I agree with Estel. What you have written here is no reflection of the reality I grew up in.
There weren't a lot of games. There were just under 1000 NES games for both the US AND Japanese market (combined), and the total clocks in at about 200MB in size. The 30+ games you saw were probably the entire library of unique games for the platform.
The games we had yesteryear sucked. Really, really sucked. Most of them were bare derivatives of each other. For every Super Mario Bros. 3 there were 5 clones of Arkanoid. The controls were bad, the artwork was bad, the framerates were bad. We just didn't know they sucked because we didn't have better games yet. Look at some of the best games on the market back then, games like Megaman or Star Fox, and they are are only popular as nostalgia pieces today. I don't consider Golgo 13 or Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles for the NES; PilotWings or DOOM on the SNES; Driver or Grand Theft Auto 3 on the PlayStation; to be anything close to playable games today, but I remember playing all of them for hours and liking it, because that was really all we knew.
And the games were not cheap. The NES retailed at $300 in the US when it debuted in 1985. That'd be almost $650 today. Super Mario Bros. 3 (the pinnacle of the series, IMO) debuted in 1990 at a price point of $60--over $105 in today's dollars. Chrono Trigger on the SNES debuted at $80 in 1995--over $120 today. I remember paying $70 for Yoshi's Cookie in 1992 (because I was 10 and that was all the Christmas money I had and I really, really wanted. My mother and I played it together for hours. It was great). That'd be $115 today for a puzzle game I could rewrite in a weekend now. I don't know what you're talking about with "$5 games".
You're praise of Sega Channel just further underscores that you were probably too young to understand money back in this time. It was $15/mo in 1994 when the only subscription services anyone had were telephone and TV cable (and you were "rich" if you had cable). I remember my father freaking out over a $20 telephone bill one month in the 90s: I regularly pay almost $100/mo for my cellphone today. The downloads constantly failed and you could only play the games for an hour before they reset.
Not sure of the particulars of your situation, but my family was by no means "rich" but had Sega Channel for the entire length of its existence. Sure beat renting games at Blockbuster (and before that, Home Vision Video, a New England chain that got pummeled out of existence) for $5 a pop, and it lasted the whole month.
There are lots of very playable games on the SNES and Playstation - my friends and I still break out Contra 3 and Super Bomberman sometimes, and Chrono Trigger is still a lot of fun to play through for the first time. NES, not so much. Also, 1000 games for a platform is a good number. PS3 clocks in at around 700. Your money arguments are pretty accurate, though. He might be talking about FuncoLand and other used game shops?
There weren't a lot of games. There were just under 1000 NES games for both the US AND Japanese market (combined), and the total clocks in at about 200MB in size. The 30+ games you saw were probably the entire library of unique games for the platform.
The games we had yesteryear sucked. Really, really sucked. Most of them were bare derivatives of each other. For every Super Mario Bros. 3 there were 5 clones of Arkanoid. The controls were bad, the artwork was bad, the framerates were bad. We just didn't know they sucked because we didn't have better games yet. Look at some of the best games on the market back then, games like Megaman or Star Fox, and they are are only popular as nostalgia pieces today. I don't consider Golgo 13 or Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles for the NES; PilotWings or DOOM on the SNES; Driver or Grand Theft Auto 3 on the PlayStation; to be anything close to playable games today, but I remember playing all of them for hours and liking it, because that was really all we knew.
And the games were not cheap. The NES retailed at $300 in the US when it debuted in 1985. That'd be almost $650 today. Super Mario Bros. 3 (the pinnacle of the series, IMO) debuted in 1990 at a price point of $60--over $105 in today's dollars. Chrono Trigger on the SNES debuted at $80 in 1995--over $120 today. I remember paying $70 for Yoshi's Cookie in 1992 (because I was 10 and that was all the Christmas money I had and I really, really wanted. My mother and I played it together for hours. It was great). That'd be $115 today for a puzzle game I could rewrite in a weekend now. I don't know what you're talking about with "$5 games".
You're praise of Sega Channel just further underscores that you were probably too young to understand money back in this time. It was $15/mo in 1994 when the only subscription services anyone had were telephone and TV cable (and you were "rich" if you had cable). I remember my father freaking out over a $20 telephone bill one month in the 90s: I regularly pay almost $100/mo for my cellphone today. The downloads constantly failed and you could only play the games for an hour before they reset.