7 ms·

I like drawing metaphors from Tamiya. Tamiya is a Japanese scale modelling and remote-controlled vehicle company with a loooong history of making quality produc

I like drawing metaphors from Tamiya. Tamiya is a Japanese scale modelling and remote-controlled vehicle company with a loooong history of making quality products that the industry just eats up. Like Nintendo, Tamiya has always been in the back row when it comes to technological innovation, but lead the pack when it came to functionality, reliability, and quality. Just like Nintendo, there are Tamiya fan clubs where people are enthusiastic about products from this one company. The rest of the industry doesn't exist to them. I'm trying to illustrate how Tamiya is to the R/C world what Nintendo is to console games. That said, vintage Tamiya products new in original packaging from the 70s and 80s can sell for thousands and thousands of dollars. Simple plastic and aluminum parts that were consumable in the 80s were selling for hundreds of dollars in the late 2000s. The market was a rough place. I have about a dozen antique Tamiya models, so I was one of those people engaged in bidding wars for 1/4" long tie-rod ends. A brand new Tamiya in the 80s was probably about $100 for a rolling kit. Now people are paying that for individual parts. Nobody was having fun with their models anymore. Everyone was just dusting them off and spending money keeping them pretty. Tamiya had to get the kids playing with their models again. They had to take this exclusive, elitist market they created by accident 30 years ago and start making money off of it again. So Tamiya re-released nearly ALL of their vintage kits. Brand new, with original design, documentation, decals, and packaging. This was in addition to their new models and high-tech racing vehicles which were still being released on a regular schedule at the same time. Initially all the collectors (myself included) were livid, because for a while it meant my $1,100 Bruiser 3-speed was only worth $500. That didn't happen either. For a time the prices dipped significantly, but collectors still demanded vintage parts to repair their vintage models. The prices soon stabilized. Now that market is healthy and stable, vintage vehicles can be repaired cheaply if desired, and collectors can still spend thousands on NIB models. If Nintendo embraced their market they could possibly reap the same benefits. The enthusiasm for their products is there. Tamiya has shown it is possible to separate collector demand from commodity demand and still have those ecosystems thrive side-by-side. I think Nintendo could pull that off as well.

