Nintendo Entertainment System

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"NES" redirects here. For other uses, see NES (disambiguation).
The Nintendo Entertainment System (North America, Brazil, Europe, Asia, and Australia)
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The Nintendo Entertainment System (North America, Brazil, Europe, Asia, and Australia)

The Nintendo Entertainment System, or NES, is an 8-bit video game console released by Nintendo in North America, Brazil, Europe, Asia, and Australia. Its Japanese equivalent is known as the Nintendo Family Computer (任天堂ファミリーコンピュータ), or Famicom (ファミコン). The most successful gaming console of its time in Asia and North America, it helped revitalize the video game industry following the video game crash of 1983, and set the standard for subsequent consoles in everything from game design (the first modern platform game, Super Mario Bros., was the system's first "killer app") to business practices. The NES was the first console for which the manufacturer openly courted third-party developers.

Contents

History

The Nintendo Family Computer (Japan)
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The Nintendo Family Computer (Japan)
Main article: History of the Nintendo Entertainment System

Following a series of arcade game successes in the early 1980s, Nintendo made plans to produce its own console hardware that had removable cartridges, a feature not included with the company's earlier Color TV Games product. Designed by Masayuki Uemura and released in Japan on July 15, 1983, the Nintendo Family Computer (Famicom) was slow to gather momentum: during its first year, many criticized the system as unreliable, prone to programming errors and rampant freezing. Following a product recall and a reissue with a new motherboard, the Famicom's popularity soared, becoming the best-selling game console in Japan by the end of 1984. Encouraged by their successes, Nintendo soon turned their attentions to the North American markets.

In June 1985, Nintendo unveiled its American version of the Famicom at the Consumer Electronics Show (CES). With a completely redesigned case and a new name, the Nintendo Entertainment System (NES) proved to be just as popular in America as the Famicom was in Japan, and played a major role in revitalizing interest in the video game industry following the video game crash of 1983. Nintendo rolled out its first systems to limited American markets on October 18, 1985, following up with a nationwide release of the console in February of the following year.

Several months later, in June 1986, the Sega Master System (SMS) entered the US market. The SMS faced a very tough time in the US, due to Nintendo's virtual monopoly on US software developers. Without domestic software support, the SMS failed to make any impact in the US. However in Europe, where the SMS was released earlier than the NES, it was much more successful and gained some third-party support. When the NES was introduced there, it faced much harder competition. Though still successful, it was not able to take over the market as it had in Japan and in the US, and Nintendo's market share stayed behind Sega's. Late in the console's life, Nintendo even licensed popular SMS titles for the NES.

For the rest of the decade, Nintendo was the undisputed master of the US and Japanese gaming markets, and its game titles were breaking sales records. However, the console didn't receive the same level of success in the rest of the west largely due to the console not seriously being marketed until the early 1990s. This was exacerbated by Nintendo of Canada being poorly managed and Nintendo of Europe having difficulties dealing with the multiplicity of nations it sold to. This enabled competitor Sega to outperform the NES with its Sega Master System in many countries. However, with all things considered, by 1990, the NES had become the best-selling console in video game history.

As the 1990s dawned, however, renewed competition from technologically superior systems such as the 16-bit Sega Genesis (known as the Sega Mega Drive outside of the United States) marked the end of the NES's dominance. Eclipsed by Nintendo's own Super Nintendo Entertainment System (SNES), the NES's user base gradually waned. Nintendo continued to support the system in America through the first half of the decade, even releasing a new version of the console to address many of the design flaws in the original NES hardware. By 1995, though, in the wake of ever decreasing sales and the lack of new software titles, Nintendo of America officially discontinued the NES. Despite this, Nintendo of Japan kept producing new Nintendo Famicoms for a niche market up until October 2003, when Nintendo of Japan officially discontinued the line. This gave the NES an official lifespan of over a decade establishing it as one of the longest running game consoles, and admittedly the assembly line was only halted due to difficulty in obtaining the necessary electronic components.

