Nintendo console from the 90s. Portable game consoles: Game Boy, Electronics, Brick Game

Game consoles began to appear in the 70s of the last century. And from a narrow sphere for a small audience, they have turned into a real world-class business. Many players agree that the industry peaked in the 90s.

It was then that such a modern giant as Sony entered the market with its Playstation 1. Then the gaming systems from Sega and Nintendo began to turn into something completely different. And if you want to plunge into the world of nostalgia or find out what video game entertainment was like in the past, then it is worth purchasing a console from that time. Which one?

Classic consoles of the 90s

When it comes to gaming entertainment at the end of the 20th century, many will immediately remember the legends of that time - Dendy and Sega. Then they were mastodons on the young Russian market. Almost every young guy or girl had these game consoles from the 90s. And the adults weren’t averse to playing. The best games were considered:

• "Contra";
• "Tanks";
• "Chip and Dale";
• "DuckTales";
• "Battle Toads";
• "Double Dragon" and others.

In addition to Dandy, there were analogues: Syubor, Bitman, Kanga and so on. Of course, now many people know that all products of that time were Chinese unlicensed products. These were clones of the Japanese 8-bit Famicom console from Nintendo. But the Russian market in those days was not yet able to provide players with original goods at an adequate price. However, even now, these names still evoke warm feelings. And today you can do it without the problems of that time.

Also, don’t forget about Sega Genesis, Sega Megadrive or simply Sega. It was Nintendo's main competitor. And he represented Dandy’s competition on the Russian market. Although the console was more expensive, it was also much better graphically. After all, Sega is a 16-bit system. This means better graphics, sound and gaming experience. And the rich black color of the case will forever be remembered by all players of that time.

Arrival of Playstation 1

Around the end of the 20th century, the legendary and no less beloved Playstation 1 came to the Russian market. It was already an original product, but with some technical changes, which made it possible to run unlicensed discs. For many, the PS1 was their first, and they associate the game consoles of the 90s with this gray box.

For four decades now, television game consoles have been bringing joy to children and teenagers around the world! Some of them managed to become real legends, and the characters of their games became part of popular culture. Today we'll talk about ten of the most popular games new consoles - their history, hardware and software features and of course your favorite games!

Atari 2600 (1977)

Sold: 30,000,000, generation: II

Ladies and gentlemen, meet a legend, the Atari 2600! If for you and me the era of game consoles began only in the 90s, then in the homes of our peers from Europe and America computer games came a decade earlier - with the Atari 2600!

Today, neither the bulky case with a wooden false panel, nor the rather primitive graphics look attractive. However, at the end of the 70s, this console was innovative in almost everything!

Originally released as the Atari VCS, it was the first console based on a microprocessor (originally the MOS 6502, later the MOS 6507) rather than digital logic. It was in the Atari 2600 that removable cartridges were first used.

Its predecessors (for example, the “Pong” console from the same Atari) were released on the principle of “one console, one game.” The cartridge system allowed most games from the Atari to be ported, providing an almost limitless selection! Only home computers could compete with it, but their games were on magnetic tapes or floppy disks, loading them took a long time, while games from cartridges loaded instantly!

In the first years, sales of consoles and cartridges grew exponentially: the secret of Atari's successful business was to sell consoles almost at cost (about $200 apiece), making the main profit from the sale of games.

However, in 1982 there was a recession - the video game market was oversaturated with cheap and low-quality games, which led to massive consumer disappointment. Even the porting of the mega-popular Pac-Man to Atari did not live up to expectations - out of 12 million cartridges produced, only 7 were sold. Great hopes were also placed on the game “E.T. the Extra-Terrestrial”, released based on the Spielberg film “E.T. But out of 5 million cartridges, only 1.5 were purchased. As a result, millions of unsold games were buried in a landfill in the New Mexico desert...

All this, of course, did not affect the post-Soviet space, where the public was not at all spoiled, and even pocket games “Electronics” were considered “computers”! In the 90s, in Russian stores you could find the “Rambo TV Games” console - a Taiwanese clone of the Atari 2600, with a sealed cartridge slot and 208 (in some cases the numbers varied up to 2001 and even 11554) games in memory!

NES (aka Dendy) (1983)

Sold: 61,910,000, generation: III

In Japan it was called Famicom, in Korea Hyundai Comboy, in Europe and America - Nintendo Entertainment System, but for the residents of our country it will forever remain just Dandy!

The early 80s were the era. Following the success of arcade games like Donkey Kong and Popeye, Nintendo set out to create a gaming console that would allow you to play these games at home!

