Nintendo Entertainment System

The Nintendo Entertainment System (Japanese: ' Family Computer, or ' Famicom), often abbreviated as the NES, is the second home video game console developed by Nintendo (the first being the Japan-only Color TV-Game series released from 1977-1980). This console is often credited with beginning the third generation of video and computer games. The in the  series was released for this system, though only in Japan. Sales for the Nintendo Entertainment System were high, with a strong lineup of exclusive games such as Kirby's Adventure, Metroid, and Ice Climbers. The console's best-selling titles are Super Mario Bros. and Super Mario Bros. 3. The Nintendo Entertainment System was succeeded by the Super Nintendo Entertainment System.

Many games for the Nintendo Entertainment System were re-released as Virtual Console titles on the Wii Shop Channel and later the Nintendo eShop for the Nintendo 3DS and Wii U. Among these titles is Mother, which was released on the Wii U Virtual Console in 2015. Several Nintendo Entertainment System titles are included in Super Smash Bros. Brawl and Super Smash Bros. for Wii U as Masterpieces.

History
Since before the success of their line of systems and their venerable arcade games such as Donkey Kong and Mario Bros., the president of NCL (Nintendo of ) at the time, Hiroshi Yamauchi, had tasked a team of engineers with creating a home computer gaming system. Due to the video game crash of 1983 in America, Nintendo had an opportunity to enter a milion-dollar industry with their console, since the crash that destroyed the console playing field over in America had not affected Japan in the slightest. One of Yamauchi's desires for the console was to keep the system's price point at around 9,800 yen, or 71.27 American dollars (worth roughly 221.03 US dollars in 2023). One of the console's engineers (and one of Nintendo's wisest advisors and technical gurus), Masayuki Uemera, had the technological capabilities to make the console a 16-bit system; but since Yamauchi wanted the price to be as low as possible, Uemera made the system an 8-bit machine instead, while Yamauchi further lowered the costs for the console by way of brutal negotiations. One such tactic was promising the Japanese electronics company a sale of three million semiconductors, but only on the condition that they each be priced at 2,000 yen each. In this manner, Nintendo's new system could be more powerful than its competitors while still being the cheapest one out of all of them.

Their console, the Family Computer System (or the Famicom), would be based off of the, with upgraded computer chips and controller input to differentiate itself from Atari's console. The console eventually ended up costing 14,800 yen (105.44 US dollars, roughly 322.33 US dollars in 2023), which, while not as cheap as Yamauchi originally wanted it to be, was still cheaper than its competitors. The Famicom was designed around the internal architecture of Nintendo's arcade cabinets, as Nintendo wanted to to match the cabinets' powerful sprite and scrolling capabilities, with Nintendo also planning to release ports of Nintendo's popular arcade titles onto the Famicom system. Masayuki and other engineers "slaved over calculations" and fervently experimented on the Famicom's innards, trying their best to make the machine's limited components put out their maximum potential; "We had to accomplish this exactly. It was the order from the president. So much was riding on those experiments." Uemera would later quote. Uemera was also instructed by Yamauchi to design the Famicom with the potential to hook up to a modem or keyboard to function as a computer; while this never came to fruition, it showed how far ahead of the bell curve Yamauchi could think. The Famicom was also designed to look like a toy and not like a PC system to appeal to Japanese electronic stores, as they were not favorable towards carrying video game systems in their stores as they required televisions to operate. The maroon and cream color scheme was decided by Yamauchi upon viewing a scarf and a tv antennae with the same color scheme.