In the years following the western official "death" of the NES, a collector's market based around video rental stores, garage sales and flea markets led some gamers to rediscover the NES. Coupled with the growth of console emulation, the late 1990s saw something of a second golden age for the NES. The secondhand market began to dry up after 2000, and finding ROMs no longer represented the challenge it had in the past. In the October 2005 issue of Electronic Gaming Monthly, a homage was given to the NES in order to celebrate its 20th birthday. Seanbaby, the editor of the "Game Over" segment of the magazine, where this article was featured, acknowledged how emulation allowed the younger generations of gamers to learn first-hand how the NES revived the video game market. Still, developments continue, and the NES, alongside the SNES, appears likely to live on in some form into the future.

Differences between the Famicom and the NES

Famicom controllers were simple in design
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Famicom controllers were simple in design

Although the Japanese Famicom and the international NES included essentially the same hardware, there were certain key differences between the two systems:

  • Different case design. The Famicom featured a top-loading cartridge slot, a 15-pin expansion port located on the unit's front panel for accessories (as the controllers were hard-wired to the back of the console), and a red and white color scheme. The NES featured a front-loading cartridge slot (often jokingly compared to a toaster), and a more subdued gray, black and red color scheme. An expansion port was found on the bottom of the unit (as cartridge-based add-ons were impossible with the layout of the cartridge slot), and the cartridge connector pinout was changed.
  • 60-pin vs. 72-pin cartridges. The original Famicom and the re-released AV Famicom both utilized a 60-pin cartridge design, which resulted in slightly smaller cartridges than the NES (and the NES 2), which utilized a 72-pin design. Four pins were used for the 10NES lockout chip. Ten pins were added that connected a cartridge directly to the expansion port on the bottom of the unit. Finally, two pins that allowed cartridges to provide their own sound expansion chips were removed, a regrettable decision. Many early games (such as StackUp) released in North America were simply Famicom cartridges attached to an adapter (such as the T89 Cartridge Converter) to allow them to fit inside the NES hardware. Nintendo did this to reduce costs and inventory by using the same cartridge boards in America and Japan.
  • Lockout circuitry. The Famicom contained no lockout hardware, and, as a result, unlicensed cartridges (both legitimate and bootleg) were extremely common throughout Japan and the Far East. The original NES (but not the top-loading NES) contained the 10NES lockout chip, which significantly increased the challenges faced by unlicensed developers.
  • Hardwired controllers. The Famicom's original design include hardwired, non-removable controllers. In addition, the second controller featured an internal microphone for use with certain games. Both the controllers and the microphone were subsequently dropped from the redesigned AV Famicom in favor of the two seven-pin controller ports on the front panel used in the NES from its inception.
  • Audio/video output. The original Famicom featured an RF modulator plug for audio/video output, while the original NES featured both an RF modulator and RCA composite output cables. The AV Famicom featured only RCA composite output, and the top-loading NES featured only RF modulator output.
  • Famicom Disk System (FDS). Although not included with the original system, a popular floppy disk drive peripheral was released for the Famicom in Japan only. Nintendo never released the Famicom Disk System outside of Japan, citing concerns about software bootlegging, but many FDS titles were subsequently ported to cartridge format for overseas release. Notable games released for the FDS include Doki Doki Panic (adapted for North American release as Super Mario Bros. 2), Konami's Castlevania series, Metroid, and the original Super Mario Bros. 2, which was eventually released overseas for the Super NES as The Lost Levels as part of Nintendo's Super Mario All-Stars collection.
  • Famicom Twin. Sharp manufactured (under license) a single unit that could play either disk or cartridge games, selected with a switch. It was available in a number of colors and used similar hardwired controllers to the original Famicom, but had a totally different casing design.
  • External sound chips. The Famicom had two cartridge pins that allowed cartridges to provide external sound enhancements. They were originally there for the Famicom Disk System's external sound chip. These pins were removed from the cartridge port of the NES, instead having them on the bottom expansion port, where the American disk system was planned to attach. This turned out to be a mistake, as it resulted in many games having inferior sound in the NES version compared to the Famicom version; Castlevania III: Dracula's Curse is the most notable such game.
  • Famicom BASIC was a BASIC version for the Famicom. With the addition of the Famicom Disk System and a keyboard it could actually be used as a computer. It also allowed you to program your own games. Many programmers got their first experience on programming for the console this way.
  • Famicom MODEM was a modem that allowed connection to a Nintendo server which provided content such as jokes, news (mainly about Nintendo), game tips, weather reports for Japan and allowed a small number of programs to be downloaded.

