Collection essentials #34: Nintendo Entertainment System (NES) / Famicom
The most historically significant game console of all time, the one most iconic in the category of “old school gaming”. In this post I’m gonna touch on the history of the NES, why it matters, my own experience with it and what it’s like to play it today. There is so much that can be said about it that some sections are gonna have to be abridged.
In the early ‘80s, home consoles weren’t really a thing in Japan yet like they were in the United States. Some Japanese companies had enjoyed success making arcade games, so naturally some of them, like Nintendo, saw a huge opportunity in making a console that would let people take the arcade games home. Nintendo soon devised the “Famicom” (short for “Family Computer,” Japanese people are sometimes fond of using English words in their titles) which they released in 1983 launching with three games from their arcade repertoire. Nintendo was smart because they sought a balance between making a console that was cutting edge, but having the restraint to not to add too many features and capabilities to the system in order to ensure that it would be affordable for the average consumer.
The Famicom enjoyed early success in Japan. Nintendo knew they had a quality product, and that it was much better than the consoles that had been released in the United States, so they sought to give it an international release. There was a big problem though, that being the apparent death of the home console market on the continent due to the video game crash of 1983. Consumers weren’t pining for a new video game console and retailers didn’t want to stock any. But Nintendo would find a way to get their foot in the door. First, for the American model, they completely redesigned it in order to look more like a VCR and less like a video game machine, and they initially sold it with the Zapper (a gun accessory) and a sophisticated battery-operated accessory called R.O.B. the Robot (more on him another time) in order to pitch it more as a toy than a “game console”. That alone wasn’t going to be enough, so in 1985 they started small and were able to give it an initial release only in New York City as a test market, promising retailers that they would buy back any unsold stock to limit their side of the risk. Things went well, and Nintendo gradually introduced the NES to various other big cities until finally the console got a conventional nationwide release in September of 1986.
And the NES caught on like wildfire. The whole “toy” facade was able to be discarded shortly; home video game consoles were back and here to stay. Perhaps this was helped by the fact that the NES fanbase at this point was largely young children who were too young to remember the disappointments of the Atari. So many millennials got their start with gaming growing up with the NES. Pretty soon “Nintendo” became a synonym for video games in general.
NES obviously wasn’t anywhere close to the first video game console, but it set the standard for what console gaming was going to be going forward. The controller, consisting of a d-pad, start and select buttons and multiple face buttons was revolutionary, and practically every normal controller since has derived from that design. A huge amount of gaming genres either started or evolved significantly on the NES. It was on the NES that the concept of “beating a game” became the most common objective to the player rather than simply getting a high score. So many iconic video game franchises got started on the NES/Famicom which remain relevant to this day, including Super Mario Bros., The Legend of Zelda, Mega Man, Castlevania, Final Fantasy, Dragon Quest, Metroid and Fire Emblem.
An unfortunate consequence of the North American redesign of the console is that, because games are inserted sideways and pressed down, they are very susceptible to wear and tear. So before very long, NES systems were infamous for being very prone to malfunctioning. But in 1993, at the tail end of the NES’s lifespan, Nintendo released a redesigned model (pictured to the right of the original) more like a regular game console. The new model is extremely reliable, which is awesome, though it comes with the trade-off of only being compatible with RF video and not composite unlike the original, so the video quality is not as good. The system pictured in front of the two is a Japanese “AV Famicom” unit released around the same time, which is also very reliable AND able to use composite video.
Regarding my own personal experience with the NES, I was born in the middle of its lifespan, so I’m too young to have witnessed its true heyday. My first console was its successor, the SNES. But throughout the ‘90s, the NES was still very much beloved, many people I knew had one and spoke very highly of it, and sometimes I had the opportunity to play it at the houses of friends and family. I very much wanted one for my own, although I wouldn’t have traded my beloved SNES for it. At one point my family was given a hand-me-down NES from my Aunt Joan & Uncle Dan with two games, but as previously mentioned, NES consoles were notoriously prone to failure, and this NES system worked so poorly that it was barely even usable and we got rid of it before very long. I believe I was 13 years old, in 2003, when I finally got my own NES, which worked a little better than the last one but still had issues. In 2004 when my family finally had the internet at home, I found out about the much more reliable 1993 model thanks to the late Brian Castleberry, and I bought one on eBay (the same one in the photo). Mom even managed to score some games for me at local yard sales to give me a decent starting library. But at this point, the NES was competing with many other newer game consoles, and I also wasn’t very familiar with the vast library of the console and was ignorant of so much stuff worth seeking out, so it only received modest play time. As an adult, my knowledge of the NES library has grown substantially, so I’ve amassed a large collection of its games and played them regularly as the years have gone by.
What is it like to play the NES over 40 years after its original Japanese release? Is it still enjoyable without the help of nostalgia? Yes and no. It really depends on what games you’re playing and what you expect out of them. First of all, the system’s library is pretty massive, with well over 1,000 games released in total across different regions. Many of those games were bad back then, so they still stink now. Some NES games have aged like fine wine, while others are pretty hard to go back to. RPGs on the NES, for example, haven’t aged well at all, and the few that are still fun today usually have improved remakes available on newer platforms. Side-scrolling platformer/action games tend to hold up well, although even that depends on the game. Some games suffer from excessive, unforgiving difficulty or for being impossible to figure out without outside help. Some games are lots of fun, but just don’t have a lot of content, leaving you wanting more. But if your expectations match well with what you’re getting into, you can still have a great time with a lot of these games.
In my opinion, the NES is a lot of fun, but I do feel that future consoles improved on what it was trying to do and generally offer a better experience. It’s never been my favorite console or really even close, but it’s still one that I will want to revisit as long as I live, and one that commands a special and unique respect. Stay tuned in the coming weeks as I share what I consider the essential NES and Famicom games in my collection.
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