GuiA 6y ago
This is a very cool story, and makes me want to learn more about Tamiya. But the situation does not seem the same to me. People are - for the most part - able to play the old Nintendo games they want through the virtual console, backwards compatibility, remakes, or NES/SNES mini. Yes, some N64 carts are selling for thousands on eBay - but that’s not preventing kids from playing that game if they want to.
- skuthus 6y ago
  To the OP's point, You can play some games with virtual console, but many games were released on only one or two newer consoles so you would effectively need to spend hundreds and sometimes thousands in order to actually play them all legally.
  - Hamuko 6y ago
    The strategy for Nintendo Switch Online is apparently to dripfeed classic games onto it. So if you for example want to play Mother (NES) or Mother 2 (SNES), you either need to emulate it on a PC, buy the actual retro consoles and games (or the SNES Classic for Mother 2), or get a Wii U and play it on the Wii U Virtual Console. (If you want to play Mother 3 in English, you're going to have to resort to PC emulators.)
    - skuthus 6y ago
      I definitely don't blame Nintendo for using this strategy - I do however find it frustrating how unintuitive finding the games feels. Want to play Earthbound? Get a SNES classic. Want to play LOZ:Link to the Past? You can do it on the switch. Want to play Mario 2? Too bad. Its japan only. Etc.
      - Hamuko 6y ago
        Mario 2 is on the Switch in the west as well.
- jrajav 6y ago
  The virtual console is exactly how Nintendo lost faith with loyal consumers who want to stay above board. They sold them on the Wii and many fans bought in - but their purchases were not maintained with their digital account for a Wii U update, instead they had to physically transfer them. So far, just annoyances though. The real problem came when they shipped the Switch with no virtual console at all. It's obviously easy to run NES and SNES games on even the cheapest modern hardware, so there's no excuse for not letting consumers own and play their games on any Nintendo console. And maybe they just don't think it's worth spending time on shipping their old games, that it wouldn't be profitable? That would be fair enough, but they are spending time - they just released a whole batch of NES / SNES games to push their online subscription service. Of course, you don't get them just by owning them before - you have to buy them again. It would have been easy to get and keep the good will of long-time loyal fans with a persistent and growing platform of their classic titles, but Nintendo opted for short-term investments instead of long-term in this case.
detritus 6y ago
Wait - so I can finally buy the Monster Beetle I dearly wanted as a 14 year old? I imagine the modern iterations are significantly better than those I drooled over as a child, with 30 odd years of improvements in electric motors and batteries?
- zelon88 6y ago
  Yes and no. You can still buy a NiMH battery and a silver can brushed 540 motor if you want too. The price on that stuff has come down significantly. It's the LiPo batteries and brushless motors that cost all the money these days. Then again, they really are in a different league as far as performance and runtime. Back in the day of crystal radios if you wanted to go 50+ MPH you either had to have a nitro engine or you just had a 9T motor that killed your battery in 3 minutes. Today's electric cars have aaaaalmost made nitro obsolete... not only from a reliability standpoint (like always) but from a performance standpoint as well. Obviously the market for nitro fun will always exist, but if you're just looking for performance these days there is no benefit nitro has over electric anymore.
  - detritus 6y ago
    I think you just cost me a few hundred quid..!
- elihu 6y ago
  That was also my first thought as well. Those things were awesome.
ginko 6y ago
One of my dreams was always if Nintendo released "development diary" editions of old titles(in particular Super Mario 64 and Ocarina of Time) where you'd get to try out a playable showcase of the game's builds at particular states in development from very early initial tests, to Alpha, Beta, various trade conference demos etc. Each with developer commentary, perhaps design sketches, deleted content and maybe maybe also some source code. Essentially like what's pretty much standard for special edition BluRays. Pack that in a nice hardcover booklet and people would eat it up.
- striking 6y ago
  You might enjoy the content on https://tcrf.net/The_Cutting_Room_Floor https://tcrf.net/The_Cutting_Room_Floor and https://www.unseen64.net/ https://www.unseen64.net/, among others.
  - ginko 6y ago
    Yeah, I'm aware of these. The point is these sites exist because the interest is there but game developers aren't interested in serving it. That's why people try to find leaked beta copies and even resort to hacking like here.
- sleepydog 6y ago
  I really enjoy reading about some of the techniques the developers use to get the most out of the hardware. Here are some of my favorites from recent memory: https://medium.com/@gordonnl/wind-waker-graphics-analysis-a0b575a31127 https://medium.com/@gordonnl/wind-waker-graphics-analysis-a0... https://blog.mecheye.net/2018/03/deconstructing-the-water-effect-in-super-mario-sunshine/ https://blog.mecheye.net/2018/03/deconstructing-the-water-ef... https://dolphin-emu.org/blog/2014/03/15/pixel-processing-problems/ https://dolphin-emu.org/blog/2014/03/15/pixel-processing-pro...
- GuiA 6y ago
  Valve did this for a number of their games (e.g. Portal, Half Life 2). You can play the game in a developer commentary mode, where (iirc) "orbs" that play recorded audio commentary are littered throughout the regular game world.
JansjoFromIkea 6y ago
I doubt it, Nintendo had huge success from the NES classic precisely because of their absurdly protective attitudes towards old games. They've managed to retain some level of serious value onto 35 year old games in an industry where many games are being given away for next to nothing within a few years of release. I think they've pushed the NES stuff about as far as they possibly can and the NES classic was something of a final cash grab from those games, but they can absolutely still bleed some value from SNES onwards. As far as that Tamiya model is concerned, surely Nintendo are doing about as close to that as they can within their medium with Link's Awakening on Switch? It's close to the exact same game, released at a price comparable to the original release, but with technological updates to make up for where the original would no longer match up?
- kingbirdy 6y ago
  Nintendo is still getting value from the NES and SNES with their online program as well. The membership is $20/yr and one of the very few things it includes is an emulator with a few dozen games from each system.
- dragontamer 6y ago
  Case in point: it was Dreamcast's ability to be hacked and run CD-ROMs illegitimately which probably killed it. "Open Source Video Game Hardware" is a misnomer. Video game developers (ie: EA or Activision) demand DLC and DRM models to extract more money out of "whale" video game players. A leak like this harms the #1 customer of a console: the 3rd party developers. Even if a console is a hit with consumers (ie: Dreamcast), if it is opened up for easy piracy and loses DRM protections, the 3rd party developers will stay away, killing the platform. -------- For a more modern example, consider Ouya vs Android vs iPhone. The locked down "walled garden" DRM model wins for developers, even if it loses on consumer freedom.
  - ginko 6y ago
    > Case in point: it was Dreamcast's ability to be hacked and run CD-ROMs illegitimately which probably killed it. I'm not convinced. I only heard about the ability of playing regular CD-ROMs on Dreamcast way after it was already dead. If anything Dreamcast is a great example of terrible mismanagement by SEGA. And if CD copying killed the Dreamcast then the PSX would have been dead 3 times over. I knew tons of people that shared burned games for that one.

