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Nintendo Entertainment System Turns 25
harrymcc writes "On October 18th 1985, Nintendo launched its NES console in the US, reviving a near-dead video game industry and establishing Nintendo as a leader in home consoles. We've celebrated with a roundup of some of the stranger spinoffs that the NES has inspired over the last quarter century, from odd controllers to a lock parents could use to disable the console to do-it-yourself projects like an NES built into a Super Mario cartridge."
I remember going to parties, getting pissed and stoned out of my tree, and playing NES with my buddies.
Now we play some of the same old games on the Big Ass Emulation Disc for XBOX with the family. Minus the booze and drugs, of course. That's pretty impressive staying power for those games.
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according to the Nintendo store in NYC, the NES was originally designed to have wireless (IR?) controllers. They have the prototype on display.
I remember getting my NES for christmas when I was a child.
Most of my favourite games are still from that era. New games seem to be missing some sort of soul... mind you, there were a lot of truly horrible games for NES too!
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Did anyone ever beat Mach Rider? I think that game just went on forever with increasing difficulty at each stage. And what was with the random super powers?
The robot was the only thing I remember from the early TV advertisements. No mention of it in TFA.
Then I moved to Thailand and it was all Famicom... which seemed a lot sleeker at the time... smaller carts and integrated controller holsters. But Nintendo America knew their market wouldn't go for anything that didn't remind them of a VCR.
And my original NES still works. My PS1 or first XBox, not so much.
Unlike grandma, my NES still functions just fine.
U-Force. God, that thing was useless.
Also - no power glove?
Maybe I'm just confusing "strange" with "bad".
I never had any interest in the Mario Bros. game(s)... Everyone else seemed to though. I was perhaps the only one of my friends who really liked Duck Hunt. I LOVED that game! I only wish that you could have shot the dog when he laughed at you for missing.
Brawndo: It's what plants crave!
Didn't Super Mario Bros. (the original) turn 25 last month?
Is the game really older than the console on which it runs?
The mark of good games is when you can still pick up and play them 5, 10, 15 or even 25 years from now and they are just as good as the first time you picked them up.
I can't say that many Xbox or PS1 games can say that. On the other hand, almost the entire NES library seems to be filled with examples that are just as fun today as they were back in the day without having to put on rose-tinted glasses of saying that this game was fun for its time.
Taxation is legalized theft, no more, no less.
You don't really say, "My grandma turns 86 today" if she died 15 years ago.
I don't know what you're talking about. I've got a system next to my tv that still works perfectly fine.
Me and my roommates still huddle around it to play Mario. When the gray screen and flashing light got too prevalent, I went down to my local retro game store (more NES games than you used to be able to buy in the old days!) and picked up a brand new 72-pin connector, and replaced my old one. It works like it's new again, and I got some new games, too. Wizards and Warriors is hard. All my old battery games still work, and when I bought Wizardry used, it came with the last owner's dead party members in the dungeon still. I found them and hauled them back to the surface, and now they're in my party; it's almost like I was playing Shadows of Yserbius. My PS2 died. The only console I now own is my NES. Hell, it's the only thing I use my TV for since it doesn't get that new digital whatever (and I wouldn't watch it anyway). I beat both quests of Zelda on my NES while waiting on some long downloads and compiles over the course of a long weekend.
...Except for the fact the NES isn't dead or abandoned.
Nintendo sells NES Roms for $5 a piece on the Wii, the NES still has a thriving homebrew scene, new versions of the NES/Famicom hardware shows up nearly daily from replicas of other systems made to con unwary buyers (PolyStation anyone?)to portable consoles.
Just about every one of Nintendo's NES titles have gone on to spawn successful franchises the majority of which continue to this day (Mario Bros, Zelda, Punch-Out, Metroid, etc.)
I don't think there has been an older system with as healthy of a community and such surrounding it. Just because Nintendo isn't churning out any more NES consoles doesn't mean the NES is dead.
Taxation is legalized theft, no more, no less.
I thought it was very interesting -- nice and compact, although now I wonder if you'd have to blow it to get the whole system to work instead of just a rogue cartridge... (yes, i know the real problem was with the contact fingers wearing out and no longer making contact....)
We should all play a nice, relaxing round of Battletoads.
...guys? Where are you all running off to? Come back!
Unless your grandma is John Lennon or something.
That's awesome. Someone gave the NES a chastity belt!
Hoist Number One and Number Six.
I'm confused by the phrase "near-dead". I distinctly remember back in 1985 seeing masses of new game releases from some of the real great publishers of the day, released in stores up and down the country. Nothing was "near-dead" at all - the Commodore 64 and Sinclair Spectrum were really going well, and looked unstoppable. Was this "near-dead" thing a US problem, or worldwide? I have some of my fondest gaming memories from 1982 to 1989. I'm talking about the UK of course.
10 PRINT "SCUNTHORPE"(2 TO 5): GO TO 10
I loved the Nintendo but christ, 25 years? Has it been that long?
They didn't do the full US release until Feb/Mar of 86. (Before that they only place you could get it was NYC or LA.) Also back then no internet so no going on the web and having one shipped to you.
Did you know 80 to 90% of the moderators on slashdot wouldn't recognize a troll even if one dragged them under a bridge.
