VIDEO : Nintendo Makes a Play for the Holidays
The hottest toy of the Christmas season?
Some observers are predicting the new Super Nintendo Entertainment System, which just hit the American market.
Super NES is the fancy version of the original Nintendo Entertainment System, the computer game that’s in 30 million U.S. homes. The new system operates on a 16-bit computer chip, versus an 8-bit chip for the old system, providing improved, three-dimensional graphics, sharper colors, higher-quality sound and faster action.
Early signs point to it being a big hit. “So far, consumer response has been excellent,” said Mark Haag, general manager of the Southern California Toys R Us stores. “It may be the item for this Christmas in the toy market.”
Many parents, suffering the recession blues, probably would rather not see a new Nintendo system right now, especially since Super NES costs $199 and the games are $50-$60. In other words, the new system and games cost about twice as much as the old.
At present, there are only a handful of games available for the new system, but Nintendo of America spokesman Rick Thompson said that there should be 28 games on the market by the end of the year.
Parents may also be upset that the Super NES games are incompatible with both the original system and Game Boy--Nintendo’s hot-selling portable system. Rumors of an adapter that will make it possible to play the old games on the new system are just that, Thompson said--rumors.
“Kids like to think playing their old games on the new system would enhance the old games, which isn’t true,” he said.
An adapter is technically possible, he said, but it would cost from $40 to $70 and wouldn’t, by Nintendo’s thinking, be of great value since most of the kids who will buy Super NES already have the original system and can play their old games on that.
What about reports that Nintendo will stop making games for the old system, slowly phasing it out?
“Just more rumors,” Thompson said. “With 68 million players for the old game, why cut them all off? We’ll continue to support the existing systems with new games. By the end of the year, we should have about 25 to 30 new games each for NES and Game Boy.”
It’s not likely that Super NES will become as dominant as the original system, which has been kingpin of the computer games market since the mid-’80s. The market is very different now. Back in 1986, when NES was introduced, it had little competition. But Super NES has other 16-bit systems to contend with--Sega’s Genesis and NEC’s TurboGrafx-16. Not only do both get high marks from players, but both are less expensive than Super NES, with Genesis at $149 and TurboGrafx-16 at $99.
“This new game is a high-end game that will coexist with what we already have on the market,” Thompson said. “This game is not for everybody. It’s geared to advanced players--not kids who are just getting into video games. We expect to sell to about 6% to 9% of people who already have the NES--mainly males between the ages of 8 and 17 years old.”
How much fun is Super NES? Some who previewed it were impressed by the system, saying it offers more complex, challenging games and boasts more control buttons--six compared to three for Genesis and two for TurboGrafx. They also praised the improved “play control”--the correlation between finger movements on the control panel and action on the screen.
So far the only real gripe against Super NES is that when the screen is filled with characters in fast-paced action--overloading the microprocessor--the game slows down. Thompson maintained that that’s a trait of all 16-bit machines.