Now, don't misunderstand me. I'm not suggesting that there weren't any games before the NES that weren't good and there were popular systems before it. Atari, Colecovision, and Intellivision are just a few examples of competing systems providing solid games. Most people are familiar with Pong; the simple table-tennis simulator that used maybe 10 tones between hitting the dot back-and-forth. Adventure had such a simple premise: find a key, open a gate, find a spear, kill a dragon, find a chalice, take it to a castle, you win. There's a great Robot Chicken sketch that sums up the game in under 40 seconds (see embedded below).
Even before that, simple computers had games that used nothing but text (commonly called text-based games, oddly enough). They briefly described a setting and then asked you to type out commands on what to do next, normally just typing commands like "Open the door", "Walk North", "Eat Gruel", that sort of thing. A lot of frustration would result when various commands would result in replies like "Don't know how to 'Open' something", "Can't Walk North", "Okay". So it doesn't know the verb 'Open', there's a wall or something blocking you from walking north, and apparently you ate the gruel with no context on how that affects your next step. The point I'm driving at is that before the NES, games required much more imagination in order for them to be enjoyed. A lot of reading was necessary, any visuals were so basic that you needed to picture scenery in your mind to see it as the creators intended, and if there was any sound, it was very basic although some inspired sound effects did come out of it (Pitfall's swinging sound for example).
Hold on until next time...
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