At that time, the first home computers were already appearing in Europe and America, and initially it was planned to release something similar to the ZX Spectrum or Commodore 64 - with a disk drive and keyboard. However, the then president of Nintendo, Hiroshi Yamauki, rejected this idea - the console had to be as simple as possible (and therefore cheap), and use replaceable cartridges instead of floppy disks! The concept was developed by Masayuki Uemura. It was his wife who suggested the name Famicom (the project's working title was GameCom). Abandoning traditional Atari-style pedal-based joysticks, Nintendo developed new type controller with buttons and a cross, based on electronic games Game& Watch, known in our country as “Electronics”.

The set-top box was equipped with a Ricoh 2A03 microprocessor (based on MOS 6502) with a frequency of 1.79 MHz and supported a graphic resolution of 256x240. The amount of RAM was 2 KB.

Successful sales in Japan, where by that time 2 million consoles had already been sold, prompted Nintendo to think about the American market, but it was not at all easy! The United States was experiencing a severe crisis in the gaming industry. Demand dropped sharply and it seemed that the era of video games was about to come to an end before it even really began!

To get away from the boring Atari image of a typical game console, which users associated with unsuccessful and low-quality games, the creators of the NES made it look like a VCR - just as flat and with front-loading cartridges (which had 72 contacts instead of 60, like the Japanese ones).

The advent of the NES (originally planned to be called AVS - Advanced Video System) breathed a second life into the industry and heralded the beginning of the third generation of game consoles! On gaming market completely new games appeared like Duck Hunt, Kung-Fu or Ice Climber, but the main hit of sales was, of course, the trilogy Super Mario Bros! Due to his popularity, Mario became the official logo of Nintendo.

So the third generation of game consoles ended the crisis forever. But neither the NES nor the Famicom came to Russia, which made it possible for the Moscow company Stipler, which initially specialized in supplying Hewlett-Packard equipment, to become a distributor of the Taiwanese Famicom clone Micro Genius, selling it in Russia and the CIS under the brand Dendy. The console looked exactly like the Famicom, but did not have the classic red and white design, but gray - like the NES. The Dendy logo is a gray baby elephant drawn by artist Ivan Maksimov. This image turned out to be so tenacious that Russian consumers called all similar consoles: Syubor, Kanga and even Rambo nothing more than Dandy!

Dendy - unofficial Famicom clone

Sega Genesis (1988)

Sold: 39,750,000, generation: IV

And here is the Sega Genesis - the same one from our childhood... Excuse me, someone my age will say, but in our childhood it was called not Genesis, but Sega Mega Drive?! That's right, because both of these titles refer to the same console! Since our country received mainly Chinese clones of Japanese consoles, it is not surprising that we knew it under the Japanese name “Mega Drive,” while in Europe and America it was sold as Sega Genesis.

The console was based on an already proven platform slot machines Sega, known as System 16. The company's developers turned it into a game console, equipping it with a 16-bit Motorola 68000 processor (7.6 MHz) and a Z80 coprocessor from Zylog (yes, the same Z80 on which the entire ZX Spectrum was built !) – it was used for audio processing. The system had 72 KB of RAM and 64 KB of video memory.

The release of the console was overshadowed by the noisy release of the game "Super Mario Bros. 3" from Nintendo, in the shadow of which Sega's presentation took place. To draw attention to the console, the company decided to release a series of devices with similar names like Sega Mega Answer answering machines!

Competing with Nintendo was not easy, and in order to expand the target audience, the company's management paid more attention to adult games (for example, Mortal Combat without censorship), while Nintendo focused on a more children's audience. Although the Mega Drive quickly lost ground in Japan (the competition was too strong), in Europe and North America it left a fairly significant contribution to pop culture, largely due to the popularity of the series of games about Sonic the Hedgehog, which became a symbol of Sega for many years!

Sega came to our country in the mid-90s and was remembered as more “advanced” compared to Dandy - the same games looked much brighter on a 16-bit console. "Aladdin", "The Jungle Book", " Mortal Kombat", "The Lion King" and of course the same Sonic for that time looked like cartoons come to life! Special attention was paid to the black rounded controllers (versus the square ones of the NES), which were produced with six game buttons from 1993 onwards! Although in Russia most game consoles were called “Dandy” out of habit, no one ever confused Sega with Dandy!

Nintendo SNES (1990)

Sold: 49,100,000, generation: IV

Super Nintendo (Super Famicom in Japan) is the second console from Nintendo with improved graphics and sound capabilities. Towards the development of this " super dandy“Nintendo was prompted by the appearance of two competitors on the market: PC Engine from NEC and Mega Drive from Sega, which in the long term meant a decrease in demand for the NES. Both competitors were 16-bit and therefore had significantly better graphics and sound performance.

The new platform was built on a 16-bit Ricoh 5A22 processor (modified WDC 65816), developed specifically for Nintendo, with a clock frequency of 3.58 MHz. RAM was 128 KB.

