About NES. The Nintendo Entertainment System (abbreviated to

About NES.
The Nintendo Entertainment System (abbreviated to NES or Nintendo)
is an 8-bit video game console that was released by Nintendo in North
America, Europe and Australia in 1985. In most of Asia, including Japan
(where it was first launched in 1983), China, Vietnam, Singapore, Middle
East and Hong Kong, it was released as the Family Computer.
As the best-selling gaming console of its time,the NES helped revitalize the US video game industry following the video game crash of 1983,
and set the standard for subsequent consoles in everything from game
designf to controller layout. In addition, with the NES, Nintendo introduced a now-standard business model of software licensing for thirdparty developers.
The game controller used for both the NES and the Famicom featured
an oblong brick-like design with a simple four button layout: two round
buttons labeled “A” and “B”, a “START” button and a “SELECT” button.
Additionally, the controllers utilized the cross-shaped joypad, designed by
Nintendo employee Gunpei Yokoi for Nintendo Game & Watch systems, to
replace the bulkier joysticks on earlier gaming consoles’ controllers.
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 earliest produced Famicom units initially had square A and B buttons. This was changed to the
circular designs because of the square buttons being caught in the controller casing when pressed down and glitches within the hardware causing the system to freeze occasionally while playing a game.
History
Following a series of arcade game successes in the early 1980s,
Nintendo made plans to produce a cartridge-based console.
Masayuki Uemura designed the system, which was released in
Japan on July 15, 1983 for ¥14,800 alongside three ports of Nintendo’s successful arcade games Donkey Kong, Donkey Kong
Jr. and Popeye. The Family Computer (or Famicom) was slow to
gather momentum; a bad chip set caused the initial release of the
system to crash. 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 these successes, Nintendo soon turned its attention to the North American market. Nintendo entered into negotiations with Atari to release the Famicom under Atari’s name as
the name Nintendo Advanced Video Gaming System; however, this
deal eventually fell apart when Atari executives discovered that
Nintendo had released a port of Donkey Kong on the ColecoVision,
one of Atari’s competitors. Subsequent plans to market a Famicom console in North America featuring a keyboard, cassette data
recorder, wireless joystick controller and a special BASIC cartridge under the name “Nintendo Advanced Video System” likewise never materialized.
In June 1985, Nintendo unveiled its American version of the
Famicom at the Consumer Electronics Show. It rolled out its first
systems to limited American markets starting in New York City on
October 18, 1985, following up with a full-fledged North American
release of the console in February of the following year. Nintendo
simultaneously released seventeen launch titles for the New York
City test: 10-Yard Fight, Baseball, Clu Clu Land, Donkey Kong Jr.
Math, Duck Hunt, Excitebike, Golf, Gyromite, Hogan’s Alley, Ice
Climber, Kung Fu, Mach Rider, Pinball, Stack-Up, Tennis, Wild
Gunman and Wrecking Crew. Some varieties of these launch
games contained Famicom chips with an adapter so they would
play on North American consoles.
In Europe and Australia, the system was released to two separate
marketing regions. One region consisted of most of mainland Europe
(excluding Italy), and distribution there was handled by a number of
different companies, with Nintendo responsible for most cartridge
releases. Most of this region saw a 1986 release. Mattel handled
distribution for the other region, consisting of the United Kingdom,
Italy, Australia and New Zealand, starting the following year. Not
until the 1990s did Nintendo’s newly created European branch direct
distribution throughout Europe.[16] Despite the system’s lackluster
performance outside of Japan and North America, by 1990 the NES
had outsold all previously released consoles worldwide. The Nintendo
Entertainment System was not available in the Soviet Union.
As the 1990s dawned, however, renewed competition from technologically superior systems such as the 16-bit Sega Mega Drive\Genesis
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. However, even as developers ceased production for
the NES, a number of high-profile video game franchises and series
that started on the NES were transitioned to newer consoles and
remain popular to this day. Nintendo continued to support the system
in North America through the first half of the decade, even releasing
a new version of the system’s console, the NES-101 model (known
as the HVC-101 in Japan), to address many of the design flaws in
the original console hardware. The last game released in Japan was
Takahashi Meijin no Bōken Jima IV, while in North America, Wario’s
Woods was the last licensed game and Sunday Funday was the last
unlicensed game. In the wake of ever decreasing sales and the lack
of new software titles, Nintendo of America officially discontinued
the NES by 1995. Despite this, Nintendo of Japan kept producing new
Nintendo Famicom units until September 2003, and continued to
repair Famicom consoles until October 31, 2007, attributing the decision to discontinue support to an increasing shortage of the necessary parts.
Design & Hardware
When Nintendo released the NES in the United States, the design
styling was deliberately different from that of other game consoles.
Nintendo wanted to distinguish its 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 (ZIF) cartridge
socket designed to resemble the front-loading mechanism of a VCR.
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.[28] Exacerbating the problem was Nintendo’s
choice of materials; the slot connector that the cartridge was actually inserted into was highly prone to corrosion.[46]
The 10NES authentication chip contributed to the system’s reliability
problems. The circuit was ultimately removed from the remodeled
NES 2.
Problems with the 10NES lockout chip frequently resulted in the console’s most infamous problem: the blinking red power light, in which
the system appears to turn itself on and off repeatedly because
the 10NES would reset the console once per second. The lockout
chip required constant communication with the chip in the game to
work.[47] Dirty, aging and bent connectors would often disrupt the
communication, resulting in the blink effect.[28] Alternatively, the
console would turn on but only show a solid white, gray, or green
screen. Users attempted to solve this problem by blowing air onto the
cartridge connectors, licking the edge connector, slapping the side
of the system after inserting a cartridge, shifting the cartridge from
side to side after insertion, pushing the ZIF up and down repeatedly,
holding the ZIF down lower than it should have been and/or cleaning the
connectors with alcohol which, observing the back of the cartridge, was
not endorsed by Nintendo. Many of the most frequent attempts to fix this
problem instead ran the risk of damaging the cartridge and/or system. In
1989, Nintendo released an official NES Cleaning Kit to help users clean
malfunctioning cartridges and consoles.
With the release of the top-loading NES-101 (NES 2) toward the end of
the NES’s lifespan, Nintendo resolved the problems by switching to a
standard card edge connector and eliminating the lockout chip. 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.
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. In practice,
the authorization process consisted of nothing more than paying a fee to
Nintendo for the privilege. In a recent trend, many sites have sprung up
to offer Nintendo repair parts, guides and services, that replace those
formerly offered by the authorized repair centers.