Post by Limne

Posted: 9/27/2005 10:03 AM

Post subject: Nintendo "Seal of Quality" - what means?

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Bisqwit

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Warp and I were discussing about video game flops of the past [1], and he told me that nowadays there are strict tests and quality conforms a new game has to pass in order to be published for XBox. The official NES game cartridges have(had) a "Seal of Quality" tag in them. Does anyone know what were actually the requirements for a game to get this tag? (Money?)

[1]: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_commercial_failures_in_computer_and_video_gaming http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Video_game_crash_of_1983

Posted: 9/27/2005 2:20 PM

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Bag_of_Magic_Food

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Oh... I figured all they needed for the seal was to be licensed by Nintendo.

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Posted: 9/27/2005 3:58 PM

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Truncated

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The Nintendo seal of quality was originally a way to stop the console from being flooded with low-quality games, which is what had happened to earlier consoles. Actual requirements? Since their console was called Family Computer (Famikon), there was limits to what level of blood and violence could be shown, nudity or sexual depictions, smoking, and religious symbols. Also, there were limits to how many titles a company could release in a year (5), something which was soon circumvented by game makers by creating smaller spin-off companies. Apart from granting seals this was enforced technically by the 10NES lockout chip. A cartridge without this chip would not boot on a standard NES console. This is something they started reevaluating when they lost market shares to Sega due to removing the blood and toning down the fatalities in Mortal Kombat. Today some Nintendo games are rated M. At least that my fairly recent understanding of the situation. I got all my info from here: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nintendo http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nintendo_Seal_of_Quality http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nintendo_Entertainment_System http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/10NES

Posted: 9/27/2005 8:19 PM

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hopper

Joined: 11/15/2004
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That may be technically correct, but it doesn't explain the deeper motivation. Nintendo wanted to make sure that they got licensing fees from every game made for the console, so they created the lockout chip. Lots of people made low-quality and, yes, pornographic games for the Atari 2600, but what was worse... they didn't pay a dime in licensing fees! The Seal of Quality tells you that the publisher paid Nintendo for a license. Atari circumvented the lockout chip and produced games that didn't have the Seal of Quality under the Tengen brand, but Nintendo took them to court and forced them to stop. It's probably true that forcing companies to license their games also forced them to produce higher quality games because they had to sell at least enough games to get their licensing fees and other expenses back, and the requirements Nintendo created for the Seal of Quality may have helped, too. But let's be honest. The Seal of Quality is your assurance that Nintendo has made some money off of this game.

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Posted: 9/28/2005 11:14 AM

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Warp

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Requiring licensing in order to publish a game for a certain console can be seen as controversial. There are positive and negative aspects to it. It is my understanding that Nintendo forcing game companies to get the quality license and limiting the amount of games to 5 per year actually caused many NES games to be of much higher quality than they would have otherwise been. Game companies could not earn profit by flooding the market with dozens and dozens of games each year, getting tiny bits from each one, but instead they had to compete with quality of the few games they were limited to make. In practice they were kind of forced to put time in the developement of their games, by both giving them the time (by limiting the number of games) and by creating healthy competition between game houses. At those times any experienced NES programmer or a small team of them could have made some poor-quality game each two weeks, thus producing over 25 games per year. Instead, now they were actually forced to a longer developement cycle and a tougher competition on quality with other game houses, which resulted in higher-quality games. In this light it was not only Nintendo who got benefits but also the end users. One could, of course, argue that it's unfair to have to pay to Nintendo to just to get the right to publish, IOW Nintendo is getting money even though they are not doing nothing. However, if this forces the game developers to make higher-quality games, is that really a bad thing?

Posted: 9/28/2005 11:39 AM

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feitclub

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While I agree that it seems greedy to charge a fee just to be allowed to program for a system, I think this is a case where the ends justified the means. A winner was everybody: Nintendo got loads of cash and the consumers got a higher standard of game. I remember the Tengen games, they were not well made to begin with. Just look at the Rolling Thunder translation and you'll see what I mean.

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Posted: 9/28/2005 3:24 PM

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nitsuja

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I know nowadays games are put through some pretty rigorous tests (including / especially games for Nintendo consoles). But for the NES, did anyone from Nintendo even play the games and decide that some of them sucked too much to approve? It seems like that wouldn't be that much harder if they were already going to the trouble of somehow determining that there was no graphic violence / nudity / etc. anywhere in the game. Obviously it hurts everyone if they're too picky, but I've seen some NES games that played poorly and looked terrible and sounded awful even in comparison with other NES games released near the same time.

