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Nintendo Entertainment System Turns 25

Posted by Soulskill on from the mine-still-works dept.

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."

10 of 164 comments (clear)

  1. Crazy... by grub · · Score: 4, Interesting


    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.

    --
    Trolling is a art,
    1. Re:Crazy... by PatHMV · · Score: 4, Informative

      God, I'm old. This was 5 months after I graduated high school.

    2. Re:Crazy... by Aquina · · Score: 3, Informative

      Yeah, but I disliked NES and rather chose SNES games like Terranigma, Zelda (3), Secret Of Mana, Secret Of Evermore, Illusion of Time and... oh yeah Battletoads in Battlemaniacs. ;-) Give Terranigma a try (http://www.romnation.net/srv/roms/43226/snes/Terranigma-G.html)!

    3. Re:Crazy... by commodore64_love · · Score: 4, Informative

      NES is actually older than the Summary suggests.

      The NES is simply the US version of the Famicom, which was released to Japan in 1983. Same hardware and specs; different plastic package. So it's really 27 years old now..... almost as old as a Commodore 64 or Atari 5200/Supersystem or Colecovision (1982).

      --
      "I disapprove of what you say, but I will defend to the death your right to say it." - historian Evelyn Beatrice Hall
  2. wireless by snookerhog · · Score: 4, Interesting

    according to the Nintendo store in NYC, the NES was originally designed to have wireless (IR?) controllers. They have the prototype on display.

  3. Sure makes you feel old by mirix · · Score: 4, Interesting

    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!

    --
    Sent from my PDP-11
    1. Re:Sure makes you feel old by Darkness404 · · Score: 5, Insightful

      The thing is, games for the NES and that era were -made- to be abstract, when we got to the N64/PS1 era, developers started releasing "realistic" games which end up looking like crap when the next generation of games come out.

      Graphics were secondary to making an entertaining game, the game was developed with the concept first then the graphics followed and the graphics were what made sense. For example, the look of Mario wasn't developed to look like a specific person, but rather to compensate for the lack of advanced hardware. Today, developers take graphics first, take a storyline first, then let the game fill in the cracks.

      --
      Taxation is legalized theft, no more, no less.
  4. Re:Obituary != Birthday Card by Darkness404 · · Score: 3, Insightful

    ...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.
  5. Re:Mine still works... by Applekid · · Score: 4, Insightful

    Hey, it's already pretty good. The lockout inside the console is easily neutered (cut pin 4 on the DIP IC with "CIC" on the silkscreen), the cartridge connector -- while flawed -- is straightforward to repair and you can buy replacements for about $5, and the console can be opened up with regular old Phillips screwdriver.

    If it were made today, it would use security screws under rubber feet and labels, have a sticker about voiding the warranty, and disabling any kind of protection device would either brick it, make it impossible to play with more than one player at a time, or get you in trouble under DMCA.

    --
    More Twoson than Cupertino
  6. Re:The mark of good games... by CronoCloud · · Score: 3, Insightful

    That's nostalgia talking, there was plenty of crap on the NES, and plenty of great games on the PSone.