After finally making it to the top it was to be expected that Nintendo would face the envious eyes of those that want that same spotlight. After Nintendo fought so hard to finally break into the American video game market and establish itself as a viable video game developer it still had it’s hardships to go through. Once they made it to the top, their new problem became the many lawsuits they would then face. The main reason they had to face these had to be because of the fact that they were the biggest name in the video game industry and other companies felt like they had no way into the market with Nintendo the way they were.

One such company is Atari.  In 1988 they filed suit against Nintendo saying they were, “improperly using their patent and greater market share to monopolize the home video game market.” This was all a ploy to try to help bring them to the top and get Nintendo out of the way. Luckily Nintendo didn’t crack under pressure as they took their time to respond to the suit and in turn filed one of their own. Their, Nintendo, suit was accusing Atari of patent infringement, breach of contract, unfair competition, and tortious interference with contract. The case eventually settled in Nintendo’s favor but this was only the beginning as more suits began to flood in, coming at Nintendo with anything they could throw at them from accusing them to announcing a ROM shortage to control the market to a suit including the attorney general of all fifty states and the District of Colombia. No matter the suit or what they accused them of all of them came from the same place in each instance and that was other companies way of trying to force themselves into a market that Nintendo dominated.

In terms of the decisions from this suits and their affect on the parties involved, it can be said that it did affect Nintendo in a negative way to some degree. After the case against the states of NY and MD it could be said that Nintendo perhaps seen the error in their ways or possibly did not want to continues getting complaint and lawsuit after another. It made them seem, in some light as if they were a dictator of the market and gave them a sort of bad image. Seeing this it could be said that they changed their agreement with their licensees allowing them to make other games for other consoles and allowing companies to make games for their console as well.

Personal computers also became a contender for the gaming market during this time. What made PCs a popular choice for gamers over the typical consoles?

PC’s definitely became a contender and it was because for the most part PC’s were more than just for gaming so that sold it off at the beginning but focusing on the gaming side of it, it broke out with the help of its breakthroughs that let it stand out over the others.

            One of these breakthroughs was soundcards. Having only had a trying level of sound from most PC’s it was an exciting addition and as it became more common it certainly made PC’s a more viable option for gaming. With the introduction of CD-ROMs however, it completely opened the doors for more video games on the PC and allowed for the creation of three games that could be considered the “killer applications” allowing the PC to skyrocket as a viable gaming platform.

            One of the games was Myst and a lot of its popularity came from its surrealistic adventure with elaborate puzzles. It’s sort of interesting as it was first released on gaming consoles through Sunsoft and it didn’t take the scene as they expected but still earned quite a bit of money. Through Broderbund it was released on the Macintosh and it was a great success, later releasing it on the PC as well and that version became a hit as well. It quickly became the firs CD-ROM game to sell over one million units it remains on the computer game’s bestseller list for three years. The next game was The 7^th Guest brought about a similar bit of puzzle solving and exploring but it was nothing like Myst. Showing off the technology though was what made it shine as it had a photo-realistically rendered virtual haunted house with live action video of actors portraying ghosts. The final game was Doom I’m sure a lot of people have heard, played, and enjoyed this game to some degree. It was a game the revolutionized the FPS genre. It was created by id Software where their first hit game was Wolfenstein 3D and it sold really well. It was a game with a bit of gore that players enjoyed, Doom built upon that and added even more gore and increased their shock value. Another thing that Doom did was bring attention to the idea of shareware as a viable way to get software out to people and showed the entertainment capacity of multiplayer games. With all of these things compiled together it opened the floodgates for the PC as players would then be able to see it as another means to getting to play video games.