The new miracle from Nintendo instantly became a bestseller - the first batch of 300,000 units sold out in just a few hours, and the “black shark” Sega Mega Drive began to quickly lose ground. The lack of own 16-bit games (at the time of the console's release there were only two - Super Mario World and F-Zero) was covered by third-party manufacturers such as Capcom, Konami and Tecmo. One of the best sellers was Capcom's Street Fighter II, which was ported to the SNES before Sega. The confrontation between SNES and Sega went down in video game history as the “console war,” from which the SNES emerged victorious, becoming the best-selling 16-bit console!

When the first 32-bit consoles went on sale, the SNES remained afloat thanks to the release of the excellent Donkey Kong Country game from Rare interesting story, mesmerizing graphics and no less stunning melodies! But the most popular character remained, of course, Super Mario. New game Super Mario World sold 20 million!

In our country, Super Nintendo (unlike the NES) was distributed quite legally. Its official distributor was Steepler, the same company that supplied Dandy to Russia. However, it was never possible to even come close to Dandy’s SNES sales due to the significantly higher cost of consoles (try explaining to your mom that you need a new console when you’ve already bought Dandy!) and very expensive licensed cartridges, and therefore most Russian teenagers admired it beautiful 16-bit games a la “Cool Spot” only on TV screens in shops and department stores...

Sony PlayStation (1994)

Sold: 102,490,000, generation: V

The history of this now legendary console goes back to 1986, when, having mastered floppy disks (Famicom Disk System) as a storage medium, Nintendo approached Sony with a proposal to jointly develop a new SNESCD-ROM format that allowed playing games from laser disks. The main considerations, of course, were copyright - while a magnetic disk could be easily copied, laser disks did not provide such an opportunity. The future device was called, attention, Play Station! Its development was supervised by Sony employee Ken Kutaragi, who went down in video game history as the “father of Play Station”!

The project was not destined to come to fruition. Fearing that Sony would take control of the release of products in the SNESCD-ROM format, Nintendo management stopped all cooperation with it, joining further efforts with Philips. And so that numerous developments would not be in vain, Sony management, which had not previously taken the video game market seriously, decided to release its own console. The basis was a 32-bit MIPS R3000A microprocessor with a clock frequency of 33.8688 MHz; there was a controller for working with three-dimensional graphics on a separate chip. And also RAM: 2 MB, video memory: 1 MB, sound RAM: 512 KB.

The console was released in December 1994, when such hits as Doom, Twisted Metal and Warhawk had already been written and successfully ported to the Play Station. Equipped with a 2-speed CD-ROM, in addition to playing game discs, the console made it possible to play music discs in Audio CD format.

The success of the Play Station led to the end of the cartridge era. Although Sega, Nintendo and other manufacturers resisted for a while, new games required too much memory, and they too were forced to switch to optical discs.

PS-1 was the first console to exceed 100 million in sales, and until 2006 it remained the best-selling console in history!

Nintendo 64 (1996)

Sold: 32,930,000, generation: V

If the Atari 2600 was the first console to use cartridges, then the Nintendo 64 (or simply N64) was the last - the future of the gaming industry lay in optical discs!

Although Nintendo has been one of the leaders in the video game market since the mid-80s, new competitors emerged in 1994: Sony PlayStation and Sega Saturn prompted the company's management to think about the “offspring” for the still quite successful SNES...

The deciding factor was commercial offer from SGI (Silicon Graphics Inc.), which, together with MIPS Technologies, developed a new processor solution, MIPS R4000, which combined a central and graphics processor and was waiting for its implementation! The choice between Sega and Nintendo was decided in favor of Nintendo, since this company did not require exclusive rights to the technology and was ready to use it on a general basis. The new solution made it possible to play games in 3D format!

The console owes its name to the 64-bit NEC VR4300 processor with a frequency of 93.75 MHz. In the interests of marketing, the number 64 was also added to the names of games: Super Mario 64, Pilotwings 64, Donkey Kong 64, etc. However, in reality, the capabilities of the 64-bit system were rarely used - high accuracy of calculations in games was of no use, while 64 - bit data required significantly larger memory resources!

The release of the N64 started in June 1996, but at first the company's management showed some confusion - Nintendo had minimal experience with 3D graphics, and the developers were only able to provide users with a decent number of 3D games by 1998.

To attract buyers, the console was produced in different colors and with different types of joysticks, for example, for the debut of Donkey Kong 64 in the United States, a limited edition of banana-shaped joysticks was released!

Sony Playstation-2 (2000)

Sold: 155,000,000, generation: VI

The second console from Sony in the glorious Play Station family was a response to the release of the Sega Dreamcast console, which began the 6th generation of gaming systems. But this competitor left the market quite quickly; the PS-2 had to compete really hard with Nintendo’s GameCube and Microsoft’s Xbox!

