The Nintendo Entertainment System (NES)

Monday 24 Nov 2008

Our gaming hobby might be movie like in this day and age, but it is because of consoles pushing the limits by outclassing each other with each new generation that this industry evolves so quickly. Some of you have been with us since the Atari 2600 days in the 70’s and some might have only joined recently without any knowledge of where it all started. Come back every week, as we will be looking at each console and what exactly it did that made us buy into it and how it helped the industry to become the monster we know and enjoy today.

Nintendo Entertainment System

Intro:

The Nintendo Entertainment System (NES) had so much resting on its shoulders. In the year that it launched in Japan (1983) the video game market came to an abrupt crash and everyone thought that this was the beginning of the end for this industry. Nintendo, who started off as a hanafuda card company in 1889, had an immense amount of knowledge in the toy industry and the NES was the proof of this. Their aim was to get these babies into as many households as possible by getting a genius onboard - Shigeru Miyamoto. He worked on Donkey Kong, Super Mario Bros. and The Legend of Zelda amongst others and brought with it exclusivity that would be at the helm of the Nintendo brand for years to come.

Look and Design:

In the 80’s everything moved toward the “smaller is better” idea and therefore you will find the Japanese NES (or Famicom as it is known there) was quite a small console for it’s time. The NES had a port on the top for the cartridges to be inserted into (which often needed the dust blown out of the slot as games would not work) and with two grooves on the side of the console to neatly slot your controllers in. It also had an eject shift, power button and reset button – the basic fundamentals. The American version of the console was quite a bit different to that of its Japanese counterpart with it being bigger and secondly front loaded, which looked way cool back then.

The controller took a new approach towards gaming with the joystick being tossed out the window in favour of the, now well known, D-Pad (which was made famous by their Game & Watch handheld systems). With that you had the “a” and “b” buttons to control your characters in the game. However, what was really new to the controller was the Start and Select buttons. In the past these buttons would be on the console itself and would require you to get up from the comfort of your chair to change settings on the console, now it was done from the controller in your hand.

The Games:

Super Mario Brothers – there is no better known game to man in the world. I think that it speaks for itself when I say that this is to date probably the console with the games that stood the test of time. Metroid Prime, MegaMan, Ninja Gaiden, Donkey Kong, Contra, The Legend of Zelda, Final Fantasy, Metal Gear Solid, Castlevania – all games that still live in our hearts today with modern versions intact.

If ever there was a golden age in gaming this would probably be the console that would take the honours. Games like Super Mario Bros. 3, MegaMan 2 and The Legend of Zelda are widely regarded as the best games of all time and are still exceptionally playable to this day. The games, which were mostly created in 2D, captivated the world and some still long for it today.

Add Ons:

The NES was probably the first console to really experience decent add-ons. The first one that comes to mind is the infamous Zapper – a gun that was used in well known games such as Duckhunt, Wild Gunman and Hogans Alley.

There was also the release of an arcade stick to play all the arcade ports.

Overall:

The NES is a classic and will remain one of the most important events of the videogame industry. Were it not for this little console you would not have most of the classics which we enjoy today. Nintendo are what they are today purely because of the NES. NES games sold on the GBA as classics and today we can buy all those great titles on the Wii’s Virtual Console with new titles being added weekly. Consoles sell because of games and the reality of it is that the Wii today is being helped with sales of 25 year old NES games. Amazing!

If you missed out on our first week, make sure you catch up with our thoughts of the Atari 2600 today.