GuiA 6y ago

This is a very cool story, and makes me want to learn more about Tamiya. But the situation does not seem the same to me. People are - for the most part - able to play the old Nintendo games they want through the virtual console, backwards compatibility, remakes, or NES/SNES mini. Yes, some N64 carts are selling for thousands on eBay - but that’s not preventing kids from playing that game if they want to.

skuthus 6y ago
To the OP's point, You can play some games with virtual console, but many games were released on only one or two newer consoles so you would effectively need to spend hundreds and sometimes thousands in order to actually play them all legally.
- Hamuko 6y ago
  The strategy for Nintendo Switch Online is apparently to dripfeed classic games onto it. So if you for example want to play Mother (NES) or Mother 2 (SNES), you either need to emulate it on a PC, buy the actual retro consoles and games (or the SNES Classic for Mother 2), or get a Wii U and play it on the Wii U Virtual Console. (If you want to play Mother 3 in English, you're going to have to resort to PC emulators.)
  - skuthus 6y ago
    I definitely don't blame Nintendo for using this strategy - I do however find it frustrating how unintuitive finding the games feels. Want to play Earthbound? Get a SNES classic. Want to play LOZ:Link to the Past? You can do it on the switch. Want to play Mario 2? Too bad. Its japan only. Etc.
    - Hamuko 6y ago
      Mario 2 is on the Switch in the west as well.
jrajav 6y ago
The virtual console is exactly how Nintendo lost faith with loyal consumers who want to stay above board. They sold them on the Wii and many fans bought in - but their purchases were not maintained with their digital account for a Wii U update, instead they had to physically transfer them. So far, just annoyances though. The real problem came when they shipped the Switch with no virtual console at all. It's obviously easy to run NES and SNES games on even the cheapest modern hardware, so there's no excuse for not letting consumers own and play their games on any Nintendo console. And maybe they just don't think it's worth spending time on shipping their old games, that it wouldn't be profitable? That would be fair enough, but they are spending time - they just released a whole batch of NES / SNES games to push their online subscription service. Of course, you don't get them just by owning them before - you have to buy them again. It would have been easy to get and keep the good will of long-time loyal fans with a persistent and growing platform of their classic titles, but Nintendo opted for short-term investments instead of long-term in this case.

detritus 6y ago

Wait - so I can finally buy the Monster Beetle I dearly wanted as a 14 year old? I imagine the modern iterations are significantly better than those I drooled over as a child, with 30 odd years of improvements in electric motors and batteries?

zelon88 6y ago
Yes and no. You can still buy a NiMH battery and a silver can brushed 540 motor if you want too. The price on that stuff has come down significantly. It's the LiPo batteries and brushless motors that cost all the money these days. Then again, they really are in a different league as far as performance and runtime. Back in the day of crystal radios if you wanted to go 50+ MPH you either had to have a nitro engine or you just had a 9T motor that killed your battery in 3 minutes. Today's electric cars have aaaaalmost made nitro obsolete... not only from a reliability standpoint (like always) but from a performance standpoint as well. Obviously the market for nitro fun will always exist, but if you're just looking for performance these days there is no benefit nitro has over electric anymore.
- detritus 6y ago
  I think you just cost me a few hundred quid..!
elihu 6y ago
That was also my first thought as well. Those things were awesome.

