The REAL Reason So Many NES Games Stayed In Japan

So many amazing NES or Famicom games never left Japan, here's a look at why
support me on Patreon:
patreon.com/sharopolis
Index:
00:00 Intro
01:40 Bigger Cartridges
05:37 Gradius II
09:40 Megami Tensei II
11:27 Splatterhouse
13:15 Crisis Force
15:25 Castlevania III
19:55 Patreon thanks

[@Bro3256]

I have a strong feeling that the reason Splatterhouse wasn't released for the NES was not because of its content (games like Friday the 13th had no issue lol) but more likely because it was a Namco game and right around the time Splatterhouse initially released for the Famicom in Japan they had pretty much burned their relationship with Nintendo. I won't go into detail here and suggest you check out RndStranger's Famidaily episode on the game.

[@willmistretta]

Yup. Relationships between the two companies was at an all-time low then. They collaborated with Tengen on unlicensed releases, even.

[@masonasaro2118]

@@willmistrettathey basically *owned* tengen, didn’t they?

[@willmistretta]

@@masonasaro2118 No. They were an alternate name for Atari Games. Long story, but basically Atari was split into two different companies at the time. One had the right to use the Atari branding for computer/console games and the other could only use it for arcade games. When the arcade branch wanted to get into console games, they needed a new label to do it under, hence Tengen.

[@LUCKO2022]

​@willmistretta Partially right. Atari was split into 2 halves like you said. Atari Corp went to Jack Traimel of Commodore fame. Warner retained Atari Games. Warner and Namco created a new entity called AT Games. Warner owned 40 % of the company, Namco owned the rest. Namco then sold 20% of the shares to the employees. Which means it was then owned by 3 different entities.

[@Dwedit]

Famicom Splatterhouse also has a highly clashing tone. The name Splatterhouse is given to a highly bloody and gory series, yet the game's tone is very silly and full of parodies. How would you market it? Call it "Silly Splatterhouse"? People who want the blood and gore might be scared off by the comedy.

[@DELTARYZ]

You are one of very few KZbinrs who are consistently able to bring a new and fresh conversation topic to the subject of early video game systems. I feel like I've been hearing the same 12 stories on repeat from everyone for the past 20 years, but you bring a perspective of actual technical competence and familiarity with the hardware that sets you way apart from the rest.

[@edgarbaez516]

Agreed!

[@Tempora158]

10:50 The expansion audio line was meant for EXACTLY that, the expansion audio chip found in the NES/Famicom Disk System. It would be pointless from Nintendo's point of view to build TWO expansion audio lines on the NES, one for the cartridge slot and one for the expansion port, because that audio line was never intended for cartridge games to use. Famicom games using the audio line for their own audio chip in their game cartridges when the Famicom Disk System was abandoned was an unintended consequence of the Famicom's design that Nintendo "fixed" when designing the NES.

[@CptJistuce]

Nintendo did not know when designing the FamiCom that they were going to be releasing a disk add-on later. It was added as something that "might be useful". Same reason audio input pins exist on the Super Nintendo, Genesis, TurboGrafX, and N64. (The Atari 5200 and 7800, by contrast, both have audio pins for specific purposes. The 5200 had them added in a redesign for the 2600 adapter, the 7800 had them for in-cart POKEY chips.)

[@b-star1867]

Surprised Lagrange Point didn't get mentioned, a Konami RPG with the arguably the most advanced sound chip in Famicom's library

[@MarkDell]

You did a great job explaining those complex mappers and swapping! I never understood it before!

[@AlbertB.-zy6nz]

Mark, you said what i was thinking! Thanks man!

[@johnsimon8457]

Open the “Tile Viewer” in an emulator and you can watch the tiles get swapped in and out depending on the enemies on screen or the area you’re in etc

[@emmettturner9452]

No mention that the PCB for Castlevania III Dracula’s Curse actually has an expansion audio pin/contact? That PCB was only used in Castlevania III and Laser Invasion. It’s also the only way we know what pin on the expansion port to connect for expansion audio since there were multiple that connected to otherwise-unused auxiliary pins on an NES cart. Expansion audio did not require an internal mod. It just required plugging something in to the expansion port covered by an annoyingly difficult break-away panel. Inside the cart you can see that the extra contact connects through a 10KΩ resistor to the last leg in the MMC5 mapper chip. Understandably, they left the resistor footprint unpopulated since they ultimately reprogrammed the game to use system audio instead, but it seems the PCB really was designed for an expansion audio dongle at some point. At first I thought the dongle would have included whatever sound generator they used in the VRC VI chip but, no, the MMC5 really does provide the expansion audio. A few people have modified their cartridge and installed a hacked ROM to re-enable Expansion Audio but I wouldn’t expect VRC VI expansion audio to sound the same from an MMC5 unless Nintendo specifically tried to incorporate the same functions. Regarding the theoretical expansion audio dongle, one must wonder: How was anyone planning to implement it when they laid out that PCB? The break-away panel covering the expansion port is not as easy as most break-away panels intended for end users. Unlike a PC slot cover, you aren’t getting it off with a screwdriver. It would require a cutting tool of some kind which may be why they decided not to move ahead with it. No idea why Nintendo bothered designing it and putting it into every console and even designed a game PCB that could use it when they made it so difficult to expose for end users. Ultimately Nintendo removed the expansion port and the pin that would have been used for it in the NES-101 “toploader.”