The demand for the new miracle exceeded all expectations! New consoles were literally flying off store shelves, and factories were simply not ready for such a rush. As a result, there was a worldwide shortage of the PlayStation 2 for a moment, leading to massive speculation on the Internet!

From the very beginning it was stated that the console would be backwards compatible with PS-I games, but in addition to CDs, the PS-2 could also play DVDs, including DVD movies! Despite the fact that the PS-2 lagged behind the GameCube and Xbox in terms of hardware characteristics, only it had full support for the DVD format (the Xbox needed a special adapter to play DVDs; the GameCube did not support DVDs at all).

While the selection of games wasn't particularly impressive at first, Sony quickly caught up with the game thanks to its clever use of third-party developers and its policy of exclusivity for best-selling games. Today the number of games for PS-2 is approaching 4000!

Besides regular games, several musical ones were released, such as Dance Dance Revolution and Guitar Hero. After installing a special network card, the console made it possible to play multiplayer games over the Internet. Following the trends of the times, a huge number of accessories were released for the PS-2 console: remote controls remote control, light guns, USB cameras, microphones for karaoke, memory cards, an electric guitar for Guitar Hero, a katana sword and even a chainsaw controller for Resident Evil 4!

The hardware was based on a 64-bit "Emotion Engine" microprocessor clocked at 294.912 MHz (later 299 MHz), a "Graphics Synthesizer" graphics processor at 147 MHz, and a PlayStation-1 processor as an input/output controller. RAM was 32 MB.

This gaming console remains the best-selling to this day. game console in history - the number of devices purchased today exceeds 155 million, and there are 1.5 billion games!

Microsoft XBOX 360 (2005)

Sold: 77,200,000, generation: VII

If back in the late 90s Bill Gates spoke highly of Sony game consoles, then in the early 2000s they will become Microsoft's main competitors in the gaming market!

The company came up with the idea of ​​releasing its own console while developing a special version of Windows CE for Sega Dreamcast consoles. In November 2001, its own was released Microsoft console called Xbox. Name for new console was selected through an online survey.

Xbox consoles are entirely based on Microsoft's own technologies and largely replicate the architecture of a personal computer. They run on Windows 2000 (due to significant changes allocated to the “Xbox OS” family). The “stuffing” was also completely computer-based - the first Xbox of 2001 was based on an Intel Pentium III processor, 733 MHz, the Xbox 360 used a tri-core Xenon - a special development by IBM based on PowerPC technology with a clock frequency of 3.2 GHz. The graphics processor is Xenos from ATI, 512 MB of RAM, and a removable hard drive and DVD drive are also included.

A service was created to support users on the Internet Xbox Live, allowing users to communicate with each other and, in some cases, play network games. Xbox Live Arcade lets you download games from the Internet to try before you buy. Game patches, demos, and video trailers are distributed through the Xbox Live Marketplace download center.

Just like other consoles of its generation, the Xbox 360 comes with a large number of accessories: wireless headsets, removable hard drives, WiFi adapters, web cameras, as well as replaceable front panels. The Kinect touch controller deserves special attention, allowing you to interact with the console using gestures!

The joy of users from the Xbox 360 console was somewhat overshadowed by a number of technical problems. Insufficient cooling of the electronics caused the device to overheat and fail. Toshiba DVD drives scratched discs. The answer was to extend the warranty on set-top boxes to 3 years, install additional radiators on the graphics processor, and replace Toshiba drives with Lite On ones.

Sold: 80,000,000, generation: VII

Publication Xbox consoles 360 from Microsoft in November 2005 heralded the beginning of the 7th generation of gaming systems. A year later, Sony managed to present a worthy alternative - the PlayStation-3!

It was the first game console to use Blu-ray discs as media! The hardware was built on an 8-thread Cell 3.2 GHz processor. The amount of RAM was 256 MB with the same amount of video memory. Initially, the set-top box was produced in two configurations - budget with a 20 GB hard drive and full - 60 GB. The operation of the device was controlled by Cell OS, the interaction of which with the user was carried out through the XMB (XrossMediaBar) interface.

In addition to the Bluetooth 2.0 interface, the console allowed you to work on the Internet both via Ethernet and Wi-Fi. Using the built-in browser, you could browse websites and even send email!

To support users, a free online service PlayStation Network, which made it possible to play multiplayer games online. Another service - PlayStation Store– worked as an online market for digital content, both paid and free.

Unlike the previous model, the PS-3 did not have a quick start - the cost of the console, about $800, seemed to users to be very high, and the number of new high-quality games was small. There were also compatibility problems - not all games created for the PS-1 and PS-2 played well on the PS-3. Sales increased with the release of the Slim model, a “thin” version of the PS-3, released in September 2009. The thin model featured a flatter body, lower power consumption and a quieter cooling system. Four years later, the even smaller Super Slim was released.