ginko 6y ago

One of my dreams was always if Nintendo released "development diary" editions of old titles(in particular Super Mario 64 and Ocarina of Time) where you'd get to try out a playable showcase of the game's builds at particular states in development from very early initial tests, to Alpha, Beta, various trade conference demos etc. Each with developer commentary, perhaps design sketches, deleted content and maybe maybe also some source code. Essentially like what's pretty much standard for special edition BluRays. Pack that in a nice hardcover booklet and people would eat it up.

striking 6y ago
You might enjoy the content on https://tcrf.net/The_Cutting_Room_Floor https://tcrf.net/The_Cutting_Room_Floor and https://www.unseen64.net/ https://www.unseen64.net/, among others.
- ginko 6y ago
  Yeah, I'm aware of these. The point is these sites exist because the interest is there but game developers aren't interested in serving it. That's why people try to find leaked beta copies and even resort to hacking like here.
sleepydog 6y ago
I really enjoy reading about some of the techniques the developers use to get the most out of the hardware. Here are some of my favorites from recent memory: https://medium.com/@gordonnl/wind-waker-graphics-analysis-a0b575a31127 https://medium.com/@gordonnl/wind-waker-graphics-analysis-a0... https://blog.mecheye.net/2018/03/deconstructing-the-water-effect-in-super-mario-sunshine/ https://blog.mecheye.net/2018/03/deconstructing-the-water-ef... https://dolphin-emu.org/blog/2014/03/15/pixel-processing-problems/ https://dolphin-emu.org/blog/2014/03/15/pixel-processing-pro...
GuiA 6y ago
Valve did this for a number of their games (e.g. Portal, Half Life 2). You can play the game in a developer commentary mode, where (iirc) "orbs" that play recorded audio commentary are littered throughout the regular game world.

JansjoFromIkea 6y ago

I doubt it, Nintendo had huge success from the NES classic precisely because of their absurdly protective attitudes towards old games. They've managed to retain some level of serious value onto 35 year old games in an industry where many games are being given away for next to nothing within a few years of release. I think they've pushed the NES stuff about as far as they possibly can and the NES classic was something of a final cash grab from those games, but they can absolutely still bleed some value from SNES onwards. As far as that Tamiya model is concerned, surely Nintendo are doing about as close to that as they can within their medium with Link's Awakening on Switch? It's close to the exact same game, released at a price comparable to the original release, but with technological updates to make up for where the original would no longer match up?

kingbirdy 6y ago
Nintendo is still getting value from the NES and SNES with their online program as well. The membership is $20/yr and one of the very few things it includes is an emulator with a few dozen games from each system.
dragontamer 6y ago
Case in point: it was Dreamcast's ability to be hacked and run CD-ROMs illegitimately which probably killed it. "Open Source Video Game Hardware" is a misnomer. Video game developers (ie: EA or Activision) demand DLC and DRM models to extract more money out of "whale" video game players. A leak like this harms the #1 customer of a console: the 3rd party developers. Even if a console is a hit with consumers (ie: Dreamcast), if it is opened up for easy piracy and loses DRM protections, the 3rd party developers will stay away, killing the platform. -------- For a more modern example, consider Ouya vs Android vs iPhone. The locked down "walled garden" DRM model wins for developers, even if it loses on consumer freedom.
- ginko 6y ago
  > Case in point: it was Dreamcast's ability to be hacked and run CD-ROMs illegitimately which probably killed it. I'm not convinced. I only heard about the ability of playing regular CD-ROMs on Dreamcast way after it was already dead. If anything Dreamcast is a great example of terrible mismanagement by SEGA. And if CD copying killed the Dreamcast then the PSX would have been dead 3 times over. I knew tons of people that shared burned games for that one.