exerted on us.
When it comes to the mass of novelty, it is often difficult for people to keep up with what is new and therefore miss out on what was known to them. I think that is the reason why pepople still are interesting about retro games.
Modern games are implementing much more sophisticated mechanism and have much better graphics overall. That doesn't really make all of them better. The retro games main focus was to make them as playable as possible, and I think we kind of lost this purpose on many productions. They are pretty and sophisticated, but we get tired of them really easily.
I think that most of people who are playing retro games now are mostly people who want to play the games they used to play during their childhood to follow this amazing feeling of nostalgia. I'm unfortunately not one of these people and what I feed myself with is remakes. Ones of them are more successful than the others, but I can't really name any bad ones.
Are today’s video games more playable than retro ones? It depends on what „playable” means to you. Nowadays, graphics in games are amazing. Sometimes it looks like a movie - Crysis 3, The Witcher 3 etc., but it doesn’t come with playability. For example - Assassin’s Creed Unity - this is one of the worst games I’ve ever played. Maybe it looks good, but it has sooo many bugs, which makes it unplayable. On the other hand - Mario. Simple graphics, simple movement and you were able to play it all day. That’s the definition of playable for me.
Personally, I didn’t sell my PSX, ATARI or PS2, because it has sentimental value to me. I think that’s the main reason, why people still gather old consoles and games.
If we are talking about playability, well it depends on game. Some of the old ones are so good that they don't need ultra pretty graphics. Some of the new ones has so bad story line that graphics is they only advantage.
Interesting article. Good to know that people still remember good old consoles.
I think that the reason old retro games are still good is because their developers couldn't invest a lot in graphics, so they had to invest a lot in a gameplay and storyline. For example, there is a lot of people that uses emulators on their phones to play those old games(and I'm one of them).
Admittedly Nintendo didn't really help things by clearly not providing enough supply to satisfy the demand, which in turn resulted in people buying these things only to sell them on eBay for triple the initial price.
As for the third question - how is collecting games different from collecting postcards or stamps? I don't get it.
I promise, there was a tear in his eye ;)
Why do people still gather and play old consoles and games, even though they have already been remade many times? I believe its purely outof nostalgia. Many of those people had these in their childhood. Of course there are psycho fans of certain marks such as Nintendo and people that buy them for profit but theyarea minority.
Todays games are more difficult, have got a perfect graphics and better music in the background. Now there are tons of the different games available on the market. Everyone will find something for themselves. However, many people still play and willingly buy old games. In my opinion todays games are great, but old games have something in themselves, which the new one's don't have. They are recalling our memories - that is priceless!
Games nowadays are made to gather more vast number of people, so they’re made as more approachable for everyone. Also it’s much easier to convince someone to play a game with modern “real-life” like graphics than pixels shooting other pixels.
The biggest factor is probably nostalgia. People love to relieve games from their childhoods. I hate it myself. I’ve spoiled a few memories of some older games that I played as a child by playing those games recently. Those games just seem better when left in my brain's memories only.
Why do people love old games so much? I consider that it just evokes good memories from our childhood.
I think that modern games are more playable than retro one. Our memories makes us think different but these days we have much more games and we can find a gmae that is ideal to us.
There are some people who just love the retro style and love the memories of "old good times".
I think today's games are more playable. The graphics is better and the story is usually more player-friendly.
I believe people still gather and play old consoles and games out of sentiment. They can feel what they felt playing them when they were kids.
For whole of my childhood I didn’t have any Famiclone. Nevertheless some of my friends have those and I used to play with them. That was extra.
Do you believe today's video games are more “playable” than retro ones?
The retro games are still in our memories. I’ve heard once that our brains turn up our memories so that they appear to be more exciting and more colorful. But if we check that console or game again we may experience a some kind of disappointment. Today’s games are so different from retro ones. We almost always wait for new, and we generally chose that but there are many games we still return to, f.e. logic games.
Why do people still gather and play old consoles and games, even though they have already been remade many times?
Some people are maniacs. I don’t know why, but I know they are. I don’t belong to this group.
Is there any game you don’t like remake of?
If is there some, then I simply not get the new one.
If it comes to third question - I just had to come up with something ;)
Happily, retro games start to gain popularity nowadays, so they probably won't be forgotten in the near future ;)
Although I remember playing those games very nice and funny, I don't understand nowadays people's retromania - engineers design faster and faster GPUs that can handle more and more sophisticated graphics, which can soon be photorealistic, and still some people force those "pixolosis"-genres. I think some retro-games are successful just because of the nostalgic feel, and because that type of games can be easily made, we have a huge flow of 8-bit games in stores...
When it comes to remakes, my opinion is - "Either do a complete remake, od don't even bother yourself with it". Half-made, modded or twitches in any other way than newer graphics engine or new technologies used, such remake becomes a new game, which usually has bad plot and nothing holds together, making the game more of a joke, than a remake...