Game controllers

The game controller used for the both the NES and Famicom featured a brick-like design with a simple five-button layout: two round buttons labelled "B" and "A," a "Start" button, a "Select" button, and a cross-shaped D-pad which had been designed by Nintendo employee Gunpei Yokoi to replace the bulkier joysticks that most earlier gaming consoles had utilized.

The original model Famicom featured two game controllers, both of which were hardwired to the back of the console. The second controller lacked the "Start" and "Select" buttons, but featured a small microphone. Relatively few games made use of this feature. The NES dropped the hardwired controllers, instead featuring two custom 7-pin ports on the front of the console. Also in contrast to the Famicom, the controllers included with the NES were identical to each other - the second controller lacked the microphone that was present on the Famicom model, and possessed the same "Start" and "Select" buttons as the primary controller.

A number of special controllers designed for use with specific games were released for the system, though very few such devices proved particularly popular. Such devices included, but were not limited to, the NES Zapper (a light gun), the Power Pad, and the ill-fated R.O.B. and Power Glove. The original Famicom featured a DB-15 expansion port on the front of the unit, which was used to connect most auxiliary devices. On the NES, these special controllers were generally connected to one of the two control ports on the front of the unit.

Near the end of the NES's lifespan, upon the release of the AV Famicom and the top-loading NES, the design of the game controllers was modified slightly. Though the original button layout was retained, the redesigned device abandoned the "brick" shell in favor of a "dog bone" shape reminiscent of the controllers of the Super Nintendo Entertainment System. In addition, the AV Famicom joined its international counterpart and dropped the hardwired controllers in favor of detachable controller ports.

In recent years the original North American NES controller has become one of the most recognizable symbols of the system. Nintendo has mimicked the look of the controller in several recent products, from promotional merchandise to a limited edition version of the Game Boy Advance SP handheld game console. Nintendo's new Revolution console also has somewhat of a reference to the NES controller when turned sideways. The Revolution also allows players to download NES games, so this may explain the reasoning behind its design.

Hardware design flaws

When Nintendo released the NES in the United States, the design styling was deliberately different than that of other game consoles. Nintendo wanted to distinguish their product from those of competitors, and to avoid the generally poor reputation that game consoles had acquired following the video game crash of 1983. One result of this philosophy was a front-loading zero insertion force cartridge socket designed to resemble the front-loading mechanism of a VCR. Unfortunately, inadequate testing of this design prior to release resulted in one of the NES's most infamous problems: the blinking red power light. The ZIF connector worked quite well when both the connector and the cartridges were clean and the pins on the connector were new.

Unfortunately, the ZIF connector was not truly zero insertion force. When a user inserted the cartridge into the NES, the force of pressing the cartridge down and into place bent the contact pins slightly, as well as pressing the cartridge's ROM board back into the cartridge itself. Repeated insertion and removal of cartridges caused the pins to wear out relatively quickly, and the ZIF design proved far more prone to interference by dirt and dust than an industry-standard card edge connector. Exacerbating the problem was Nintendo's choice of materials; the slot connector that the cartridge was actually inserted into was made of a cheap alloy that was highly prone to corrosion.