The Famicom launched on July 15th, 1983 in Japan to immense critical and commercial reception, with its launch line-up consisting of home console ports of Donkey Kong, Donkey Kong Jr., and Popeye. Shortly after its release, multiple reports came in from all over Japan that the Famicom would freeze or crash during gameplay; a problem caused by faulty chips in each and every Famicom console that malfunctioned. In response, Nintendo recalled every Famicom system (including the non-faulty systems) on the marketplace and replaced the motherboards for each and every system, with the consumers who had the faulty Famicoms being given the option to send in their defective Famicoms for repair free of charge. This act of goodwill bolstered Nintendo's image in the eyes of Japanese retailers, and the Famicom would move 500,000 units for the rest of 1983, with TV manufacturer Sharp producing a commercially-available TV set with a built-in Famicom. Sharp also produced multiple iterations of the Famicom, including one which combined both the standard Famicom and its add-on, the Famicom Disk System, into one console. The initial release of the Famicom had a smooth-bottomed console and square controller buttons; since it had a weak lockout chip and soft square buttons could wear down, the console and controller were revamped with a rougher-textured bottom, a better lockout chip and round plastic controller buttons, which became the more widespread release. Three million Famicom units were sold by 1984, with 19.32 million units being sold by the end of the Famicom's lifetime. The Famicom would become the most popular console system in Japan at the time, with Nintendo controlling 90 to 95% of the video game market at the time, with this fact being especially touted by Nintendo of America when bringing the Famicom to the U.S. Manufacturing for the Famicom lasted two decades before it was finally shut down in 2003, with the last published Famicom game,, being released in 1994.



The Famicom was planned to be released in the United States, and the initial planning was for to distribute the system in America, with Nintendo of Japan receiving a royalty check for every unit sold. While Atari and Nintendo were enthusiastic about the deal, Atari eventually backed out of the deal entirely due to a skirmish between, Atari, and Nintendo for the home computer and console rights for Donkey Kong, and Atari's dire financial state during the video game crash of 1983. As a result, Nintendo had to market and distribute the American Famicom themselves. To the chagrin of Nintendo, American retailers were adamant about not selling any video game system ever again because of the crash of 1983. To remedy this, the system was redesigned multiple times to appear more like a consumer electronic device on the behest of the president of Nintendo of America (NOA for short) at the time, Minoru Arakawa. The name for the American Famicom was originally the Advanced Video System, with multiple prototypes of the system being showcased throughout various electronic trade shows in 1984 and 1985. The device was conceived to have multiple applications, with several add-ons for the console being a tape deck/data recorder, a piano keyboard, a joystick, a programmable BASIC cartridge, and a typewriter keyboard. The system was touted as less of a toy and a video game console and more as a high-end revolutionary entertainment system capable of "images that actually appear three-dimensional". It was also touted as being the first system to be "designed to fit in with other fine audio and video components", the first system "that allows play of music as well as games", and the first system that was "more than a toy". The Advanced Video System (or AVS) also came with two infrared wireless controllers, (the AVS was meant to have no wires for the system and its applications at all, the only wires for the AVS being the ones that would plug the "cartridge controller" into the wall and into the television. ), and a sleek and futuristic "Light Wand", which could be used as a "Light Gun" in target games such as the hit Famicom game ', which was also showcased at the events along with the Famicom titles Baseball, ', Golf, Tennis, and . NOA's sole marketing staff member Gail Tilden also announced that the AVS would come with 25 launch games, with the AVS itself supposedly launching in June. An article also claimed that Nintendo stated that "a wide range of software would be marketed for all age levels".



