NES: how it was born, worked and saved the industry

In honor of Wemmura’s career and his lasting impact on the gaming industry, we are republishing this article, released in 2013 for the 30th anniversary of the Famicom, detailing the system’s technical details and exploring its history and legacy.

We’re on the cusp of a new generation of gaming consoles, and whether you’re an Xbox One fan or a PlayStation 4 fan, you probably know what’s in store if you’ve been through a few of these cycles. The systems will launch just in time for the holidays, each will have one or two decent launch titles, maybe a year or two will pass when the new console and the old console co-exist on the store shelves, and then the “next generation”will become the current generation – until we we’ll do it all over again in a few years. For gamers born in the 1980s or later, this cycle has remained familiar even after the old console makers dropped out (Sega, Atari) and new ones (Sony, Microsoft) took their place.

It wasn’t always like that.

The system that started this cycle by reviving the American video game industry and setting up the third-party game publisher system as we know it was the original Nintendo Entertainment System (NES), launched in Japan on July 15, 1983 as the Family Computer (or Famicom). Today, in honor of the original Famicom’s 30th anniversary, we take a look back at what the console has accomplished, how it has worked, and how people (both legal and illegal) keep their games alive today.

From Japanese origins to American victories

The Famicom wasn’t Nintendo’s first home console – that honor went only to Japan’s “Color TV Game”consoles, which were inexpensive devices designed to play several different variations of a single built-in game. However, it was the first Nintendo console to use interchangeable game cartridges.

The original Japanese Famicom looked like some kind of hovercar with controllers glued to it. The top-loading system used a 60-pin connector to accept 3″high x 5.3″wide cartridges and originally had two wired controllers that could be stored in cradles on the side of the unit (unlike the NES’s detachable controllers, they were permanently plugged in). to Famicom).

The second controller had a built-in microphone instead of the start and select buttons. A 15-pin port meant for hardware add-ons has been integrated into the front of the system – we’ll talk a little more about the accessories that used this port. After an initial hardware challenge relating to a faulty circuit on the motherboard, the console became quite successful in Japan based on the power of arcade ports such as the Donkey Kong Jr. and original titles like Super Mario Bros.

The North American version of the console suffered several false starts, not to mention adverse marketing conditions. A distribution deal with then-giant Atari fell through at the last minute after Atari management saw Nintendo’s version of Donkey Kong running on a Coleco Adam computer at the 1983 Consumer Electronics Show (CES). By the time Atari was ready to negotiate again, the video game crash of 1983 dealt a major blow to the American market, killing what could have been the “Advanced Nintendo Video System”before it had a chance at life.

Nintendo decided to go its own way. By the time CES broke out in 1985, the company was ready to show off a prototype of what became the Nintendo Advanced Video System (AVS). This system was impressive in its ambition and came with accessories including controllers, a light gun, and a cassette drive that were designed to communicate wirelessly with the console via infrared. The still terrible video game market made such a complex (and probably expensive) system a hard sell, and after a lukewarm reception, Nintendo returned to the drawing board to work on what would become the Nintendo Entertainment System. still know and love today.