[@CptJistuce]

It is worth noting that the breakaway panel isn't on earlier units. They stopped cutting it away in the factory at some point, but continued to populate the connector for some reason. In the era, it wouldn't be outrageous to ask people to use a razor blade to cut away the plastic struts.

[@emmettturner9452]

@@CptJistuce I’ve heard that but I’ve serviced and modded hundreds of consoles including some that I suspect were from the 1985 test launch and yet I’ve never seen one with the panel removed. OK, that’s not true: I’ve seen some where the owner removed it but never seen one removed from the factory. Even my Deluxe Set had the panel… though I’d love to inspect a confirmed 1995 test launch set (same contents but without “Deluxe Set” on the package).

[@mrfrenzy.]

As a kid I removed the expansion cover out of curiosity since it clearly looked like it was supposed to be removed easily on the PAL version. Then I spent years wondering what the connector should be used for.

[@Choralone422]

I'm glad that near the end of the video you talked a bit about why Nintendo would only allow 3rd parties to publish a handful of titles per calendar year on the NES! While it didn't guarantee those outside of Japan would have the best NES games, it sure did help prevent some publishers from dumping loads of bad games like what happened during the NA crash of 1983. As someone who was alive and remembers that time I can tell you first hand how a lot of retailers had very little to no interest in video games after going through that! Nintendo had a real uphill battle in 1985 and 1986 to get the NES into stores. Where I live in the Midwest US it wasn't easily to find a NES for sale until 1987 unless you went to Toys R Us as very few places sold them in my area. However, once it was clear that the NES was a hit you could find them practically everywhere by 1988.

[@ryan89554]

More like the Seal of crap so many bad games were released in the western systems

[@aleksazunjic9672]

BS excuse. Quality had nothing to do with it, as many Nintendo games released in the West were crap. It was always about the money. Nintendo simply wanted to extract as much money as possible from each game sold, so they forced developers to use their own inferior solutions (mappers and otherwise) . This remained Nintendo policy till the end, and finally forced them out from home console market into handhelds .

[@noop9k]

It was more complex than that. Originally Nintendo did not want to allow free access to their system at all, then it had "special" agreements with a very few other companies, later IIRC they had serious disagreements, and only after all that worked out more-or-less standard 3rd party licensing rules for other Japanese devs. Not all software initially released by Nintendo for Famicom and before Famicom was actually made by Nintendo and they screwed some of those companies on royalties too.

[@Ernesto-ir8ds]

cope, there was a metric fuckton of really shit games on nes...

[@Dwedit]

There were only two mappers that shipped in US that weren't made by Nintendo: Namcot 109 (The precursor to the MMC3) and the Sunsoft FME-7.

[@stripedrajang3571]

Was that a good thing?

[@jd9119]

The MMC1 and other mapper ICs didn't "emulate enough of the disk system features" The allowed the game to bank switch in real time. That let the NES see entirely different data at addresses within the 64k the 6502 could address and it could switch back as needed. The disk system's fetching data and putting it in to memory wasn't simulated at all.

[@forcedfeedbackclassicgamer5499]

Splatterhouse Wanpaku Graffiti is amazing, one of my all-time favorite 8-bit games, period. The West got totally screwed over something awful in regards to Contra ports. Gryzor on the Famicom is waaaay more polished than its NES counterparts in the US and Europe.

[@Sharopolis]

It's Splatterhouse is so much fun, such a shame it's still not well known.

[@Dwedit]

NES Contra made good use of graphics compression to fit on the 128KB cartridge. US and Japanese versions shipped at around the same time. They just added a bunch of extra stuff for the Japanese release, and there's a lot of blank space in the Japanese version because the cartridge size was doubled. Also, it was not named Gryzor, that's the name from the European arcade release. Japanese version is named with three Kanji that read as "Kon to ra", it's Contra.

[@RedRanger2001]

Gryzor is actually the European Arcade title. It's still "Contra" in Japan.

[@georgesiv2082]

What about probotector?

[@DenkyManner]

​@@georgesiv2082 PAL console version with robots. There's no arcade Probotector.

[@knghtbrd]

I dunno if it's quite fair to suggest Nintendo ALLOWED 3rd party companies to make games for their console. Rather, they neglected to include a mechanism to stop them. They "corrected" that "mistake" with the NES and now 3rd party games had to be licensed and manufactured by Nintendo, at significant cost of course. If you limit the number of mappers you support, you limit the number of chips you need to have on hand, the PCBs you have to order, etc. It gave Nintendo a lot more control over the entire process.

[@BlahajMama]

That was more so in their domestic market. Their main regulation dealt with selling their titles internationally.

[@musashix96]

Other games that didn't get a Western localization on NES times are visual novels like The Portopia Serial Murder Case (Enix, 1983), the first two Detective Club games (Nintendo, 1988 & 1989), Hokkaidō Rensa Satsujin: Okhotsk ni Kiyu (Armor Project, 1984), Yamamura Misa Suspense: Kyōto Zai-tech Satsujin Jiken (Tose, 1990), and the Tantei Jingūji Saburō series (Data East, 1987, 1988 & 1990).