However, the potential retailer's receptions at the various trade show events were lukewarm at best; while they enjoyed the system and its titles, they saw through the AVS being a high-end entertainment system and saw it for what it really was: another video game console that had a very high probability of crashing and burning in a market that had excised new video game consoles and titles from it only a scant year earlier. As such, they were extremely skeptical of its chance at success in the U.S. and refused to place any orders, with additional critiques going out to the keyboards and infrared controllers on the basis that children would hate them. In response, Nintendo decided to create a trojan horse that would bring the AVS into the homes of American children and would make it appear more of a toy and a uniquely sophisticated futuristic electronic device rather than have it bear the stale and damaged perception of video game consoles in general; a robot buddy accessory named R.O.B. (Robotic Operating Buddy), who could play Famicom titles like Robot Gyro and Robot Block (Gyromite and Stack-Up in the U.S., respectively) alongside you as a second player. This was merely a marketing gimmick, though, and retailers saw through the pretense of a robotic buddy (R.O.B.'s original name was OTTO, a play on the word "auto"; however, Gail Tilden settled on the name R.O.B. instead ) and still did not advocate for the system's American release. Despite Nintendo of America's staff calling R.O.B "hysterically slow" and it being difficult to make the sales-pitch "exciting", most of the staff agreed that the robot was indeed "cool" and that "it was fun to play! But again, like Rock 'em Sock 'em Robots, I wouldn't want to do it for 40 hours", according to product designer Don James. Simply put: it could fulfill its mission as a trojan horse for the AVS (probably). The AVS itself also underwent several changes in response to the 1984 CES reception: the tape deck/data recorder, the keyboards (both musical and typewriter), the programmable BASIC cartridge, and the joystick were all removed from the fray, leaving only the console, its controllers (now with wires), R.O.B., and the "Light Wand" (now the Light Gun). The number of launch games for the AVS decreased from 25 to 20 games, and then down to only 18, which were hand-picked by Nintendo of America "Game Master" Howard Philips on the basis of what games would be the most fun for an American market. The AVS's name was also changed to the Video Entertainment System (or the VES). In addition to the changes to the VES itself, Nintendo began intensely centering the VES's marketing around R.O.B. on the front of advertisements and other promotional materials for the VES, which continued until mid-1986.



In the face of continued opposition from American retailers, the VES was changed into its final design around June 1985, with the console, controllers, and the Light Gun (now the NES Zapper) undergoing major cosmetic and functional changes, with R.O.B. receiving only minor differences in coloration and structuring. The VES's top-loading cartridge acceptance, like the Famicom, was removed, and replaced with a side-loading deck system similar to a VCR device. To support the new side-design, the VES became significantly less sleek and refined and more angular and blocky. The VES controllers' flat directional pad was changed to a plus sign-shaped D-Pad, which was brought over from the Famicom controller. The console's color aesthetic remained mostly the same, though the light/dark gray and black color scheme received more prominent red highlights throughout the design. The launch line-up was whittled down from 18 to 17 games, with two being included with the console:  and [|Gyromite]. The NES Zapper was also changed from an angular and detail-barren gun to a more simple and practical design, with the words "Nintendo Zapper" being emblazoned on the side of it. The words "Nintendo Entertainment System" were also emblazoned on the deck flap of the NES console itself, to reflect the console's newest and final name. The NES cartridges and boxes were also changed: To fit the console's side-loading cartridge function, the NES cartridges were changed from being squat and rectangular-shaped like the Famicom cartridges and were instead redesigned to be tall and long. (Later NES games could take advantage of this by upgrading its hardware inside the spacious cartridge shell.) The boxes were also designed to be longer than the cartridges themselves in order to show more detail on the boxes regarding the game; a single block of styrofoam was packaged in the box so the cartridge and other materials wouldn't move around an excessive amount inside the box. This was all done to make the games seem more like tapes, which played into Nintendo's "entertainment system' marketing strategy. The boxes also displayed game-accurate graphics on the front to avoid misleading customers on the game's graphical capabilities; Nintendo felt that Atari had erred by showing lavish paintings of the games on their game boxes. And finally, the NES console would be packaged with two controllers, Duck Hunt and Gyromite, the zapper, and R.O.B. in a bundle that would retail for the price of $130. Despite these changes, the reaction at the trade shows did little better to encourage retailers to place orders; in addition, a focus-group test showed that children hated the console, with a typical 8-year-old's reaction being: "This is s**t!" A solemn Arakawa had to be reinvigorated by Yamauchi, who told Arakawa: "Try to sell the system in one American city. Then, if it fails, it fails. But we must get it into the hands of the customer. That is the only test that matters." After consideration between Arakawa and other Nintendo of America heads, Yamauchi decided to release the NES in first, as it would be the most difficult place to sell NES systems in: it had been hit the hardest by the 1983 crash, and the buyers were among the most "cynical" and "savvy" buyers in America. Yamauchi then granted Nintendo of America a budget of $50,000,000 to get the job done.



