History of video games/Platforms/Nintendo Entertainment System

Famicom Development
The Famicom, and by extension the Nintendo Entertainment System, was proceeded by the Color TV-Game Series. Development was lead by noted engineer Masayuki Uemura, who was asked to develop a new more competitive and advanced home gaming system by Nintendo President Hiroshi Yamauchi during a phone call to the Uemura house. This was part of a larger strategy in which Hiroshi Yamauchi decided to reinvest profits from the Color TV Game and Game and watch systems into further game products.

Plans for the system originally called for a 16-bit CPU but a more economical 8-bit CPU was chosen. Nintendo was able to further optimize the cost of the CPU by placing a very large bulk order with Ricoh, who had an underutilized factory at the time. This technical choice had an additional unexpected effect of attracting developer Satoru Iwata to the system, who would later become a key developer at Nintendo, and later serve as its president.

NES Development


In 1983 Nintendo approached Atari about releasing their console in the USA, and agreed on it until a misunderstanding at CES 1983 sunk the deal.

Designer Lance Barr was charged with refining the design of the NES to make it appealing to American audiences while keeping costs low, ultimately creating an iconic design.

Nintendo would attempt to make an user avatar system for the console, but this would ultimately be scrapped and shelved until the release of Miis on the Nintendo Wii decades later.

Launch
"Now you're Playing with Power!"

The Family Computer (Famicom) was released in Japan on July 15, 1983 at a cost of 14,800 yen. Nintendo later released the similar Nintendo Entertainment System (NES) to international markets. The NES saw its American release in 1985, and European release in 1986. In the United States the NES was a dominant player in the market, and was so popular that it began to alter how people discussed gaming, with many people using the word "Nintendo" to describe video games in general for a time, even those not made by Nintendo. Fearing the word "Nintendo" might become a generic trademark, Nintendo promoted the word "Game Console" instead.

Internationally the NES received significant challenges from the Sega Master System particularly in South America and Europe.

1983 also saw the launch of the Sharp Game Television (Also known as the Sharp Nintendo Television or as the Sharp C1 NES TV) which integrated a Famicom with a 19 inch TV costing 145,000 yen or a 14 inch TV that cost 93,000 yen.

Seal of Quality
To avoid negative associations with video game consoles following the video game crash of 1983, Nintendo used careful wording in its marketing to brand the NES as an "Entertainment" system, rather then a game console. To avoid a repeat of the poor quality games that caused the crash, Nintendo required licensed developers to limit game releases to two a year, as well as to censor overt depictions of gore and other sensitive subjects. These policies were a cause of friction between some developers and Nintendo.

Later on in the system life, an Atari subsidiary would break the lockout protection used to enforce Nintendo's licensing, though this resulted in legal challenges. This inspired other companies to make their own bypass, though methods that used a charge pump or negative voltage spike could damage the system.

Smash hit
The NES had a limited United States of America launch in New York City and Los Angeles October 15th, 1985, with a nationwide release a year later. These first markets were picked to see if the NES could survive in difficult markets, and retailers were persuaded to carry the system by only needing to pay for systems sold, with unsold stock being fully returnable. The 1989 television show Captain N was used to promote Nintendo products.

The Famicom Tiler was jointly launched by Nintendo and Sharp in 1989 at a cost of 43,000 yen, and added video editing features and S-Video to improve screen captures for media outlets.

International Adoption
Some regions such as India saw officially licensed versions of the NES released under other names.

Other clones were unlicensed, like the Dendy console, made in Taiwan for the newly accessible Russian market where it was legal due to a lack of Intellectual property laws at the time. This later led to an official partnership between Dendy and Nintendo.

NES 101
In 1993 the NES 101, a cost reduced version of the NES was released, removing the composite output and lowering the price to $49.99.

Legacy
61.91 million NES and Famicom consoles were sold.

The Nintendo Entertainment System and the Famicom was succeeded by the Super Nintendo Entertainment System and the Super Famicom.

Nintendo stopped producing new NES units in 1995, new Famicom systems in 2003, and stopped repairing Famicom systems in 2007.

Compute
The NES CPU was a reduced feature version of the MOS 6502, a Rioch 2A03. The CPU was clocked at 1.789773Mhz in NTSC regions, and at 1.773447Mhz in PAL regions.

The NES had two kilobytes of RAM and two kilobytes of video RAM.

Graphics
The NES had a Rioch 2C02 Picture Processing Unit (PPU) for graphical output, supporting up to 52 colors and 64 sprites. The PPU was clocked at 5.37 megahertz. The PPU had 256 bytes of memory located directly on chip, which was known as Object Attribute Memory. The PPU had a number of limitations on what it could do simultaniously, notably limiting sprites to use only 3 colors at a time, with an additional transparency color. However, clever programmers and artists often found ways to lean into or even subvert these limitations through guile and wit. The PPU of the NES was quite capable for it's time, and gave the system a graphical edge over much of it's competition.