[@CadillacFrank]

This was a great and informative video! As someone mentioned in a previous comment, I truly do appreciate that you presented information I did not previously know. Keep up the great work!

[@leoismaking]

I always thought that Lifeforce was Gradius 2, and then Gradius 3 was on the SNES. Turns out Lifeforce was just a spinoff. Learned something new today, I guess!

[@CptJistuce]

LifeForce is a reworking of Salamander, which is a spinoff.

[@OnafetsEnovap]

@@CptJistuce Not to be confused with the 1985 sci-fi/horror mystery flick "Lifeforce", which would have made a pretty cool videogame adaptation, to be honest.

[@TanookiSuit]

Well said. Konami suffered the most. It’s why of all the Konami games I have a lot of them are Konami titles that we’re objectionable, overpowered with VRCs, the release limits or breaking games to punish renters. A lot of the games you have here like splattehouse too I have.

[@SweetStevieAaron]

Aw, I love your videos. Great to hear about the technical aspects (which confuses me). Hope you have a good Christmas or whatever it is you do, mate.

[@kikujade]

Nintendo was in on the Ultra Games thing. It was an agreement between Minoru Arakawa and the Konami reps to release names under that shell company

[@J3D1xKN1GHT]

Always enjoy your detailed explanations of these classic games, thanks for another awesome video!

[@kranibal]

This gaming channel is one of the most underrated ones out on KZbin. The sheer quality of these videos are amongst the best.

[@markjohnson7887]

To probably has to do with the fact that his voice may be wanna. Put an ice pick at my eardrums.

[@aaaaaaaaaaaaa373]

One huge thing missing from this video was Tengen's shenanigans to make their own cartridges (both the Rabbit and the design heist via the US Copyright Office)

[@BlahajMama]

That's touched on in a comment near the end, but it doesn't really fit with this video as those games were (technically) released domestically.

[@Tall_Order]

I remember playing Castlevania 3 on Nesticle back in the day. Good times.

[@kenwheeler3637]

Very interesting. That was jam packed with a lot of details that I was unaware of.

[@rangoononline]

Really informative and interesting video. Good work bro!

[@Sharopolis]

Thanks for watching!

[@tarstarkusz]

Shame it is wrong, at least in one detail. Nintendo put the lock in chip to the NES precisely to force other software vendors to publish with them under their terms. They effectively taxed all 3rd party games. First, by overcharging them to manufacture, package and publish the games and then second by taking a cut of the sales. It was just good old fashioned greed.

[@Sharopolis]

But that's exactly what I said in the video@@tarstarkusz

[@rangoononline]

@@tarstarkusz I feel like I got that impression from this video, but good info

[@tarstarkusz]

@@Sharopolis I got the impression you were saying they did it to protect from "unapproved" poor quality releases from hurting Nintendo. A lot of people falsely believe this is what caused the 83/84 crash in the US. It's not. It's not even close. But people like to say it.

[@ASavageEye]

Gradius was an amazing game and Gradius 2 was simply on another level compared to it. One of my favourite things I own is a complete set of YuGiOh cards based around the Gradius game. Konami owns both titles and so YuGiOh was able to make a whole set of cards based on the old game....very cool.

[@tappersreviews4677]

Fantastic info. You are so good at explaining complex things.

[@biostemm]

Ooh Crisis Force looks great!

[@Trailblazer162]

Damn Gradius 2 looks awesome with the bosses and all. I loved the first one. What a shame we never got it.

[@KC-kp4vh]

Love your vids!

[@noaht2005]

facinating. I'd love to see you cover unlicensed games and multicarts too

[@cube2fox]

0:31 "Jesus: Tale of the Dreadful Bio-Monster" 😂

[@Zombytes]

Wow that Splatterhouse game looks awesome, I would of loved to play that growing up ha

[@CptJistuce]

It is worth noting that the FamiCom Disk System didn't just exist to enable bigger games. It was not just meant to solve the problem of the Nintendo's limited address space, but also the problem of games being too expensive for kids to buy(a problem that was exacerbated by high ROM prices at the time). The FDS looked like "the future" until ROM prices came back down and then fell farther, and pirates noticed it was SUPER easy to copy FDS games(the system used standard QuickDisks and had no copy protection). Piracy was what really killed the FDS. But cartridges were never as cheap as Disk System games were.

[@OnafetsEnovap]

The MSX series of home computers were a viable alternative in Japan, not so much in the West save for the Netherlands, Italy and Spain (even though we had the C64 and ZX Spectrum).

[@CptJistuce]

@@OnafetsEnovap The MSX is a pretty rad format, though really only the MSX2 and later is a viable Famicom competitor. MSX1 has the same problem the SG-1000 had: it is basically a ColecoVision released at the same time the FamiCom launched.

[@OnafetsEnovap]

@@CptJistuce Indeed. I think that's what crippled its legacy somewhat (and ruined its chances of making a big splash in the West - that, and oversaturation). Looks like first impressions do count after all.