In the late summer of 1985, 100,000 units of the NES were shipped to a dark and dingy warehouse in Hackensack, New Jersey, with 35 NOA employees being sent there as well. After Arakawa encouraged the team with the promise that "If we can get the players to see it, it will be really big". The team (described by David Sheff in his 1993 book "Game Over" as being more of a SWAT team) spent the next five months doing everything that they possibly could to get the NES onto retailer's shelves, including devising an extensive ad campaign that centered around the NES being a powerful, revolutionary futuristic entertainment device (like a |live-action commercial that featured two brothers' house skyrocketing upwards towards outer space after playing their NES); setting up colorful NES booths in many stores and malls, and having NOA's Howard Philips, an excellent spokesman, draw in customers to get hooked on the machine; hiring professional athletes to promote the NES in stores and malls (one such mall director forbade an NOA team from turning on the NES console, claiming they would attract the "wrong sort of crowd"; she just wanted to meet the baseball stars); repeatedly contacting malls and store operators to agree to allow them to demonstrate the NES; and going out in droves, pair by pair, to hand sell the system to as many department stores, toy and electronic shops, retail shops, malls, and stores in the New York area, even setting up the NES booths and window displays in the stores themselves. Arakawa also went out with the rest of the team; he could be even seen running up a large flight of stairs with a TV in his arms, just to "see what it was like." The team even stood next to Mets stars who were signing autographs and tried to get anyone passing by to listen to their pitch, with and  even playing Baseball for the NES on a large-screen television. The team contacted companies like Toys "R" Us, Sea, Circuit City, and Macy's to host the NES in their stores; most of them were not interested, with the founding chairman of Toys "R" Us and a select few others being open to the idea. Arakawa then offered a risky strategy that troubled Yamauchi: Nintendo would stock the stores and set up their window displays and interior displays, while the stores didn't have to pay for anything for ninety days; afterwards, those stores would pay Nintendo for what they had sold and could return the rest for free. Despite being a risk-free proposition for the stores, the store owners were still skeptical, though the companies eventually agreed to the deal with the general consensus that the deal would be Nintendo's downfall. On the marketing side of the NES mission, Gail Tilden was responsible for creating the NES marketing vernacular for the system and its accessories: consoles were no longer "consoles" but "control decks"; game "cartridges" were now "game paks" (sic); and the use of "video game" was rebranded as a "entertainment system". This was done to remove the foul reminders of Atari from the public's view of the NES. In the meantime, the team was losing spirit--Arakawa's promise gave little respite at this point--it was a long, slow process to get stores to agree to stock the NES, even with Arakawa's tactic in play; it often took multiple phone calls to convince stores to stock the NES, with no guarantees that their decision wouldn't be immediately revoked based on the opinion of their other management heads. Journalists, the trade press, and reporters were entirely non-receptive to NOA's plight. Multiple stores, malls, and shops did agree to do so, though, and the number continued to climb as the fall and winter season wore on, largely in-part due to the extraordinary efforts of the NOA team. Eventually, enough stores agreed to stock the NES that the NOA team's spirits were bolstered, though Howard Philips had a rather unpleasant encounter with a security guard while setting up an NES window display at a Toys "R" Us. The team hosted an NES "birthday" party on October 10th at a place called The Visage, with the advert inviting children to experience a "child's-eye" view of the NES. T-shirts and pins with R.O.B. the robot on them were given around at the party while multiple silver R.O.B.s stood guard around a giant R.O.B. statue.