Moreover, the 10NES lockout chip was quite finicky, requiring precise timing in order to permit the system to boot. Since both the NES console and the game cartridges were commonly handled by young children, contamination of the cartridge contacts was quite common, and the low error tolerance of the design often resulted in a cartridge's lockout chip failing to communicate properly with the console, causing the red power LED on the console to flash repeatedly and the boot process to halt. Often, this could be temporarily resolved by blowing on the cartridge to remove dust (but the moisture from the user's breath would often act like a cement for more refuse, or possibly corrode the cartridge's metal contacts, actually making the problem worse), but stubborn or badly contaminated games sometimes needed more extensive cleanings with isopropyl alcohol. (Nintendo sold an official cleaning kit for this purpose.) In many cases, the connector became too unreliable for use after several years of heavy play, thus resulting in the console being repaired or replaced. Even today, it is quite common to see "broken" NES consoles at yard sales or thrift stores that can be fixed by cleaning or replacing the damaged cartridge connector, and ensuring that it stays clean by cleaning games before insertions.

When Nintendo released a top-loading NES toward the end of the NES's lifespan, they fixed the problem by switching to a standard card edge connector, and eliminated the lockout chip. The design and the controllers were reminiscent of the more recent Super Nintendo. All of the Famicom systems used standard card edge connectors, as did Nintendo's subsequent game consoles, the Super Nintendo Entertainment System and the Nintendo 64.

The bending problem with the NES's design was also increased by the release of the popular Game Genie add-on; this add-on's purpose was to enable "cheat" or "patch" codes to various games. Attaching the Game Genie device to a NES cartridge meant that the front-loading mechanism would be bent while playing, and the Game Genie's retention mechanism (a triangular piece of plastic) made the device difficult to remove as well. Continual use of the Game Genie device could warp the loading mechanism's pins to such a degree that the NES would not function without a Game Genie present.

In response to these hardware flaws, "Nintendo Authorized Repair Centers" sprang up across the United States. According to Nintendo, the authorization program was designed to ensure that the machines were properly repaired. Nintendo would ship the necessary replacement parts only to shops that had enrolled in the authorization program, and in practice, the authorization process consisted of nothing more than paying a fee to Nintendo for the privilege.

Third-party licensing

This Nintendo Seal of Quality was placed on every officially licensed NES cartridge released in North America, with a similar design used in Europe
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This Nintendo Seal of Quality was placed on every officially licensed NES cartridge released in North America, with a similar design used in Europe

Nintendo's near monopoly on the home video game market left it with a degree of influence over the industry exceeding even that of Atari during its heyday in the early 1980s. Many of Nintendo's business practices during this period were heavily criticized, and may have played some role in the erosion of Nintendo's market share throughout the 1990s. Unlike Atari, who never actively courted third-party developers, and went so far as to go to court to attempt to force Activision to cease production of Atari 2600 games, Nintendo had anticipated and encouraged the involvement of third-party software developers — strictly on Nintendo's terms. To this end, a 10NES authentication chip was placed in every console, and in every officially licensed cartridge. If the console's chip could not detect a counterpart chip inside the cartridge, the game would not be loaded. Nintendo combined this with a marketing campaign introducing the Nintendo Seal of Quality. Commercials featured a purple-robed wizard instructing consumers that the Nintendo Seal of Quality was the only assurance that a game was any good — and, by implication, that any game without the Seal of Quality was bad. In reality, the seal only meant that the developer had paid the license fee; it had nothing to do with the quality of the game.

Some unlicensed games by Home Entertainment Suppliers Pty. Ltd. released in Australia used a dongle to circumvent the NES's lockout chip
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Some unlicensed games by Home Entertainment Suppliers Pty. Ltd. released in Australia used a dongle to circumvent the NES's lockout chip

The business side of this was that game developers were now forced to pay a license fee to Nintendo, to submit to Nintendo's quality assurance process, to buy developer kits from Nintendo, and to utilize Nintendo as the manufacturer for all cartridges and packaging. Nintendo tested and manufactured all games at its own facilities (either for part of the fee or for an additional cost), reserved the right to dictate pricing, censored material it believed to be unacceptable, decided how many cartridges of each game it would manufacture, and placed limits on how many titles it would permit a publisher to produce over a given time span (five per year). This last restriction led several publishers to establish or utilize subsidiaries to circumvent Nintendo's policies (examples including Konami's subsidiary Ultra, and Acclaim Entertainment's subsidiary LJN).

