Why do Americans call the NES a Nintendo ?

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dougal

dougal

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Its so annoying when watching videos or reading articles and the call the NES a Nintendo.

An example, I was watching a review of the Retron 5 and the guy is going through the cartridge slots and he's like "you have Genesis, Super Nintendo, Nintendo (And NES is show written clearly near the port) and Famicom.

Really silly! Thats like calling a Playstation a Sony or like calling an Xbox a Microsoft. Its like calling an iPhone an Apple or calling an Amiga a Commodore.

I want to buy a Blizzard 1230 for my Commodore
I wanna buy Drive Club for my Sony
I want Halo for my Microsoft
I bought a headset for my Apple
Hi i'm looking for a Castlevania for my Nintendo. What Nintendo do you have ? Snes, NES, N64? No, a Nintendo Nintendo
 
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It's just the slang that became common. "Nintendo Entertainment System" was the only Nintendo product at the time, so it became simply "Nintendo" to a lot of people, easy to say and everyone knew what you were talking about. You can look up maps of the US where certain areas have specific generic terms for a soft drink, like "what kind of coke would you like?" "Pepsi". I've also heard (usually dumb/ignorant) parents referring to every console from the 80's/90's as a "Nintendo" or "playing Nintendo" even when they had a Genesis etc. Face tissues are commonly Kleenex, even when they're not. Here in Wisconsin we call drinking fountains "Bubblers" because that is the name used by a local company.
 
To be fair the English aren't much better, rather than doing the vacuming my Ma still says she's going to the "Hoovering" despite having a Dyson :lol:
 
Why do Americans call the NES a Nintendo ?

During the Playstation 2 times here in Malta everyone had a chipped PS2 and would buy pirated games from the market.

Ignorant people used to ask for games "for the 2". But worse were the ones who would ask for games "of the computer" when referring to PC games.
 
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sir_beaker said:
To be fair the English aren't much better, rather than doing the vacuming my Ma still says she's going to the "Hoovering" despite having a Dyson :lol:
Click to expand...

haha,,, We still call it the "hoover", saying get the "Dyson" sounds Wrong:huh:
 
Where I grew up, we called it the Nintendo and the Super Nintendo instead of saying Nintendo Entertainment System or Super Nintendo Entertainment System. Saying the first word or two got the point across, especially to those who wouldn't have a clue about what a NES is. I now call them NES and SNES or Super Nintendo.

As with many things, it all depends upon what was prevalent where you were. Besides, I can't be annoyed by people who just say Nintendo because then I'd have to drop one of the other things that annoy me off my list. :D

Heather
 
Sir Beaker hit it on the head. It's a common quirk to call some act or product by the first name it became very commonly known by. For example, we call the Atari VCS the "Atari", we call searching online "googling" (despite google having a ton of other products) and we call photocopying "Xeroxing". Some people even still call a new musical recoding an LP. We even do this with games. For example "Fables and Fiends: The Legend of Kyrandia" became so commonly known as "Legend of Kyrandia" that this became the umbrella name for the next releases, even though the series was supposed to be known as "Fables and Fiends"

Now if you want to know what's really a crime against language; There are people in Europe who call the Amiga a "Miggy"
That one makes me wretch a bit each time I see it. If I want to induce vomiting I could probably just try to imagine if all the Amiga websites were named the same way. Can you imagine miggynet or miggybay or miggykit?

Europeans also call vertical shooters "shumps"; Which I guess is an attempt at an ultra-cutsey form of "shoot-em-up..."
Assumedly FPS will eventualy become "fishpers" and RTS will become "ritsies"
 
I can understand your comments and I agree with calling stuff like a vacuum cleaner a Hoover or whatever. Even referring to the NES as a Nintendo to a certain extent.

But people who are being technical and were you have NES written there in your face should not say Nintendo.
 
Kinda like those Russian fighter planes ! I just feel silly calling them my "friends" all the time, hence miggies .. Lol
 
"Miggies" holds nothing on "Amigans"... I heard Petro use it at one of the Amiga shows stateside back in the 90's and I'm sure I visibly winced. It's such an uncreative term that sounds like something a 5-year old would make up... Atarians? Xboxians? Playstationians??? Nope Nope Nope
 
FastRobPlus said:
Europeans also call vertical shooters "shumps"
Click to expand...
To be fair if you watch a lot of youtube you will find a lot of Americans also use this horrible term. I blame it on the modern console crowd stealing the shoot em up genre's name and applying it to first person shooters when they had their own genre name of fps. "shmup" just sounds like such a nerd word from back in the days when people used to hide the fact they enjoyed gaming, I cringe every time i hear it said and most certainly have never and hopefully will never say it out loud!
 
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I remember in the early to mid 80's, every gaming console was called an "Atari" :)
I recall going to friends from school to play their "Atari" only to find out its a different console...

I've seen it happen in many areas, not just consoles, where there's a very dominant product, people tend to mix the product name with the manufacturer name.
 
Because when most of us were in our formative stages, there was only the one Nintendo console, and calling it an "en-ee-ess" was clunky and calling it a "ness" just sounded like you were mumbling something.
 
When people in my area talked about a 'Commodore', they meant the C64. Also here, the NES was called Nintendo and SNES was called Super Nintendo. I think this was less confusing since Nintendo didn't make so many different models as Commodore did and also, only the NES was called 'Nintendo'. Closest one was the Nintendo 64, but that one was never very popular so people never really talked about it. :)

Edit: Also, you could confuse some people by saying 'Commodore Amiga', since they thought they were two different machines..
 
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Sardine said:
sir_beaker said:
To be fair the English aren't much better, rather than doing the vacuming my Ma still says she's going to the "Hoovering" despite having a Dyson :lol:
Click to expand...

haha,,, We still call it the "hoover", saying get the "Dyson" sounds Wrong:huh:
Click to expand...

I was at a hotel in the UK, needed a vacuum cleaner and asked a cleaning assistant on the hallway... He just looked at me like I was talking Russian... I had to make gestures and noise and he was like "Ahhhh.... A HOOVER! Here you go mate" :D

OT: We always called the NES a Nintendo as well, and the SNES a Super Nintendo... It's only if it needs to be specific that people use NES.
 
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