[@CptJistuce]

@@OnafetsEnovap I think it is more that there was an appreciable market split at the time. The modern global market wasn't really a thing, not like it is now. Japanese systems that were rather nice never left the land of the rising sun, or were ignored when they did. American systems never made it to Japan, Britain still thinks the Spectrum is something to be proud of rather than ashamed(note I have an anti-Spectrum bias). The MSX was apparently rather big in Brazil, for what it is worth.

[@OnafetsEnovap]

@@CptJistuce Of course it was (and still is) - Brazil's a gold mine for retro systems. :)

[@wisteela]

Excellent. I'm looking for more games for my Famiclone.

[@joshuahamilton2245]

i know one of the main reasons why so many games stayed in japan its because famicom had a head start in japan by the time the end of 1986 japan had so many games right away that the usa couldnt keep up with it and we only a few third party companies that released games in 1986 and nintendo released a few more but japan tons more games then we did because of there 3 year head start.

[@BikeNutt1970]

Never had a NES but I've enjoyed your vids on the subject 👏

[@tabsntoot]

definitely recommend a nes and an N8 everdrive cart to play all the latest hacks and releases. So many new titles out there if you follow the homebrew scene. You can have the entire library and save states

[@paisleyboxers]

Brilliant, thanks for posting!

[@Tofu3435]

What is even more interesting: final fantasy 1-2, dragon quest 1-4 is released for nes in English, but when the SNES released, no dq/ff game got English version outside ff6 (3)

[@mattpierce5009]

Nintendo was kind of inconsistent with their US censorship back in the day. I remember being pretty shocked as a kid by the ending of Bionic Commando, for example, and NARC, while a terrible game, certainly held its own against that chibi Splatterhouse in the violence category.

[@GardevoirBoy1991]

You'll have to remember that the societal norms during that time were very conservative, so the marketing strategy for foreign media wasn't as forgiving as it is today. The reason why video games stayed true to social norms was because Nintendo of America wanted to make sure that gamers took the NES very seriously. As the gaming industry was in bad shape thanks to Atari's reckless video game handling, the NES was localzed as a children's toy. As the NES was localized as a children's toy, video games were marketed to children and all of them had to stay true to social norms. You may have not liked the conservative societal norms for the censorship, and Nintendo of America didn't like them either, but they had no choice to rely on social norms policies because they thought it was the only way many people were going to take the gaming industry very seriously.

[@LPetal86]

Hahaha, I certainly remember being surprised they allowed Trevor Belmont to pray to a cross in _Castlevania III_ ! Good times. Lots of hilarious censorship jokes to be had from that era too, like "Frothing mugs of milk" and "coffee" causing dudes to be asleep at tables in "cafés".

[@tarstarkusz]

Atari being hurt by crappy 3rd party shovelware/bad games is as overstated as blaming ET and Pac Man for the great shakeout of 1983/84 in the US. What caused the crash was there was at least 12 different and incompatible systems. This and this alone caused it. The NES is absolutely overrun with bad shovelware. The real reason Nintendo did it was to tax 3rd party publishers. That's why Atari locked out 3rd parties with the 7800. They taxed them twice. First, they overcharged them to manufacture, package and distribute the game and then second they took a cut of the actual sales. This is plain old fashioned grift and NOT looking out for the customer to ensure the game has the "Nintendo seal of quality"

[@catsaregovernmentspies]

One of the KZbinrs I follow did a video debunking the ET crashed the market myth. I forget who it was, but it was a good video.

[@Ammothief41]

12 consoles and all of em sucked. If the nes had released in the U.S. same time as the famicom in japan probably wouldn't have crashed at all.

[@tarstarkusz]

@@Ammothief41 Are you stupid?

[@tarstarkusz]

@@catsaregovernmentspies I've seen a number of them and they always get this cause wrong. It sounds plausible and I guess that's good enough for most people. Another thing is a lot of people thought video games were a fad that would pass. When the big players started losing large sums of money, all of the weak players and even some of the strong ones cut and ran. They thought the fad was over and that people would ditch the consoles for home computers and get down to doing serious work. What exactly that serious work in the home was supposed to be, I have no clue.

[@joshfacio9379]

Business stuff i suspect. And remember the us was hit with a recession so that added to the problem

[@fredturd]

It's 2024 and I'm still looking for a Video Ouija cartridge.

[@TheRealHedgehogSonic]

I'd like to clarify Namco's chip wasn't a singing mapper. Unlike the other devs, Namco used two separate chips to manage mapping and handle expansion audio. Regardless, it's a shame we never got Megami Tensei 2.

[@retrofan4963]

Don't forget Mappy Kids as well.

[@iyatemu]

This is literally not true at all.

[@TheRealHedgehogSonic]

@@iyatemu You are literally the rudest commenter to grace a soundchip fun fact.

[@reaper84]

Great video!

[@TwesomE]

After a while i did understood how a game can be better because of the chip set was using,either for the mapping or the whole game to be for instance a perfect port or really close to an arcade! I started with GB and after that an snes and back then we didn't knew or better put couldn't put side by site an arcade with a 16bit system to see the differences in graphics etc! If a cartridge had one or two components inside the price tag would be higher,thus more difficult to make those games and sell them! If you wanted to play a perfect port of an arcade the cartridges should be like SNK's system with those big ass cartridges even years after the release of nes.Japan didn't release those outside because of the costs involved,which would make really difficult and more expensive the retail sales! I remember donkey kong country when it first released on snes,the console was close to the final steps and the price tag was fall because we were pretty close to the next gens.So the game it self because of the extra tech goodness it had inside cost really close to the entire system! I have gradius 1 complete boxed for NES and it shows really good that even the first game of the series work really well for an NES system,imagine now with the second game! Also i do remember the difference in the sound the japanese dracula's curse had compared with the western cartridge as well! Talking about a big difference in those releases in sound.