Oh Super Mario, You never get old :)
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As others have mentioned, the NES isn't technically a dead platform, but I still got a chuckle out of this, and am not at all surprised you've been modded down. Better not mess with nerds and their nostalgic gaming. Everyone else in this thread is acting like the NES remains the pinnacle of gaming, and everything since represents selling out in some way. I can't count the number of times I've heard frothing idiots exclaim that games back then were all about *fun* and they didn't need graphics. Like "fun" is somehow a missing quantity in modern gaming. Modern games have all the elements of classic games and then some. The only reason to prefer the classic is nostalgia... I'm not even saying it's a bad reason. I do things for nostalgia as well. I just think it's patently absurd that people genuinely seem to think that games were better then than they are now.
And in 25 years, presumably we'll have it happening all over again, only there likely won't be any working Wiis, PS3s, or Xbox360s floating around. But if you played a PS3 as a kid, you won't care about Zelda 1 or the original Super Mario Bros. Maybe you'll remember the good old days of LittleBigPlanet, back when games hadn't sold out and stopped being fun.
Did the NES have Manic Miner or Jet Set Willy ported across to it? It was on just about every 8-bit computer platform.
I'd probably hedge my bets on "Elite" being ported to more platforms than any other game, though it was strictly a non-console game due to the number of command keys needed.
I'm scratching my head to think of any titles that appeared on the consoles & computers as well - maybe Bobble Bubble or New Zealand Story?
Gentoo Linux - another day, another USE flag.
...Bah, wake me up when Sonic turns 20 next year! Meantime to all the new youngsters playing on your Wii's, quit Duck Hunting on my Lawn!
I'm honest enough to admit I lie to myself.
Ahh the memories!
I was 10 years old and the only looser who's parents bought him the Sega master system. Sure, hand-on & safari hunt, alex kidd or wonder boy were good games for a 10 years old, but finding someone to trade or just talk about a game was painful. The seemed to have all the fun!!!
I don't have an intelligent phone, so I need to be.
>>>the NES isn't dead or abandoned.
On the day when a console stops being manufactured on the assembly line, that's when it's dead. For example Atari 2600/VCS stopped in 1992. Ditto the C=64 computer. Off the top of my head, I recall NES ceased manufacture in 1996.
Sure the games might still live-on via emulation, just like some people still drive Model T's, but the model has been retired from production.
"I disapprove of what you say, but I will defend to the death your right to say it." - historian Evelyn Beatrice Hall
PolyStation
On the day when a console stops being manufactured on the assembly line, that's when it's dead. [...] I recall NES ceased manufacture in 1996.
Nintendo no longer makes the NES, but third-party Famiclones are still manufactured. Your mileage may vary on the quality, however, especially as to sound and compatibility with some of the later titles such as Castlevania 3 and Koei's turn-based war sims.
The articles is split across fourteen pages.
Seriously, who thinks that's a good idea?
My NES was the first thing that I can really remember saving up my money for. Allowance money, xmas cash. At my 7th birthday I so happy to be able to tell everyone that I had finally saved enough to get the box....only to get a bunch more cash from relatives that knew I was saving for it. So in a way it kinda muted the whole idea of saving in the first place, but with the extra cash I was able to get the add on Power pad too.
I never should have sold that set. Or Zelda, 1943, Pinball, Donkey Kong jr, or any of the other slew of shitty, snark fodder games that I had that had meaning to me. "Don't sell your NES." That's actually on my list of "stuff i'd go back in time and tell my younger self." Forget all that stuff about lousy girlfriend's, super bowl winners, and chicks that you need to go out of your way to make a pass at. I've seen enough scifi to know about altering the time line. But having that box. That specific box, not the one I picked up years later, that would mean something to me. I *bought* my NES.
There are some people that if they don't know, you can't tell 'em.
I think i still have my self made maps of wizardry in some box somewhere from when i was like 10.
I mean I think I originally got my NES in the Boston area in March of 86. But after I got it no new games came out for months. As I remember it I didn't see any new games until the September'ish so what you say makes a whole load of sense.
Did you know 80 to 90% of the moderators on slashdot wouldn't recognize a troll even if one dragged them under a bridge.
Just last week I found myself playing Duck Hunt briefly, for the first time in probalby around 18 years. Is there any equivalent sort of game on any other system? I don't see how that genre could have possibly been a dead end.
"It is a good thing for an uneducated man to read books of quotations..." -Winston Churchill
...Except for the fact that NES consoles are still being made, just not by Nintendo.
Take this for instance http://www.amazon.com/Retron-Genesis-Triple-System-Nintendo-Entertainment/dp/B003O3EFY2/ref=pd_sbs_t_4 it is a third-party NES, third-party SNES and third-party Sega Genesis (MegaDrive outside of the US). Or the "FC Mobile" a third-party portable NES ( http://www.amazon.com/Mobile-Portable-System-White-Nintendo-DS/dp/B0027ESBCG/ref=pd_sim_sbs_vg_2 ).
The NES is not dead because it is still being produced. It might not have the Nintendo name, it might not have the "toaster" design, it might not have identical controllers, but it still is a NES.
Taxation is legalized theft, no more, no less.