My paradigm shift is about the change of video games over time and how they have evolved and effected our modern culture. In this section, I analyze one of the most important gaming systems ever released, the Nintendo Entertainment System. I feel like these paragraphs are both too specific and too vague at the same time depending on your previous knowledge of the games industry and I’m worried that they’re a little repetitive. Any feedback would be appreciated!
The release of the Nintendo Entertainment System (NES) modernized the video game industry and established the precedent for its current status. Before its release, the market was lawless. Games were being produced at an unprecedented rate with almost no screening, resulting in the market being flooded with low-quality products. Nintendo learned from the mistakes of its rivals, and implemented regulations that have been described as “draconian” for its game publishers, ensuring that Nintendo and Nintendo alone would have the final say on what games were released on its system (Arsenault). This tactic proved to be massively successful, and the NES skyrocketed to new heights, selling seven million units in just 3 years, an unprecedented amount for the time period. The system was lauded for its innovations and its high quality games, proving to the world that video games could be a serious business with a serious potential for growth. The prevalence of the NES gave Nintendo almost total control of the home video game industry for many years, and the golden era of home video consoles was born.
Under Nintendo’s careful censorship, the market was revitalized. After the market’s second crash in the early 80s, it had rebounded to once again become a multi-billion dollar industry. The NES made video games standard to every home, and the generation that was born at the same time as the NES now plays more video games than any other group (Essential Facts). Thanks to the NES, the world began to look at video games in a new light. The blockbuster series such as Mario and The Legend of Zelda that have united hundreds of millions of people across the world were born on the NES, and games produced for the NES established a set format for video games of the future such as control schemes, menu setups, and reward systems. It was on the NES that modern video games were first introduced, and the importance of the console cannot be overstated as it relates to video game history.