[@thedrunkmonkshow]

It's interesting when you dive deep into the behind the scenes with Nintendo's consoles back in the day how much of a pain in the ass they were to work with if you were a developer. They finally got it right with the Switch being region free and inviting to Indie developers to which I hope they continue this mindset going forward with whatever their new system or Switch 2 will be. I watched a video recently on what development was like on the N64 and besides the Rom space limitations just the way they engineered the different components of the system severely bottlenecked the capabilities the system could do graphically and on top of that developers heavily relied on Nintendo's development kits which weren't always optimized and didn't allow developers to really test the hardware unless they wasted months or years disassembling the system with their own homegrown tools. It's wild.

[@BobbyHo2022]

there answer was if you don't like our rules, make your own system. That is the magic of the free market. LMAO

[@WeskerXM96E1]

If memory serves me and my brothers somehow had a MSX and we had Gradius 2 on cartridge and it was awesome!!

[@ruperterskin2117]

Cool. Thanks for sharing.

[@jeremygregorio7472]

Atari didn't really have a problem with too much software or the low quality of games. What killed the Atari 2600 was America had a massive recession which resulted in people pulling back spending and the toy retailers took that to mean that the video game fad was over. Eventually Atari started to make 2600s again because as soon as the recession ended they have a massive amount of demand for them

[@Cooe.]

This is just a reductive and inaccurate view as blaming it all on the latter. It was very much a combination of both factors. You don't get the crash without both being there. When the 2600 came back it was mostly being supported by existing titles NOT new software. New Atari 2600 software post-crash was almost universally unsuccessful. Without the NES, home gaming likely permanently shifts towards the domain of the personal computer ala the C64 in North America, at least for a significant period of time. The reason the Atari came back wasn't because good new games were getting made for it... because they weren't. It's because it was dirt cheap and had an established software library in a revitalized console market. Without Nintendo revitalizing the market first and restoring both industry & consumer confidence, the Atari 2600 NEVER would have bounced back the way it did in the first place. 🤷

[@jeremygregorio7472]

@@Cooe. Dude I was there.... And if bad software was the problem people would not have immediately started buying games the first chance they got. Remember that long before Nintendo entered the market Atari was still selling 2600 directly to consumers because they kept calling Atari asking for them. That's how and why we got the 2600 Jr (which I had because my original 2600 died) Back then you didn't have big data so retailers didn't know what consumers actually wanted they just made rough guesses. Everyone thought the public would want computers because they we're only $100 or so more than a game console. Like William shatner said, why buy a video game. Turns out there was lots of reasons but by the time Atari realized that it was a bit too late

[@Cooe.]

@@jeremygregorio7472 Not THE problem but definitely A problem. And it was a major contributing problem. Your rose tinted nostalgia glasses and cognitive biases are brainwashing you from facing reality. Not all pleasure & toy purchasing saw similar hits during the early 1980's recession as console based video games. NOT EVEN FUCKING CLOSE in fact!

[@PointReflex]

@@jeremygregorio7472 On top of this, most of the third party developers for the 2600 were so small that once people stopped buying their games, entire studios dissapeared, from Games by Apollo to Imagic. Also, by 1984 Atari was ready to release the 7800 wich had a demand in the market, but payement disputes between Warner Coms. and Tramiel delayed the system till 1986 when it was obsolete and late to the party. Nintendo didn't "save" the industry, the numbers show that as much, it was more like Atari suffered an economic crash based upon many things, their own stupid desitions (like comisioning more cartridges for Pacman than consoles already produced since 1977) that put them on a fatal loss, mixed with the smaller studios closing down due to their costs on logistics and catridge production. Once this fuzz was over in early 1984 the entire industry started to revitalize. What Nintendo did on its own was a quality control over the software produced for the system, however, the company approached this in very draconian terms wich just 5 years later made them loss the 16-bit war and with that it's dominance in the home console department till this very day.

[@bootmii98]

​@@jeremygregorio7472 Also the retailers always got refunds for unsold cartridges. This ended up bankrupting Imagic, for instance.

[@keaton718]

Here's hoping Shar never runs out of ideas for these kind of videos 👍

[@hydrocarbon8272]

I didn't even know there were any decent looking NES games like that, all I ever experienced were borning washout out pallettes and crap music. Probably why I rarely bother with NES emus, and why SNES seems like such a crazy leap forward.

[@XErox7X]

Very good video, really went into detail about what type of chip and how it was possible to have such advanced games on the Famicon, and the Nes. I never even knew what a mapper chip was.

[@mirumotsuyasuke8327]

Let me tell you, I loved City Connection.

[@skywalkerranch]

Excellent content as always. Thanks once again for all your efforts they are greatly appreciated by myself and many others.

[@meistudiony]

Here i am like almost 40 years later finding out that life force wasn't gradius 2...