These practices were intended not only to keep developers on a short leash, but also to manipulate the market itself: in 1988 Nintendo started orchestrating intentional game shortages in order to increase consumer demand. Referred as "inventory management" by Nintendo of America public relations executive Peter Main, Nintendo would refuse to fill all retailer orders. Retailers, many of whom derived a large percentage of their profit from sales of Nintendo-based hardware and software (at one point, Toys "R" Us reported 17% of its sales and 22% of its profits were from Nintendo merchandise), could do little to stop these practices. In 1988, over 33 million NES cartridges were sold in the United States, but estimates suggest that the realistic demand was closer to 45 million. Because Nintendo controlled the production of all cartridges, they were able to enforce these rules on their third-party developers. These extremely restricted production runs would end up damaging several smaller software developers: even if demand for their games was high, they could only produce as much profit as Nintendo allowed.

Unlicensed games, such as Wisdom Tree's Bible Adventures, were often released in cartridges which looked very different from typical NES game packs
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Unlicensed games, such as Wisdom Tree's Bible Adventures, were often released in cartridges which looked very different from typical NES game packs

Several companies began producing unlicensed games, either refusing to pay the licensing fee or manufacturing their own cartridges after having been rejected by Nintendo. Most of these companies created circuits that used a voltage spike to knock out the authentication unit in the NES. Atari created a line of NES products under the name Tengen, and took a different tack: the company obtained a description of the lockout chip from the United States Patent and Trademark Office by falsely claiming that it was required to defend against present infringement claims in a legal case. Tengen then used these documents to design their Rabbit chip, which duplicated the function of the 10NES. Nintendo sued Tengen for these actions, and Tengen lost because of the fraudulent use of the published patent. Tengen's antitrust claims against Nintendo were never finally decided.

A few unlicensed games released in Europe and Australia came in the form of a dongle that would be connected to a licensed game, in order to use the licensed game's 10NES lockout chip for authentication.

Although Nintendo's success at suing such companies was mixed (the case of Lewis Galoob Toys, Inc. v. Nintendo of America, Inc. was found in favor of Galoob and their Game Genie device, for instance), most were eventually forced out of business or out of production by legal fees and court costs for extended lawsuits brought by the giant against the transgressors. One notable exception was Color Dreams, who produced religious-themed games under the subsidiary name Wisdom Tree. This operation was never sued by Nintendo, who feared a public relations backlash.

Following the introduction of Sega's successful Genesis, Nintendo began to face real competition in the industry, and in the early 1990s was forced to reevaluate its stance towards its developers, many of whom had begun to defect to other systems. When the console was reissued as the NES 2, the 10NES chip was omitted from the console, marking the end of Nintendo's most notorious hold over its third-party developers.

Companies that produced unlicensed games or accessories for the western market include:

Hardware clones

The PolyStation, an unlicensed hardware clone of the NES, is designed to resemble the Sony PlayStation
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The PolyStation, an unlicensed hardware clone of the NES, is designed to resemble the Sony PlayStation
Main article: Nintendo Entertainment System hardware clone

A thriving market of unlicensed NES hardware clones emerged during the heyday of the console's popularity, and has continued to exist, and even flourish, following Nintendo's discontinuation of the NES itself. Such clones continue to be sold even now in 2005! But as the NES fades into memory, these systems have tended to adopt case designs which mimic the most popular gaming consoles of their time. NES clones resembling the Sega Megadrive, the SNES, and even current systems like the Nintendo GameCube, the Sony PlayStation 2 and the Microsoft Xbox have been produced. Some of the more exotic of these systems have gone beyond the functionality of the original hardware, and have included variations such as a portable system with a color LCD (e.g. Pocket Famicom). Others have been produced with certain specialized markets in mind, including various "educational computer packages" which include copies of some of the NES's educational titles and come complete with a clone of the Famicom BASIC keyboard, transforming the system into a rather primitive personal computer.

