What video game system's success shocked you?

[python16]

I will have to say the original Gameboy. I will never understand why it did so well. It was cumbersome, the screen was too small, it wasn't back lit, you needed perfect lighting conditions to see it, and it had that hideous green color scheme. Yet I still owned one! How about you guys? What system surprised you with it's success?

[ptdebate]

The Gameboy succeeded due to it's cost-cutting design and well-documented architecture. To the power consumer, it looks like literally the worst handheld ever won due to the strength of its library. Chicken, meet egg.

The 360's success was a bit surprising due to the rampant quality issues at the start. Microsoft's willingness to part ways with millions of systems to replace the broken ones they shipped kept it afloat. Their commitment to online infrastructure gave you something you couldn't get on any other console at the time.

The Atari 2600 was a surprise success due to its high price (nearly $800 in modern dollars) and extremely barebones hardware, even for 1977. All it was was a color pong console with swappable ROMS. Build quality was exceptional on the early models, however.

[scotland]

Skating on thin ice in this lake, but the Nintendo Entertainment System, the NES.

Nintendo has seldom been about cutting edge technology, and the Famicom was no exception. Here was a 1983 console with a 6502 processor at its core - hardly cutting edge. Yet it rolls out years later in North America with dull face lift, troublesome side loading system, no keyboard, no disk drive, expensive game packs, and it becomes the dawn of a new age. In the same price range, you could have picked up a family computer, with a keyboard and disk drive and maybe even a modem. People had boxes of floppy disks full of games, as well as learning about computers and writing their own games. Yet it was the NES, with its Super Mario Bros, Zelda and Metroid and Castlevania and other franchises that was the talk of school kids in the late 80s. While I was playing games like Elite and Maniac Mansion on the C64, the NES was creating the Nintendo brand they still enjoy today.

[Wallyworld]

The huge success of Tamagachi portable games shocked me. Just didn't understand why they became so popular. I attained more enjoyment from a Dreamcast VMU and it was just a glorified memory card.

[Voor]

You know the political expression, "it's the economy, stupid."?

For video games, "it's the games, stupid."*

*not calling anyone stupid, but Nintendo took off because they had Mario, Zelda, etc....which they rode almost single handedly for 20 years, and when that was no longer enough....needed a quirky gimmick like the Wii (which ended up being a good move).

360 made it despite the debacle because gamers were so invested in Halo and couldn't imagine their lives without it. Lol.

And so on.

[Shapur]

Game Boy didn't even need to have the best library. 90 bucks, 4 AA batteries for ten-ish hours and the Nintendo name were enough. Although the Game Gear put up a better fight than most people remember. It only sold like ten million from 91-95 but the Game Boy's quoted 80 million is from 1989 to like 2001.

I think the PS2 surprised me a little bit. Not that there was any ever doubt it would be huge. it was the level of success that was shocking. It totally crushed the Dreamcast pretty much the instant it was released despite having no good games at all. That didn't even surprise me too much, I mean the PS brand was huge then. What surprised me was how badly the Gamecube and Xbox did despite being better in pretty much every way. I thought with Nintendo not saddled with cartridges it would be like the SNES again. Microsoft threw everything including the kitchen sink into their console, I would have thought a failry even three way split was the future, but shows how much I know right.

I was pleasantly surprised by the Xbox 360 as well. I had learned from the PS1 and PS2 that no matter what Sony was invincible. I even bought a 360 thinking it was gonna be steamrolled(I really wanted to play on my HDTV now!). It wasn't until the internet was filled with "599 US dollars" and "Giant Enemy Crabs" that I knew things were gonna be different.

[Hardcore Sadism]

I can understand now, but back then I didn't know why the Nintendo 64 was what every kid at school had and not the PlayStation (okay this was only true for about three years before I turned ten). Its controller does suck and the thumbstick is the worst, regardless of it being an earlier generation. But it really does come down to the games with that system. Controllers aside.

[ThePixelatedGenocide]

The Gameboy Advance.

At least with the 2600, there were technical tricks programmers could use to turn the color pong machine into an actual home arcade. And the NES had a killer app in Super Mario Brothers, which instantly made obsolete the simplistic twitch or die gameplay of competing 8-bit platformers. Besides, it's high resolution graphics made the C64 and 7800 look like crude cave drawings, and there were no load times at all.

What the Gameboy Advance had, was a screen so dark that I couldn't play Circle of the Moon. It was the first time I ever bought a system on launch, and then returned it the very same day.

[Gentlegamer]

Skating on thin ice in this lake, but the Nintendo Entertainment System, the NES.

Nintendo has seldom been about cutting edge technology, and the Famicom was no exception. Here was a 1983 console with a 6502 processor at its core - hardly cutting edge. Yet it rolls out years later in North America with dull face lift, troublesome side loading system, no keyboard, no disk drive, expensive game packs, and it becomes the dawn of a new age. In the same price range, you could have picked up a family computer, with a keyboard and disk drive and maybe even a modem. People had boxes of floppy disks full of games, as well as learning about computers and writing their own games. Yet it was the NES, with its Super Mario Bros, Zelda and Metroid and Castlevania and other franchises that was the talk of school kids in the late 80s. While I was playing games like Elite and Maniac Mansion on the C64, the NES was creating the Nintendo brand they still enjoy today.

Your NES hate knows no limit.

The Famicom in 1983 was cutting edge and ahead of its contemporaries such as ColecoVision in USA and the Sega Mark I in Japan.

The advent of memory mappers allowed the hardware to compete well into the 16 bit generation. One of the greatest systems of all time.

What should surprise you is how Nintendo was able to overcome the retail environment (of which home computer gaming was not even a blip on the mainstream radar) following the video game crash

[Tron]

I agree w/ the Gameboy as a surprise hit. Even as a little kid dying for a portable system that thing was just too dang ugly even for me. I knew someday a color Gameboy would emerge and I'd rather wait. Unfortunately the GB was so successful Nintendo was in no hurry to upgrade. What frustrated me even further was seeing how the GB was still selling better than the Game Gear & the Lynx. I couldn't freakin' believe it. I could understand desperate gamers getting the GB at first, but to still buy it over the GG & Lynx? Wow, just wow.