Audio
The Nintendo Entertainment System had 2 pulse wave channels, 1 triangle wave channel, 1 noise channel, and 1 DPCM channel. Games for the Famicom often featured much better audio then on the Nintendo Entertainment System, as the Famicom has additional pins for cartridge based sound chips. A number of different additional audio chips were used in Famicom cartridges.

NES Hands Free Controller
Nintendo of America developed a hands free controller for disabled gamers, among the earliest of it's kind. A chin mounted joystick and breath tube served as input. The controller was chest mounted and weighed 2.5 lb. A prototype was tested at the Children's Orthopedic Hospital in Seattle, Washington, near where Nintendo of America was headquartered.

1983

 * Donkey Kong Jr.

Mario Bros.
A recreation of the arcade game.

Read more about Mario Bros. on Wikipedia.

1984

 * Duck Hunt
 * Excitebike
 * Clu Clu Land

1985

 * Bomberman
 * Ice Climber

Super Mario Bros
First version of Mario as an adventure platformer.

From here on, designers Shigeru Miyamoto, Takashi Tezuka, developer Toshihiko Nakago and musician Koji Kondo would typically work together as a unit on future projects, to great success.

Read more about Super Mario Bros 1 on Wikipedia.

Wrecking Crew
An early Mario puzzle-platformer.

Read more about Wrecking Crew on Wikipedia.

1986

 * Dragon Quest - Popular RPG
 * Kid Icarus
 * Ghosts 'n Goblins

The Legend of Zelda
The Legend of Zelda is one of the most iconic Famicom and NES games, mainly because of the expansive multimedia franchise it started. Sigeru Miyamoto was inspired to make this game by his personal experience of exploring the countryside and caves as a child.

Metroid
Metroid is noted for being an early game with a female protagonist.

Read more about Metroid on Wikipedia.

1987

 * Zelda II: The Adventure of Link - 2D scroller adaptation of the Zelda format.
 * Mega Man - Known as Rockman in Japanese markets.
 * Rad Racer
 * Punch-Out!!
 * Nakayama Miho no Tokimeki High School

Final Fantasy
The first game in the popular RPG series.

The game was named Final Fantasy because the developers thought it would be their final game before Square went bankrupt.

Many elements of Final Fantasy appear to be inspired by Advanced Dungeons and Dragons.

Read more about Final Fantasy I on Wikipedia.

Metal Gear
Early popular stealth game.

The NES port of Metal Gear was made without the involvement of Hideo Kojima, who disliked the NES version.

Read more about Metal Gear on Wikipedia.

1988

 * Super Mario Bros. 2 - Remake of the Japanese game Doki Doki Panic.
 * Super Mario Bros. 3
 * Mega Man 2 - The best selling Mega Man game.
 * Contra
 * Ninja Gaiden

Famicom Detective Club The Missing Heir Volumes 1 and 2
An Japan only primeval visual novel that notably strayed from adventure game conventions to make a more story focused game.

Character Ayumi Tachibana would later be considered as a Super Smash Brothers Melee character.

Read more about the Famicom Detective Club series on Wikipedia.

1989

 * Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles
 * Mendel Palace / Quinty
 * A Boy and His Blob: Trouble on Blobolonia
 * Faria: A World of Mystery and Danger!

Mother
The first game in the Mother series.

A documentary was produced about an unreleased prototype english cartridge.

Read more about Mother on Wikipedia.

Tetris
Popular game from the Soviet Union, licensed to Nintendo for home consoles in the west.

In 2021 a new technique for the NES version of the game was discovered where pressure was applied to the back of the controller to allow for faster inputs, allowing world records to be broken.

Read more about Tetris on Wikipedia.

Famicom Detective Club The Girl Who Stands Behind Volumes 1 and 2
The second entry in the then Japan exclusive Famicom Detective Club series. Series director Yoshio Sakamoto was able to better work around system limitations to his satisfaction in this entry.

Read more about the Famicom Detective Club series on Wikipedia.

1990

 * Dr. Mario
 * Fire Emblem: Shadow Dragon and the Blade of Light
 * Mega Man 3

Final Fantasy III
Not to be confused with the North American Final Fantasy III for the SNES, which was Final Fantasy VI in other regions but had its name changed in North America to avoid skipping missed releases. This was done to avoid confusion at the time, though it caused some confusion later.

Final Fantasy III was the first Final Fantasy series game to break a million sales.

Read more about Final Fantasy III on Wikipedia.

1991

 * Yoshi
 * Metal Slader Glory

Kirby's Adventure
The second game in the Kirby series. It introduced a mechanic allowing the player to copy enemy abilities, becoming a series staple from there onward.

The game is considered by many to be make good use of the technical capabilities of the NES, having good graphics given the system limitations.

Read more about Kirby's Adventure on Wikipedia.

Trivia
A third party company, Power 10 Inc., made a early motion controller for the NES that used mercury switches called the Hot Stik.

External Resources

 * Video Game Console Library - Famicom/NES page.
 * Nintendo UK Blog - Post showing design documents for the original Legend of Zelda.