[@Rogun987]

We didn't have Gladius 2 but we did get Life Force, damn near exactly like Gladius 2

[@Sajgi]

Thanks for a video!

[@ralfxephon1]

I Just suscribed, greetings from México

[@mattalan6618]

i love how every Famicom game came on a different colored cart

[@chibidoragon]

At 16:25 would have been perfect time to use the variant saying of "Where there's a whip, there's a way"

[@kisstune]

I don't blame them there where a lot of groups back then that would've destroyed Nintendo if they did. Those groups canceled Saturday morning cartoons, and many other cartoons and comic books. Those groups even went after music. The ramifications of their actions are still felt today. Ratings on games and music, cartoon and comic books standards, loss of cartoon blocks, censoring of anime and manga and video games.

[@_PatrickO]

Nothing about a mapper has anything to do with politics. The only group that canceled saturday morning cartoons is tv network execs. Nintendo was acting no different than those execs. Nintendo was controlling what could be on the NES in america. Apple today acts like nintendo. Apple consolized the iphone so they control the features apps can have. Don't blame "groups" for the actions of rich executives.

[@_JackNapier]

I am finally playing this upload even though I've seen itultiple times since I bought an emulator stocked with every NES/SNES/etc. and wondered. . .where the heck is Gradius2!?🃏🤣🤣🤣 It must be in the Famicom section to which I've not checked yet.

[@MajinErick]

I'm still looking for Gradius 2.

[@oodo2908]

A Billy Goat boss! I've never seen that before!

[@customsongmaker]

I got a $35 thing on Etsy that plugs into the bottom NES expansion port and allows Japanese expansion audio work. I got it for the Pac Man Championship Edition cartridge, and for a few other games.

[@ExperimentIV]

yo i need one of these! that’s so cool

[@videotape2959]

So, did you knock out the tab, or did you find another way of using it?

[@customsongmaker]

@@videotape2959 I just clipped the tab off and plugged it in. It didn't work at first, I had to bend it a little to get a tight connection. It's homemade.

[@edwindelfin6793]

I think we had gradius 2 here in the philippines. I think it is the same game titled SALAMANDER

[@renandavidsoriaahumada6093]

3:24 ohhh lord thast would have awesome to make action games with the gun

[@fordesponja]

17:48 we have to think that by that time the PC Engine and the Mega Drive were also in and started to get signifcant market share, Nintendo didn't have other choice but open their hand because they weren't the only player in town anymore.

[@yankees29]

Gradius was such a great game.

[@OnafetsEnovap]

The NES, from what I remember, only had any kind of major success in two European countries - Italy and Spain (I grew up in the former as well as the UK, so I got to see firsthand the difference between Nintendo games, which were really rich kids' toys, and what I normally got with my friends on the home computers such as the Spectrum and C64).

[@belstar1128]

It was also popular in the nordic countries in my country i think it divided equally between nes sega master system and c64 but my memory is too poor

[@MiharuHiramu]

Nordic countries were absolutely dominated by the NES.

[@OnafetsEnovap]

@@MiharuHiramu Were they now? That's news to me. I stand corrected.

[@stevendobbins2826]

The British release of the NES was notoriously bungled with terrible distribution networks and absolutely jacked prices compared to home computers or even Sega consoles.

[@OnafetsEnovap]

@@stevendobbins2826 So I understand. Maybe just as well - a computer is always a better buy than a console in my opinion (though I do have a soft spot for the Sega Master System).

[@Myako]

A video series on bootleg games would be awesome.

[@nobodyinparticular80]

Gradius II looks amazing!

[@soyreeng8864]

Gradious 2 looks like life-force but g2 looks way more intense and harder

[@EarthboundX]

Man, taking a look at the Switch online store, Nintendo most definitely has rescinded their old NES ideas of how to avoid a ton of crap games. The Switch store is pretty overwhelmed with them.

[@borrisg4972]

They have hentai games. They have a game where the whole point is beating women to steal and collect their underwear. Looking back, the Seal of Quality really NEVER meant anything. It only meant the 3rd party paid for the license, which is evident by 7/10 of the NES lineup being absolutely terrible. That said, the Switch lineup shows Nintendo never gave one damn about quality. 99 out of 100 games on the e-shop are shovelware dogshit that are in MOST cases free cellphone games being sold for $20+ on the Switch. ALL of them glitchy buggy and crashprone. NONE of them worth a fucking penny.

[@renandavidsoriaahumada6093]

13:09 THATS "THE FLY " OHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHH

[@JukeBoxDestroyer]

Splatterhouse was fun as an adult on an emulator.

[@jonathanplooij3666]

the thing i hated most about castlevania 3 was the difficulty for the us version

[@user-ot5br7pq3b]

I had the first one for NES

[@reeldirtiestudios]

I bought a GradiusII clone for the US Nintendo on Ebay... I was afraid it wasn't gonna work but luckily works great and that soundtrack is fuckin lit.

[@OmegaVideoGameGod]

A lot of other reasons too were because they felt it was suppose to do better in just Japan alone but mostly it came do personal problems too.