The Nintendo Entertainment System was released for around 179.99 U.S. dollars (roughly 511.73 American dollars in 2023) in late October, 1985. One of the first NES sales belonged to a man who purchased the NES system and all additional 15 launch titles at an FAO Schwartz while multiple NOA employees crouched behind a nearby pillar; he later turned out to be part of a Japanese competitor. Nonetheless, the NES system would go on to sell 50,000 units for the Christmas season: while it wasn't as many as Nintendo was expecting, it was still a start, largely due to the monumental efforts that the NOA "SWAT-team" gave. The NOA staff had a lonely Christmas themselves, as most of them could not journey back home to their families to celebrate as their plane flight back to (NOA's headquarters) had been cancelled due to fog. Armed with their accomplishment, though, the team would go on to prepare a nation-wide launch in 1986, first starting with in February (which was tougher than New York as February was a bad month for L.A. retailers), which was greeted with an enthusiastic response from retailers yet still maintained the gradual pace from before; then, then , and then several Texan cities before finally unleashing the NES across the entire nation. NOA partnered up with fledgling company Worlds of Wonder (formed by ex-Atari employees) with their hit products and  to distribute the NES throughout the states (Nintendo would end up hiring the sales force from Worlds of Wonder when the company faced bankruptcy later on due to an excess amount of unsold Teddy Ruxpins ) while toy company  handled the distribution system in. NOA's vice-president of marketing, Peter Main, also infiltrated Wall Street and presented Nintendo's debt-free and successful history to the electronic and toy store's key analysts within Wall Street, causing the name and stories of Nintendo to spread like wildfire throughout Wall Street and bolstering Nintendo's image and popularity. This also caused multiple toy and electronic retailers to sign up to stock the NES including Sears, Babbages, Circuit City, Kmart, and Walmart (many of them the ones that initially turned down Nintendo's offer in 1985), which would generate a self-feeding fire by causing the various retailers to each stock more of Nintendo's products to try to compete with the other. "It became a fulfilling prophecy that something would happen", Main would later quote. New NES system bundles were created as well; A Control Deck set was released, with the deck and two controllers being included in the bundle, as well as a pack-in title:, Shigeru Miyamoto's hit Famicom title that was also released as one of the launch games for October 1985; the NES system bundle from 1985 was rebranded as the NES Deluxe Set, with the words "DELUXE SET" being added to the front of the box, along with new images as well; and a limited edition version of the NES Deluxe Set came with an additional pack-in title along with Duck Hunt and Gyromite: Stack-Up, the only other game that R.O.B. could play with you. Being the NES's trojan horse, R.O.B.'s only purpose was to get the NES into the homes of the U.S. children that were robot-obsessed, so R.O.B. was quickly fizzled out and he vanished from Nintendo's marketing plans and advertisements around mid-1987. But it didn't matter; once children across America got ahold of the system, "nobody missed R.O.B....once players realized that games played with the standard controller, like Super Mario Bros., were much more fun." Perhaps the greatest example of this is the NES Action Set, a bundle released in 1987 consisting of the NES, two controllers, an NES Zapper (later versions had the gray color scheme changed to a neon-orange color as laws regarding toy guns became stricter ), and a combo cartridge containing both Duck Hunt and Super Mario Bros.; this bundle would go on to be the best selling NES bundle in the console's history, almost certainly contributing to the cumulative sales of Miyamoto's Super Mario Bros. (more than 40 million copies worldwide ). The NES would go on to sell 3 million systems by the end of 1986, with the NES selling 6 million more by 1987. At the end of its lifetime, the NES would go on selling over 34,000,000 systems in the U.S. alone, leading to a cumulative 61.91 million sales worldwide, with 19.32 million units being sold in Japan and 8.56 million additional units being sold in other regions.

Legacy


The NES infected the American pop culture zeitgeist, with Nintendo firmly establishing itself in the and first making its name known in the U.S. as the de-facto video game company in both Japan and America until 's uprising in the early 90s, being featured in countless mainstream magazines, articles, television and media references, advertisements, and fictional media such as the 1989 film, in which a boy is an intuitive master of Nintendo games (the film was used to promote ') and ', where the NES and Nintendo characters also make appearances. A toll-free 1-800 Nintendo hotline number was established in January 1986 to help callers out with tips, tricks, and guides to difficult parts of NES titles, with the number even being put into 1987's The Legend of Zelda's instruction manual by Minoru Arakawa who knew that the game was a difficult one; once the phones began ringing, the phones never stopped ringing, with the four hotline staff members eventually being increased by Arakawa to 200 to 400 by 1990 (500 for the holiday rush). The callers never decreased, even when the toll-free number was removed later on. a 1-900 number was also established, which was a Captain Nintendo Hotline for "tips and adventure stories about Nintendo games."