Sold: 101,630,000, generation: VII

Game console Nintendo Wii(or simply “vi”) was released almost simultaneously with the Sony PlayStation 3 in November 2006 and immediately got off to a fast start! In the first half of 2007, the number of devices sold exceeded the Xbox 360 and PlayStation-3 combined!

The name of the console (during development it was called “Revolution”) was subjected to a lot of ridicule on the Internet. Nintendo representatives had to come out with clarification: “Wii sounds like “we,” which means that this console is suitable for everyone. Wii is easier to remember for a person from any country, no matter what language he speaks.”

A distinctive feature of the console is the Wii Remote wireless game controllers, which, thanks to built-in accelerometers and infrared sensors, respond to the player’s movements in three dimensions, allowing you to control characters on the screen with hand movements, as well as the Wii Nunchuk controller. The controller communicates with the set-top box via Bluetooth.

Hardware characteristics: Broadway processor (jointly developed with IBM) with a clock frequency of 729 MHz, 88 MB memory and 512 MB of built-in Flash memory for saving games and software. As well as USB ports, support for SD memory cards and Wi-Fi.

It’s easy to see that the Wii’s hardware is significantly inferior to its competitors, and the console can be classified as the 7th generation at a stretch – rather by its release date than by its parameters. But Nintendo representatives said that the company does not intend to compete with anyone in the number of gigabytes and gigahertz, its advantages: a unique controller and interesting games!

“We've come to realize that power isn't everything for a console. Too many powerful consoles will not be able to coexist. It’s the same as if there were only predatory dinosaurs; sooner or later they will simply exterminate each other.”

(Game developer Shigeru Miyamotu)

By the way, among its main competitors: Xbox 360 and PS-3, Wii is the smallest!

Rating

TOP 10 game consoles of all time

The first gaming device in the house. The computer, of course, is better, but the console was within the budget. The kit included a console, peripherals and several cartridges. Connected to the TV, two people could play together, a free alternative to gaming clubs. This meant a queue for the TV, sleepless nights of excitement. The first understanding of the need for self-control.

The first household set-top box was designed back in 1972. Steve Jobs began his career working for a game console company. The industry broke through to Russia during the period of perestroika.

The most popular consoles of the 90s

NES (Dendy) - third generation

The first console to appear on the market was Dendy. To be precise, it is not the original. The console itself was copied by the Thais from a similar NES model from the Japanese company Nintendo. The Dendy brand was one of the first franchises in Russia. The proposal immediately gained unprecedented popularity and gave birth to an entire subculture. The first gaming edition was dedicated to Dendy. The seller, Stepler, released a whole line of similar, generally compatible consoles before they fell into oblivion: Classic I and II, Junior I, II, IIP and IVP. Starting from the second model, a light gun was added to the gamepads.

The cartridges, like the console itself, were unofficial. The games were pirated, but few people cared. The graphics left much to be desired, everything consisted of large pixels, but had a peculiar beauty. Unforgettable “Tanks”, “ Super Mario", "Tetris", "Prince of Persia" and numerous fighting games. The first aviation simulators, hunting. In fact, the entire main set of games without saving, modifications of which are still played.

Dendy's competitors. The most common console was Dandy, but similar offerings included Kanga and Bitman. The Sega brand began with the same class of consoles; this competitor has gone further than Dendy.

Sega fourth generation

The Sega brand appeared in America back in the 80s. In Russia, players became acquainted with the company's products in the 90s Sega console Mega Drive. In contrast to SNES (Super Nintendo) games, this console is known as more "mature and serious" due to the fact that blood and violent elements were censored when ported to SNES.

Sega did not have any special characteristics, but it was (especially in Russia) much cheaper and more widespread than the SNES. For a long time, the mascot (personification of the brand) of the company was Sonic the Hedgehog, created as a character in a game competing with the Mario series. Mortal Kombat was also exclusive to this console. On the other hand, games about Mario and a lot of Japanese RPGs like “ Final Fantasy" and "Chrono trigger". Later models were also produced, for example, the Sega Saturn and the disastrous Dreamcast, which led the company to collapse in the late nineties.

Super Nintendo

Sega's heyday didn't last long. Soon Nintendo released the Super Nintendo, which became the cherished dream of schoolchildren for a long time. SNES had very high technical indicators - 8 audio channels, 64 kilobytes of sound memory, hardware alpha channel, more than thirty thousand colors with 256 of them simultaneously present on the screen, as well as Mode 7, which allowed you to draw a pseudo-3D image with a top view.