[@jonathanirvine2147]

You mentioned rom hacking. I’ve been seeing a lot of fastroms for the SNES roms. What’s that all about

[@Dwedit]

When it's on an emulator or flash cartridge, you're not constrained by manufacturing the cartridge anymore. You don't need to use a cheaper kind of cartridge board that runs the game more slowly. So you can change a few things and reconfigure the game to have the game use a faster kind of cartridge.

[@LarryLopez91]

It's an easy and quick way to contract against the slowdown that some SNES games had. While some developers could make games with minimal slowdown without a fastrom, many developers really needed that extra oompf from a fastrom.

[@xxdarklink93xx]

Emulators and flashcarts have to run games with enhancment chips like starfox or yoshi's island, so you can imagine gradius 3 running on the same type of cart will have no slowdown

[@LarryLopez91]

@@xxdarklink93xx A fastrom isn't an enhancement chip though. It's just a type of cartridge that lets an SNES game run at the 3.58 MHz that the CPU is capable of.

[@xxdarklink93xx]

@@LarryLopez91 I understand that, I was trying to make it as easy to understand as possible

[@thej3799]

I wanted gradius 2 really bad when I was a kid. I remember thinking lifeforce was a gradus knock off.

[@FYCY]

I'm so sad we didn't get Brid week.

[@BeefJerkey]

I hate Nintendo of America. The NES's fail-prone cartridge slot design, the lack of audio support in the cartridge slot (it was moved to the unused add-on port, which probably would've worked with the Disk System if they ever made an NES version, but I don't see a reason why they couldn't put the audio connection in _both_ locations), their refusal to allow non-Nintendo mappers (even from reputable companies like Konami), their yearly game limit per-company... Seems like Nintendo of America really bent over backwards to give us an inferior experience compared to the Japan releases. Nintendo is cool. But not their American branch, they always kick sand in the eyes of the fans, even these days.

[@Dwedit]

I don't think NOA designed the actual NES system board.

[@ChicagoMel23]

They weren’t trying to make it inferior at all. They wanted a design that would sell and thought the vhs style was the key after the crash

[@GardevoirBoy1991]

@@ChicagoMel23 Apparently, they wanted to avoid being associated with Atari in any way possible. That's why Nintendo of America didn't publish Defender II, Joust, and Millepede for NES. Little did we know, they ended up being Nintendo published games all along. Make no mistake, Nintendo of America was no stranger to conservative societal norms, but that was the only excuse why they censored video games on their consoles.

[@whtiequillBj]

flashing image warning @9:39

[@sheldonmurray9155]

Considering the first Megami Tensei wasn't ported, they probably never planned to port the sequel either.

[@Bugrim]

Видать нам повезло с пиратством и все эти игры завозили в Россию😅

[@adampierce7468]

I thought lifeforce was Gradius 2, Nemesis was Gradius 3.

[@OATS-zt8js]

Isn’t gradius II, Life Force in the US(?)

[@chrisd6287]

People are really tough on Nintendo for being so strict with 3rd Party Devs in the early days but I truly think it was smart and necessary in the West for the time. A great example of what can happen without such oversight is the mounds of shovel wear that was produced for the Wii. I think it was a brilliant business plan and we have that to thank in part for the resurgence of the industry in the West.

[@retrofan4963]

No it isn't. All that causes is American and European gamers to miss out lot of great classic games that never officially release here in the US and Europe. There's always going to be shovelware no matter what. We still got lot of the bad games by LJN on the NES. How is it a smart decision to license those instead of the good ones? So many underrated gems happens because of that idiotic rule by Nintendo of America. This hits home to me because I'm a huge fan of the Mappy series made by Namco(Really great series). Famicom version of Mappy is sadly only released in Japan and did not get localized back in the 80's. And because of the strictness of Nintendo not allowing custom chips in the NES causes Mappy Kids to only be released in Japan as well. In the long run all it causes is we're missing out a lot of great gems that would see a light of day of success and fanbase worldwide since a long time, not just in Japan. That's why I always feel Japan handled better in releasing Famicom games and not miss out any of the great ones by great third party developers by Namco for example.

[@johnfriscia1731]

​@retrofan4963 You have to consider the context of the era. Atari almost killed the industry in the US with its lack of quality control that caused consumers to stop buying and playing games altogether. In the early days, the Nintendo Seal of Quality actually meant something, an assurance to consumers that the games being released were curated as quality experiences. Obviously, the efficacy over time was debatable, and Nintendo's walled garden approach would certainly cause a lot of problems that weren't always reasonable. But you can't just dismiss this as some random bad idea Nintendo had.

[@GardevoirBoy1991]

The reason why I think that Nintendo of America got strict with their video game policies were due to societal norms being conservative at the time. When foreign media first came to the west, many people did not understand the original work, and not that many people thought that video games are cartoons were enjoyed by everyone.

[@tabsntoot]

this is what makes it so interesting all those regional games so many cool gems

[@Eduardo_Espinoza]

19:45 we received super smash Bros in America.

[@hamburgler9839]

Life force is basically gradius 2

[@SolCresta3405]

Crisis Force would have been awesome.