The hotline, with "Gameplay Counselors" manning the lines on an hourly basis and ready to help any hapless young man with a difficult play session on his NES, further cemented Nintendo's "caring" reputation among its customers.



The NES's success also gave rise to NOA's in-house magazine named  in late 1988, which gave game walkthroughs, cheats, hints, a list of upcoming titles, NOA's 1-800 hotline number, and advertisements for Nintendo products and peripherals from the past, present, and future. The magazine succeeded NOA's former free-to-join newsletter, which functioned similarly to Nintendo Power. The final issue of the newsletter encouraging readers to transfer over to Nintendo Power. The NES gave birth to the "Nintendo Generation", which were the young children who grew up with the NES during the late 80s and early 90s, passing game codes, secrets and rumors at schoolyard playgrounds, faking being sick to stay home and play their NES, and devouring each issue of Nintendo Power with aplomb. At the height of its popularity, the NES was in one out of three American homes. The NES library contained first-party titles that are still revered as some of the best games of all time today through innumerable lists of NES favorites, and licensed third-party titles ranging from mega-popular fictional franchises to live-action films from ' to ' to . The 1990 title Super Mario Bros. 3 sold 14,000,000 copies worldwide with its total grosses only being succeeded by the Spielberg mega-hit  film, with Super Mario Bros. 3 going on become the highest-selling individual game in history at the time. A company named Rare also became a reputable third-party licensee for Nintendo through their NES titles ', ', and the hit game Battletoads, leading Nintendo to purchase a 25% stake of the company in 1994 after being impressed by their recent Silicon Graphics (SGI) advances in video game technology, leading Rare to become an independent second-party developer for Nintendo. The stake increased to 49%, while Rare would go on to develop more titles and franchises for Nintendo's subsequent consoles, such as the Donkey Kong Country, ', ', and Conker franchises, with stand-off titles such as GoldenEye 007, ', ', and Star Fox Adventures, before finally being bought out by in 2002 due to Nintendo refusing to purchase the other %51 of Rare. In addition, R.O.B. has gone on to star in other Nintendo franchises as a cameo, from being a statue, a minor appearance, or a part of a mini-game in the WarioWare series, a giant statue in [a race] in F-Zero GX, and its head and gyro blocks being part of the Blast from the Past series in Pikmin 2. His most notable appearances in other Nintendo franchises are as a playable racer in  and the Super Smash Bros. series as a playable fighter in every series title beginning with Super Smash Bros. Brawl. The NES itself has also been subject to an innumerable amount of references and appearances in other media since the 80s, like television (', '), fan-made documentaries (like, which features two friends as they try to collect every licensed NES game in a month), and feature films (like , where a young boy and his friends try to obtain a coveted NES system for Christmas 1989).

=Console Accessories and Bundles=

The NES supported multiple accessories throughout its life, beginning with the Famicom BASIC computer, with was released alongside the Famicom data recorder/tape deck. Another accessory was a Family Computer Network System, which allowed users to access a server which provided downloadable content, cheat codes, jokes, on-going stock trades, the weather, and equine betting. The accessory and the server was not a commercial success, largely due to the fact that the concept of using a server for an Internet-like experience was still in its infancy. Other peripherals for the Famicom included a Stick controller which worked primarily the same as the NES Advantage controller and a pair of 3D glasses which received a lukewarm reception.

The NES received multiple accessories throughout its lifetime, beginning with the NES Zapper and R.O.B., which were both bundled alongside the system in October 1985. The NES Zapper functions as a light gun, which could play the NES titles

Hardware
The Nintendo Entertainment System supported 8-bit graphics, whereas most consoles of the second generation of video games only supported 1-bit or 4-bit graphics. The Nintendo Entertainment System also supported 2-player games, though Mother did not utilize this feature.

EarthBound games for the Nintendo Entertainment System

 * EarthBound Beginnings

Trivia

 * Ninten's name is an abbreviation of Nintendo and a nod to the Nintendo Entertainment System, much like how Ness's name is a reference to the Nintendo Entertainment System or the Super Nintendo Entertainment System.