On Super Nintendo genre RPG arrived in its heyday, with such gems as “Final Fantasy”, “Earthbound” and “Chrono trigger” appearing. The company also released a number of less popular consoles.

Sony PlayStation

The popular CD-ROM console went on sale at the end of the 90s. A representative of the fifth generation with decent 3D graphics, fans remember the games for PS1 and 2: Crash Bandicoot, Final Fantasy VII and VIII. On the basis of the popular and relatively inexpensive PlayStation, enterprising citizens opened video clubs.

The 90s saw the peak of popularity of game consoles; the sector left advertising media, taking its place in the niche “for an amateur.” A new generation of gamers has moved to PCs that have become more affordable.

The saying that technology rules the world is more relevant now than ever. Indeed, until relatively recently we were surprised by any invention, but now progress in the IT field is so fast-moving, and the interaction of technology with our lives is so close that we have stopped noticing it. And that’s why memories of technologies that existed a couple of decades ago seem reverent and nostalgic.

You begin to wonder how quickly time flies only when the current generation of teenagers completely does not understand the essence of the devices of that time, and some of them have not even seen these so-called “gadgets” with their own eyes. Yes, this is the last century, both figuratively and literally. But for many people from that time, this is not just useless junk from the past, it is something that they loved, cherished and showed off to their peers.

Modern electronic devices are becoming smaller, faster and more powerful. They combine many functionalities, thereby replacing other devices. This is a kind of natural selection, only in the world of technology. When this happens, a huge number of the products of these technologies, as well as the technologies themselves, become useless. As a rule, devices that go on sale become obsolete within a year or two after purchase. Accordingly, the attitude towards such devices is somewhat different, soulless or something. Previously, such a change in technology was more noticeable; we thought it was something incredible, revolutionary. Therefore, the generation of the 80s, 90s and even partly the 2000s well understood the value and importance of each device. And they used such devices until their very end.

Sony Walkman cassette player

The cassette player was perhaps the most popular compact portable device in those days. In history, such a gadget is firmly entrenched in the Japanese consumer electronics manufacturer Sony, which released the world's first mass-produced player under the Walkman brand in 1979, which later became a cult favorite in personal audio.

First Walkman TPS-L2 (1979)

At that time, the player was considered a fairly small, light and, not least important, fashionable electronic accessory among young people. For 30 years, Sony has produced various models of “Walkmen” with advanced functions (auto reverse, AM/FM receiver, equalizer, microphone) both for ordinary consumers and for professional use.

Typically, most of them were powered by two AA batteries, which lasted for a couple of hours. But we knew how to save power by rewinding the film in cassettes with a pencil or pen and squeezing the last out of them, biting and deforming the batteries. It was often possible to observe the process of charging AA batteries in the sun.

The peak of popularity of cassette players came in the late 80s. At the same time, they began to be produced not only by other branded manufacturers, such as Toshiba, Aiwa and Panasonic, but also by a whole army of Chinese “virtues”. On sale you could find models with a built-in speaker, a display, two-cassette audio players, and even with voice control. After 2000, the cassette format began to be replaced by CDs and the cassette player was replaced by the CD player. Surprisingly, despite the fact that the last cassette player model from Sony was released in 2002, the company continued to produce them until 2010, and the Walkman brand is still used in the segment of portable audio products today.

Montana watch

Now we live in the era of smart wearable devices, including smart watches, which, in fact, are of little surprise. And then, in the late 80s and early 90s, Montana watches made an unforgettable impression not only on young people, but also on the adult generation.

They were not highly accurate and certainly could not boast of durability, but in appearance and in appearance functionality surpassed any domestic wristwatch, even Elektronika 5. And most importantly, they were American. At least we were sure of that - the engraved eagle on the stainless steel caseback and the Montana logo, representing one of the American states, spoke for themselves.

But, surprisingly, no one knows the manufacturer of these watches, but it is known that they were produced in Hong Kong - such a folk Chinese product. Montana was presented in several variations, with different names and even without a name, but it was in its latest version that it became super popular in our country. These were the smart watches of that time.

Montana had a stylish design, an original metal bracelet and was “stuffed” with a large number of functions: alarm clock, stopwatch, backlight. And most importantly, this watch was musical and could play 16 melodies. Although in fact there were 8 of them, and the kids believed that some special combination of buttons turned on the remaining 8 melodies. The peculiar beeping of the clock could be heard in every yard. The stopwatch became another entertainment element for schoolchildren, who staged secret competitions in how quickly it could be turned off. Montana watches, although somewhat modified, are still produced, but among collectors the model released in the late 80s is especially valued.

Polaroid camera

The first Polaroid cameras that took instant photos appeared back in 1948. In 1970, Edwin Land patented the first compact, fully automated Polaroid SX-70, which made the covers of many mainstream media outlets, calling the photo-taking process nothing short of magic and the camera itself a magic camera.

