Quote:
Originally Posted by Retro-Nerd
I've seen 6 year old kids in the 80s/90s without any problems to load a C64 or Amiga game. The 8-bit consoles were indeed very unimportant in Europe back then. It's known that the Sega Master System had a little success, not only in the young age groups.
I doubt that the NES had a huge success in Europe, at least i can't remember a single person who owned one at that time.
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Ok. I take back what I said about the difficulty of use. It is just that the NES was promoted as a game console and not a computer. so this makes it an easier target for developers and promoters.
During that time I was living in Germany. The NES promotion began in the end of the 80s and lasted till it was overshadowed by the arrival of the Super Famicom in the start of the 90s. Gameboy lasted longer. Graphics and sound differences were simply too vast to be ignored. Just as the NES was promoted, it was as easily replaced. Shops had all kind of consoles and games: NES, Amiga, Atari 2600,ST,Commodore 64 etc.
Though the NES could be found even in larger shops and not those specialized in electronics and software. It was promoted just like a vacuum cleaner or coffee machine or a toy for the kids. No need to type commands.
Console game prices were very expensive. Eg Castlevania 3 for the NES cost 120 DM in 1992!
But I remember the huge promotion of the NES. Since I was young at that time, a great deal of youngsters had an NES. There were many advertisements. You sure remember the Zelda 2 advertisement? An actor like Klaus Kinski was playing Link.
And not only that. There were also cartoons, eg the Super Mario cartoon and the Captain N the Gamemaster. This shows how popular the NES was, overshadowing the vast majority of other and often better and cheaper options available