As was the case with unlicensed software titles, Nintendo has typically gone to the courts to prohibit the manufacture and sale of unlicensed cloned hardware. Many of the clone vendors have included built-in copies of licensed Nintendo software, which constitutes copyright infringement in most countries. As recently as 2004, Nintendo of America has filed suit against manufacturers of the Power Player Super Joy III, an NES clone system that had been sold in North America, Europe, and Australia.

As of October 2005, Messiah Entertainment released a new NES clone, the Generation NEX (FAQ here). It has redesigned connectors for games to eliminate the original connector flaw; the unit will work with original accessories; here is a game compatibility chart.

Screenshots

Technical specifications

  • CPU: Ricoh 8-bit processor based on MOS Technology 6502 core, with four tone generators (2 square, 1 triangle, 1 noise), a DAC, and a restricted DMA controller on-die
  • PPU: Ricoh custom-made video processor
    • Region differences
    • Palette: 48 colors and 5 grays in base palette; red, green, and blue can be individually darkened at specific screen regions using carefully timed code.
    • Mid-frame palette swapping combined with the intensity bits in $2001 can create 256 colors palette.
    • Onscreen colors: 52 colors on one scanline (background color + 4 sets of 3 tile colors + 4 sets of 3 sprite colors), not including color de-emphasis
    • Hardware-supported sprites
      • Maximum onscreen sprites: 64 (without reloading sprites mid-screen)
      • Sprite sizes: 8x8 or 8x16 pixels (selected globally for all sprites)
      • Maximum number of sprites on one scanline: 8, using a flag to indicate when additional sprites are dropped (to allow the software to rotate sprites, causing flicker)
    • Video memory: PPU has 2 KB ondie of tile/attribute RAM, and contains 256 bytes of sprite position/attribute RAM ("OAM") and 28 bytes of palette RAM (allowing for selection of background and sprite colors); 8 KB of tile pattern ROM/RAM on cartridge (with bankswitching, virtually any amount can be used)
    • Scrolling layers: 1 layer, though horizontal scrolling can be changed on a per-scanline basis (as can vertical scrolling via more advanced programming methods)
    • Resolution: 256x240 pixels, though NTSC games usually used only 256x224, as the top and bottom 8 scanlines are not visible on most TV sets; for additional video memory bandwidth, it was possible to turn off the screen before the raster reached the very bottom.
    • Sound : 20a03 has custom soundchip ondie
      • four programmable wave synthetis, 3 notes of polyphony
        • 2 square waves
        • 1 triangle wave
        • 1 noise
        • 1 PCM
    • Video output
      • Original NES: RCA composite output and RF modulator output
      • Original Famicom (Japan) and NES 2: RF modulator output only
      • AV Famicom: Composite video output only, via a nonstandard 12-pin connector

See also

Major video game consoles
The first home video games
Magnavox Odyssey | Coleco Telstar | Pong
Pre-crash 8-bit systems
Atari 2600 | Magnavox Odyssey² | SG-1000 | Intellivision | Colecovision | 5200
8-bit era
NES | Master System | 7800
16-bit era
SNES | Mega Drive/Genesis | TG16 | Jaguar
32-bit / 64-bit era
Nintendo 64 | PlayStation | Saturn
Sixth generation era
Dreamcast | GameCube | PS2 | Xbox
Seventh generation era
PlayStation 3 | Revolution | Xbox 360
Wikibooks
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References

External links


Nintendo Hardware
Consoles
Color TV Game | NES/Famicom | NES 2 | AV Famicom | SNES/Super Famicom | Virtual Boy | Nintendo 64 | GameCube | Panasonic Q | iQue | Revolution (forthcoming)
Handheld
Game & Watch | Game Boy | Game Boy Color | Game Boy Advance | Game Boy Advance SP | Nintendo DS | Game Boy Micro
NES Accessories
Advantage | Cleaning Kit | Four Score | Max | Power Glove | Power Pad | R.O.B. | Satellite | Zapper
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