Polaroid SX-70

The peak of their popularity in our country fell in the early 90s. At the same time, mass production of some of the most popular models - Polaroid 635CL and 636 CloseUp - was established in the USSR and was intended for people not familiar with the basics of photography and the process of obtaining it. To be honest, not everyone could afford the camera itself. Such a curiosity, as well as the replacement cassettes for it, was quite expensive. A camera that allowed you to take photographs and immediately make a finished photograph was considered an unrivaled and cool gadget.

Polaroid 635CL and 636 CloseUp

Polaroid maintained the production of this line of cameras until 2000, when it was no longer able to compete with digital photography. The company was still producing its photographic products until 2008. The subsequent fate of Polaroid was not so rosy: bankruptcy, asset sales, completely new products and new attempts to return to the photo market. In any case, we remember it for its revolutionary cameras that made it possible to take instant photographs.

Portable game consoles: Game Boy, Electronics, Brick Game

Nintendo Game Boy

The Game Boy was not the first handheld gaming console, but Nintendo managed to create the most popular handheld gaming device. In our country, this gadget somehow didn’t work out, but we are all very familiar with the domestic development - the game “Well, wait a minute!”, produced under the brand name “Electronics IM-02”. In total, there were several types of games in this series, but it was “Well, wait a minute!” gained the greatest popularity among children and teenagers.

Electronics IM-02. “Well, wait a minute!”

Its special functions were a clock and an alarm clock; “Electronics” could be placed on the table like a photo frame. Every boy knew that when he reached 1000 points he would be able to see the final cartoon. Of course, this was just a myth, but it acted as a strong motivation for the players. In fact, the game "Electronics" turned out to be nothing more than a clone of Nintendo games in the Game & Watch series with a domestic adaptation of the characters.

Nintendo Game & Watch

Thanks to the resourceful and enterprising Chinese, the generation of the 90s came to know another portable gaming device called the Brick Game, popularly known as Tetris.

Brick Game

In addition to the classic Tetris and its various variations, Brick Game had many other games with a similar mechanism. Moreover, the copies of the device could differ in the content of these games. The most popular games were "Snake", "Arkanoid" and "Racing". By the way, the number of such games could vary from 8 to 9999. For each game, the best result in the entire history of its completion was saved, but if the power was removed, everything was reset to zero. Similar devices can still be found today, albeit with a slightly modified design.

Game console Dendy 8-bit

The game console became a truly insidious weapon that took almost all the children of that time off the streets and forced them to stick to television screens, and for a long time. With the advent of the 8-bit console, a breakthrough and development of the gaming industry began in the form in which we are accustomed to seeing it. The first game console proudly labeled 8-bit appeared in Japan in 1983 under the name Nintendo Entertainment System (NES).

Nintendo Entertainment System in North America and Europe and Nintendo Famicom in Japan

(Nintendo Entertainment System in North America and Europe and Nintendo Famicom in Japan)
Initially, the console was extremely popular only in its homeland, but after some time it eclipsed the minds of young people around the world, becoming the best-selling console. It was equipped with a microprocessor with a clock frequency of 1.79 MHz, had 16 colors, a resolution of 256x240 and produced a characteristic, memorable sound.
Due to the high cost and inaccessibility of the NES in our latitudes, mass acquaintance with the 8-bit console took place in 1993 thanks to its Chinese clone called Dendy.

Dendy

This device has become a truly popular console, and its name has become a household name. And even later, when the market was flooded with cheaper Chinese analogues, game consoles were still called Dandy out of habit. In the mid-90s, yellow game cartridges were everywhere. As a rule, these were pirated collections of games “100 in 1”, “1000 in 1” and even “9999 in 1”. The most popular games are Super Mario, Sonic, Prince of Persia, Contra and, of course, Tanchiki.

Children and teenagers, as if enchanted, spent hours on end playing with some toy, and at this time adults tried to tear them away from the screens, telling myths that the set-top box spoils the TV, and the light gun completely “kills” the kinescope.

The NES console not only rocked gaming industry and spawned dozens of imitators, but also created a huge foundation for the future, including serious competition in the game console market. The decline of the popularity of the 8-bit console occurred as quickly as its dawn. Improved 16-bits have arrived on the scene. game consoles SEGA Mega Drive and Super Nintendo. 8-bit eventually turned into a whole culture, reflected in art.

VHS video recorder

This “miracle of technology” began to spread massively around the world after VHS was approved as a video recording standard. By the way, this format was created by the Japanese company JVC, a well-known manufacturer of consumer household appliances at that time.

