N.E.S. - Nintendo Entertainment System, was first released in Asia in 1983 as the Famicom (family computer).
It was later released in South Korea called the Hyundai Comboy, In Russia it was called the Dendy, In India it was referred to as the WHIZKID and Little Master, and in Poland it was the Pegasus. These releases were clones of the system or knock offs but they still used the same games.
It wasn't released in America/Australia until 1985, when it got it's name that we know it as. You may not know that without the N.E.S. there was a good chance that we would not even have videogames in current times. Sounds ridiculous right?
Well as different things fall into a plague of the times. So did videogames. In 1983, the world of videogames were dying a slow death. People weren't shelling out money on them as much as they were in the mid to late 70s. Plus most of the big dollar videogame companies all went Bankrupt. It was a bad time in america for videogames. So as you can imagine 1983-christmas of 1985 was a slow time for new releases. But, if you weren't there or old enough to remember, like myself, all the systems and games that were outs prices were plummeting. Toy stores and electronic stores were getting flooded with games and new releases that shouldn't be released yet or weren't completely finished. Making them a lot more affordable and increasing sales, but most of these titles were getting tossed into discount bins because the stores themselves didn't have enough room to display them.
So with this explosion in cheap games more people were buying them and getting addicted to having fun on a home gaming system. Mainly because they could afford them. It wasn't an expensive luxury anymore.
Which was the perfect time for christmas of 1985, Nintendo launches the N.E.S. state side and we finally get to experience videogames on an 8-bit platform! 8-bit! Characters in the game actually look like people! It was crazy!
Nintendo had no competition except for a company called Tengen (you may recall black cartridges) until 1986 when the Sega Master System was released in America. This system didn't really show much of a competition to Nintendo at all, unless you lived in Europe. But, The Tengen problem was at hand. Tengen didn't release a system, and they were a huge industry at the time. They made software for the Nintendo but didn't want to pay nintendo for the pin adapter because they thought that the licensing fees were too high. So what do you do when you don't want to pay? You steal.
Tengen basically stole the pin-set and started releasing their own titles in a black cartridge to not get sued for plagerism of the cartridge (or GamePak as nintendo called them). Eventually this all stopped due to Tengen illegally releasing Tetris, which they thought they bought from someone that owned it, and they were sued into the ground by Nintendo.
After this Nintendo had no problems until the birth of the Sega Genisis to their Super Nintendo.
So there is some past of the system.
I was born perfectly into the N.E.S., i was 2 years old when it was released and it wasn't the first gaming system my tiny hands got to play but it is and always will be my favorite.
Point being is all my favorite series of games started here. The systems prior are indeed a fun time, but they were all points based (who can get the High Score) games. Because they were home arcade systems basically, but don't get me wrong, i loved writing down my high scores on those games and trying to turn it over. But, the nintendo had games that actually ended. You could complete a game. You could beat all the levels and get a few 8-bit cartoon style endings.
I am a sucker for good stories, and as we both know 8 bit games didn't have the best of stories. But, it was the first place games started to have stories. The birth of Dragon Quest and Final Fantasy (the zelda killers.. ha) started a game genre (RPG) that actually had stories. The entire game was a story with a controllable character. These were basically the change over from the popular Text based RPG's (chose your own adventure style games) on computer.
I could go on about all kinds of starts on the N.E.S. because this is where everything started. All the classics you love now, were in the 1000 releases the system had, and to top it off it was at one point the longest lasting console until the NEO-GEO beat it out a few years ago (which still is a lame defeat which i'm sure you'll find out about later once i due the NEO-GEO reviews).
So my reviews will all be a 1 -10 rating, and without nintendo i wouldn't have all the games i love now. So N.E.S. , You will always have the 10 spot in my mind.
-Felix "the Brett" Wussington