[@mikicerise6250]

Murkins turned the Medusa into a Meduso. 🤣🤣

[@dickheadrecs]

Lifeforce Salamander ended up being great anyway

[@martinrascon1350]

Gladious is Lifeforce redone

[@jeremyrichard2722]

It's an interesting video, and while I did know some parts of this, I did not know the full tech side of all of it. I just wanted to say though that I think the tech side of things had less to do with it than you think. See, for a long time Japan had this weird Love/Hate relationship with the west as they were taking all their ideas from us, and were self conscious about it, especially given a lot of the mockery when they were doing a lot of it wrong. That and they really resented the US for being a bigger market when gaming was becoming such a part of their culture. There was a big "screw America" vibe, especially among fans, and keeping things "Japan Only" was a point of pride, and I think a lot of companies themselves had that attitude. I can't speak for a lot of these, but I know with Megami Tensei 2, the attitude was entirely different. Understand, everything their RPGs do was entirely cribbed from us. Ultima, Wizardry (still big there), Might and Magic, and others were massively influential, and this was one of their dominant genres. They made a huge deal, for a very long time, about series like megaten being "too hard for western monkeys" even if the games we made that they based them on were much harder (seriously, they were) especially early on. To actually think that RPGs were not going to be popular here, when they pretty much took it all from us... well... yeah not buying that. It should also be noted they also had this sort of complex about wanting to be seen as better video games than Americans, so among other things they did stuff like crank the difficulty up on the American version and then re-label it as Easy, Normal, and Hard when we're actually starting on some ultra-extreme mode. Another video game youtuber was just talking about how the PS1 era's "Biohazard" is much easier than the US release as "Resident Evil". You can also see some of this attitude in translations, look at all the "accidental" dialogue that makes Americans sound like idiots or involves sexual innuendos in say SNK titles from the 1990s. Understand in the 1990s I was trading fansubbers who were mostly students for various anime, comics, periodicals, etc... which they translated to practice english. I'd be sending them US stuff they couldn't easily get in trade via mail. Literal high school students could do better, and more accurate, translations than the professionals hire by these companies... think about it. Do you think this was accidental? Not according to the fansubbers, who talked about the attitudes a lot of other Japanese had. I'm not saying the tech theories are wrong, but I think the bottom line is that maybe some of those mappers were made to justify not releasing to the US. If nothing else I would think given the money to be made from the larger market they would have released an inferior US version (we've seen this happen quite a bit over the decades) and assume we just wouldn't notice (and to be fair most people wouldn't). I'm not Anti-Japan or anything, but as I was involved in dealing with the Japanese through Fidonet in the 90s and read a lot of their translated stuff, I'm not holding a grudge, but I'm not exactly quick to forget. If you want to be honest, I think what really changed with this was much later when Square did "Final Fantasy X" which could have been called "Project Screw America". This was popular with a lot of Japanese fans at the time, but wound up costing them a ton of money and getting them a bad reputation that was causing other games to lose revenue apparently. Basically what happened was they decided to release an "International" version of FF X right off the bat which went everywhere BUT America and had expanded content, while saying basically "Americans are too dumb and bad at game for that version", they also cut several costumes out of X-2 (entire classes in that game) as Japan only, and then decided the true ending of the story would be a stand alone piece of work called "Final Mission" which would be Japan only. Let's just say it too a bit but they relented eventually, and since then they really havem't had the audacity to be that flagrant again, if nothing ele they figured out Americans were becoming more aware of what was being said over there, and we are at least for the current era, a far bigger market. As this kind of thing goes back to the NES era... well yeah, I think in the end a lot of it basically comes down to "they didn't want to release in the US because it was popular not to do so"

[@stevendobbins2826]

Games were made harder for the stateside release because they were scared kids would rent them over a weekend, beat them, and never buy their own copy. Japan banned game rentals so that wasn't a problem over there, and couldn't in America because Blockbuster fought tooth-and-nail against Nintendo's attempts. And JRPGs, specifically Dragon Quest, were made easier because publishers thought casual gamers would be driven to play by the story rather than chasing high scores.

[@dr.charlesedwardflorendobr3952]

Im in a country where Nintendo doesn't officially have a presence. Practically all the games here are pirated. I saw and played crises force at a store and marvelled at it. I wonder what chip or mapper these unauthorized, pirated copies used.

[@Dwedit]

The MMC3 was the mapper most used for pirate games. Not a real MMC3, but clone chips. Games were even hacked to use MMC3 instead of other mappers.

[@dr.charlesedwardflorendobr3952]

@@Dwedit Thank you for this answer. During the heydays of the SNES, I saw a pirated copy of "Star Fox." Unfortunately, the store didn't have a TV and SNES (or SFam) to test it on so I wasn't able to verify if it was really Starfox or just a mislabelled game. Since them though, I also wondered what chip the pirates would have used to replicate the SFX chip.

[@palaceofwisdom9448]

It's scary to think that there could have been a lot more bad NES games considering how many we still got. Even as a kid I mocked the Nintendo "quality seal" after it had been placed on Deadly Towers, one of the worst games of all time. It was a true trauma when a precious Christmas gift or allowance expenditure went to a dud.

[@elmosexwhistle]

Is anyone else playing the drinking game? He says “tiles”; you drink 😂

[@ChrisR]

If nintendo really wanted to avoid all religious references we wouldn't have had the original Legend of Zelda (crosses in the graveyard) or Castlevania II which had actual churches you could visit to get your health restored.