They weren't hated for their "stringent quality guidelines" they were hated for their censorship of video games and essentially telling developers to change things for really really stupid reasons. The only people that hated Nintendo were people who had to release through NOA because NoJ did not care at all.
Is that a cross symbol on a hospital in Mother 2? Better change that because I heard crosses are religious symbols and that's not allowed by NOA! Want to release more than 5 games in a year? Not allowed by NOA so better form some shell companies like Konami did by creating Ultragames (released Metal Gear for NES and TMNT). Want to call your boss Hellbat? Sorry better change it to Devilbat.
Want to make a game for a Nintendo console (which during that time they held pretty much a monopoly since what else did you have besides Gameboy and NES? Gameboy/NES held a large portion of the market)? Well you better order a minimum amount of cartridges. "Because we certainly don't want another video game crash like we had in 1983"
At least it's different now right? Oh wait, they're still kinda dicks to this very day.
Developers didn't cause the crash of 1983. Greedy companies did. Developers weren't the ones who decided that ET the video game needed to be finished by Christmas after starting the project in July of that same year. Imagine having 6 months to finish anything as difficult as a video game.
Similarly, Atari rushed Pac Man, and overproduced. "Given the popularity of the property, Atari produced 12 million units, anticipating a high number of sales." http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pac-Man_(Atari_2600) At the time, there weren't even 12 million consoles in existence - they'd banked on people buying consoles just to play Pac Man at home.
Is that a cross symbol on a hospital in Mother 2? Better change that because I heard crosses are religious symbols and that's not allowed by NOA! Want to release more than 5 games in a year? Not allowed by NOA so better form some shell companies like Konami did by creating Ultragames (released Metal Gear for NES and TMNT). Want to call your boss Hellbat? Sorry better change it to Devilbat.
Want to make a game for a Nintendo console (which during that time they held pretty much a monopoly since what else did you have besides Gameboy and NES? Gameboy/NES held a large portion of the market)? Well you better order a minimum amount of cartridges. "Because we certainly don't want another video game crash like we had in 1983"
At least it's different now right? Oh wait, they're still kinda dicks to this very day.
http://www.nintendoworldreport.com/news/29857
Developers didn't cause the crash of 1983. Greedy companies did. Developers weren't the ones who decided that ET the video game needed to be finished by Christmas after starting the project in July of that same year. Imagine having 6 months to finish anything as difficult as a video game.