Posted: 9/28/2005 3:28 PM

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Bag_of_Magic_Food

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Well wasn't the Tengen Tetris programmed better?

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Posted: 9/28/2005 3:37 PM

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nitsuja

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Bag of Magic Food wrote:

Well wasn't the Tengen Tetris programmed better?

I remember playing that for a while somewhere, then later I rented the other Tetris thinking it would be the same thing, and was confused that it was less fun to play and had fewer features.

Posted: 9/28/2005 3:50 PM

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Phil

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I agree with nitsuja. At least half the games released were insults to everyone's intelligence.

Posted: 9/28/2005 4:40 PM

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Kapow

Joined: 9/17/2005
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unlicensed: klax, impossible mission 2, spiritual warfare licensed: ikari warriors, deadly towers, home alone

Posted: 9/28/2005 4:47 PM

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Bag_of_Magic_Food

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Heh heh, we need a Spiritual Warfare movie.

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Posted: 9/30/2005 6:06 AM

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todd

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Another problem with the Seal of Quality was that the 5 game limitation was easily circumvented. I once read that Konami created the "Ultra" brand in order to be able to publish more than 5 games per year.

Posted: 9/30/2005 8:03 AM

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Josh_the_FunkDOC

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Yep, todd is right. I think Acklame also did this with the LJN label, but there aren't any other cases I'm aware of. And I second the demand for a Spiritual Warfare TAS! =P -Josh

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Posted: 10/1/2005 8:40 PM

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krieg747

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Posted: 4/14/2010 12:13 AM

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MarbleousDave

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LJN was founded in 1970. LJN was acquired by MCA in 1985, then was acquired by Acclaim in 1990. LJN worked independently from Acclaim.

Posted: 4/14/2010 8:58 AM

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arflech

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Interestingly, even though Tengen was taken to court for 10NES circumvention, Wisdom Tree (developer of such wholesome games as Bible Buffet and Super 3D Noah's Ark) got away with it, probably because Nintendo didn't want to sully its family-friendly image by suing a Christian video-game company. then less than a decade later the big N allowed Conker's Bad Fur Day on the N64

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Posted: 4/14/2010 1:20 PM

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Limne

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If I remember correctly, Nintendo did mandate certain tests in order to get the seal; namely, the game was not supposed to randomly crash all the time as happened on, say, the Action 52 games. I have no idea how that compares to the Atari days. Nintendo's content guidelines were only enforced in the American and European markets (I remember hearing that to this day neither Nintendo, nor Sony, nor Microsoft allow A0/18+ games (porn) on their consoles. But then, Something Awful has made me aware of the Japanese "visual novels" so I'm not sure how true that might be. Also, if memory serves me right, Nintendo sold their systems at a loss in every case but the Wii; licensing fees weren't their way of "being greedy," (Although I remember hearing that they become exorbitant up until the N64) it was their way of making any money at all.

Posted: 4/14/2010 3:24 PM

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Derakon

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Limne wrote:

Also, if memory serves me right, Nintendo sold their systems at a loss in every case but the Wii; licensing fees weren't their way of "being greedy," (Although I remember hearing that they become exorbitant up until the N64) it was their way of making any money at all.

That's funny, because the way I remember it, Nintendo is the only company to consistently sell their consoles at a profit. It's Sony and Microsoft that are trying to go with the razor model of profitability (sell the razors cheap, make your money on selling replacement blades). I'm unable to find a source for this, mind you -- but you didn't list a source for your statement either.

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Posted: 4/14/2010 9:05 PM

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Limne

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My source was "If I remember correctly." It's a legitimate epistemic modality... Maybe your memory is better than mine.

Posted: 4/14/2010 9:26 PM

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Derakon

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Oh, I'm not saying you have any less of a leg to stand on than I do. I'm just wishing we could find a reliable source to resolve this ambiguity. :)

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Posted: 4/15/2010 12:36 AM

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Kuwaga

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Afaik Derakon is right on this. No source, but I'm quite sure it's been like this in the more recent console wars at least.

Posted: 4/15/2010 12:48 AM

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DarkKobold

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Questions answered. Wii is not a loss leader http://tinyurl.com/y5fdfff The original NES was. http://electronics.howstuffworks.com/video-game2.htm

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Posted: 4/15/2010 1:12 AM

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nesrocks

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Interesting. Hardware was REALLY expensive back then, because, IIRC, all nintendo consoles were priced 200,00 USD at launch (except for the wii). If you make monetization corrections you'll see that the NES was more expensive than a PS3 by today's standards. And now I've learned that it was also sold at a loss.

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