The boom of VCRs in our country occurred in the early 90s. Purchasing such a device was a very serious matter, even more serious than buying the TV itself. The price for it, as a rule, started at $200 for a more simplified model of a video player, and the presence of such a device in the house elevated its owners to the rank of well-to-do people. At the same time, in any children's company there was always a happy owner of a VCR, in whose house mass screenings of films and cartoons were often held. What about kids when adults indulged themselves with regular movie shows. Often the picture on the TV turned out to be black and white - this is how we learned about the need for decoders for the PAL system. Later, in the wake of the development of VHS technology, we could show off to our friends advanced “Videos” with additional screens, a slow-motion recording mode and 4 or 6 heads. And it doesn’t matter that almost no one could explain the advantage of these magnetic heads.

The most important ritual was the process of exchanging video cassettes, when it was considered bad form to hold the cassettes for a long time and not rewind them to the beginning. Copying the contents of video cassettes was reduced to going with your VCR to visit another VCR owner. All this was facilitated by the appearance on the market of foreign video products in huge quantities. You could buy a video cassette, pirated of course, with almost any film (as a rule, they were comedies and action films of category B) on the layouts and in the transitions. This is how we discovered another world, a world on the other side of the border. Since the mid-2000s, VHS video recorders began to quickly lose ground and be replaced by the emerging DVD players.

Pager

This device can be considered the first mass messenger, although not entirely full-fledged, since the pager was only a receiver for messages without the ability to respond to them. The idea of ​​such communication was born in the USA, and the first copy of a pager was released in 1956 by Motorola. Pagers were used mainly by employees of various services. Over the course of a couple of decades, paging became so popular in the United States that two-way devices appeared early in its popularity. But it was already too late.

In Ukraine, the history of paging communications was very short. The first pagers in our country appeared in the mid-90s. The fashion accessory immediately found its way onto the belts of established people, as well as the so-called “new Russians.” The device was so recognizable that cheap Chinese watches appeared on the market, outwardly imitating a pager. But there were quite a few who wore them instead of a pager. The device ran on an AAA battery, had an internal memory for saving received messages and served as a clock with an alarm clock. To send a message to a pager, you had to call the operator, dictate the text and give the recipient's number. At that time, there were about 5 operators providing paging communications in Ukraine. This communication system existed until the end of the 90s, until the moment when it began to be replaced by mobile communications. Pagers have been replaced by mobile phones with SMS messages, but this is a different era and different technologies.

Here is such a gentleman's set of gadgets and devices of the 90s generation. It was a wonderful time of new technologies, which were real discoveries for us. Many of them have changed beyond recognition, but some things from the past are still collecting dust on tables or stored in the attic. This is already history and many of our readers probably also have something to remember.

Dendy, under this name it appeared in the CIS countries, was the most popular game console in the early 90s.

In 1983, Japanese developers created a video game console called the Famicom (short for family computer). Later the console appeared in Europe and the USA under the name NES (Nintendo Entertainment System). The symbol of the console was Mario from the game Super Mario.
The original NES was never sold in the USSR and post-Soviet countries. However, the Taiwanese company TXC Corporation produced clones of the console under the Dendy brand, the logo of which was the famous baby elephant, which was drawn by Russian animator Ivan Maksimov. Dendy appeared in Russia at the end of 1992.
The Dendy console could work with original Famicom cartridges, but since this game console itself was not produced in the CIS countries, there was no way to find licensed cartridges. Because of this, most games were just pirated copies. Several have also been created original games especially for Dandy, for example the game “Field of Miracles”.
Let's remember cult games for Dendy, with which many spent hours in those years.

Super Mario is the best-selling game in video game history! Who doesn't know the brothers Mario and Luigi who are trying to save Princess Peach?

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Tanks, where it was necessary to destroy 20 different enemy tanks, while protecting your headquarters.

3

Contra is one of best games throughout the history of the Dandy console.

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Fighting fans will remember games such as Double Dragon, Battletoads, which later appeared together in the game Battletoads & Double Dragon.

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A game about two rescue chipmunks, Chip and Dale, based on the animated series of the same name “Chip and Dale Rescue Rangers” from the Disney studio.

7

The Little Mermaid, which was played not only by girls.

8

Black Cloak (Darkwing Duck) - the menace of all thieves, Black Cloak is trying to protect the city from dangerous criminals.

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"Duck Hunt" is one of the most popular dandy games using a gun. And how I wanted to shoot this dog when it neighed at me.

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Prince of Persia, whose goal is to go through all the traps, kill the enemies along the way and save the beautiful princess.

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Tetris, in which, in addition to single player You can compete with each other or with the computer.

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Pac-Man is a yellow little guy who eats dots and must avoid ghosts.

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The game Yie Ar Kung-Fu is another variation of the fighting game, where main character named Lee takes part in a kung fu tournament.

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