NES (Page 2)
The family that games together on a giant controller…probably gets in lots of fights when someone is late to press jump.
As we head towards the end of the year, video game publishers are pulling out their big guns. But what if the modern gaming world leaves you feeling cold? Maybe you’re burned out on multiplayer first-person shooters, and open-world game sandboxes hold as much appeal to you as the pet poop-concealing one in your neighborhood park.
In that case, you’ll be happy to know that this December, Nintendo’s 8-bit Famicom, the Japanese version of the NES, is getting its first commercial cartridge release in more than two decades.
What’s the first Final Fantasy game you played? I came somewhat late to the party, and my first experience of Final Fantasy was Final Fantasy VIII. After a childhood spent playing Sonic, suddenly finding myself in a semi-realistic world with massive potential for exploration really blew my tiny mind back then. In VIII, the headmaster of the military academy is a middle-aged, bespectacled dude with a paunch called Cid. But as Final Fantasy fans know, Cid is actually a character who appears in different forms in (pretty much) all of the Final Fantasy games. The dude’s been regenerated more times than the Doctor in Doctor Who! So we decided to take a look back at all of the Cids in chronological order to see how he’s changed over the years.
Although millions of people have fond memories of playing games on Nintendo’s original Famicom (known internationally as the NES), not too many people spend much time actually playing with the system anymore. After all, portable gaming devices like Nintendo’s own 3DS and even smartphones now boast more powerful hardware specs than the classic 8-bit console, and have just as large a library of legitimately fun games as well as the capability to play old-school titles as software downloads.
Of course, the flipside to having so many great portable games to play or, in the case of smartphones, extremely important websites to visit, is that your mobile devices are going to be running out of juice before long. Now, though, there’s a way to give your new tech a recharge and your old tech a shout-out simultaneously, with this battery pack/card reader that’s styled after the Famicom’s Player One controller.
If you grew up playing video games, you’ll understand something that modern day kids with their newfangled graphics and gameplay streaming antics don’t get – the power of nostalgia! Nostalgia is what makes us dig up landfills full of buried cartridges, and waste hours of our lives watching old videos of NES start-up screens. It’s why we still want to play the classics, so we can remember the good times, when being able to navigate an entirely different world through your TV screen still seemed like magic. It’s no wonder that rare old retro games can still sell for a pretty penny, although most often they’re snapped up by collectors who want them for their rarity rather than to add lovingly to their own game collection. Because, while nostalgia can be a powerful emotion, we mere mortals couldn’t even contemplate dropping around $10k on a mere video game. Yet that’s exactly what the owner of a rare, factory sealed copy of NES game Stadium Events can (at the time of this writing) expect to bring in from the eBay auction that’s currently in progress.
So just what is Stadium Events and why is it worth so much darn moolah, anyway?
I’m going to go out on a limb here and guess that a lot of our readers have fond memories of the glory days of the Nintendo Entertainment System. As nostalgic as the iconic piece of 8-bit hardware is for North American and European gamers, though, it’s even more so for Japanese fans, who got the equivalent Famicom years before the NES launched overseas.
Japanese humor website CuRAZY recently stopped to take a look back at all the time they spent with a tiny red controller in hand during their formative years, putting together this video of 13 Famicom experiences pretty much every Japanese gamer had.
If there’s one thing that makes video gaming even more fun than it already is, it’s appropriate snack food. And while we’d never normally suggest that chocolate and controllers could possibly be a good combination (seriously, greasy controllers are a big no-no), we can safely say that you won’t find a more appropriate gaming fuel accompaniment than a plate of tiny, edible classic controllers.
For most children of the 80s, video games mean the Nintendo Entertainment System, or Famicom in Japan. Even if you didn’t have one in your home, you surely had a friend with one of those enchanting boxes. Ah, the thrills of 8-bit action, midi music, and blowing frantically on cartridges!
Though many parents might have written the devices off as mere toys, there’s an undeniable shared experience that the NES provided for children in many countries around the world. But have you ever wondered how your experiences with the system compared to those of kids in Japan, the console’s home? Well, wonder no more!
The Nintendo Family Computer, which quickly came to be known by the abbreviation-loving Japanese simply as the Famicom, was launched in its native land in 1983, a time when the world was still in black-and-white and people travelled to work by horse-drawn cart. It was a grim, unforgiving time, but games like Donkey Kong and Popeye made life that bit brighter, and before long people even had electricity and TV sets to connect their new consoles to instead of just staring at the back of the games’ boxes.
Today, on this space-age date of July 15, 2014, the Famicom turns 31 years old, so we felt it would be a good time to think about just how much we owe this little bundle of plastic and circuitry.
It’s 1987. You’re looking awesome in your oversized Michael Jackson “Bad” t-shirt as you slot a chunky, grey game cartridge into your NES console. But instead of the Super Mario Bros./Duck Hunt title screen, all you see is a jumbled-up mess of an image that looks like an 8-bit Picasso. What do you do? The same thing everyone did – you take the game cartridge out, blow into it, and put it back in. Lo, and behold: this time the game loads perfectly and you can squish goombas or shoot ducks to your heart’s content.
But in the pre-internet age, how did we all “know” to blow into cartridges? And like rubbing the magnetic strip on a credit card or shaking a Polaroid photo, why did we keep doing it even when product manufacturers and scientists insisted that it didn’t work and could actually cause damage? Joe Hanson, biologist and author of the popular science blog It’s Okay To Be Smart, offers up some answers in a neat YouTube video asking just that.
The nostalgia of a classic Nintendo Entertainment system is like nothing else.
I remember when I first got a Nintendo. I didn’t get the bundle with the gun, so no “Duck Hunt” for me, but that didn’t stop me from playing “Super Mario Bros.” for hours with my friends. Then I’d go to their houses and play for hours more. It was the first real game system I had (before that I had a Commodore VIC-20 — don’t mind me as I date myself) in a long line of game systems that followed.
I think back on those games and that system fondly, but I never considered buying one today, or even one of the mods people have made, such as this one, called the Hyperkin Retro 5.
Usually it’s because the graphics on these systems is pretty weak compared with what we’re used to from systems like the Xbox 360, and especially newer systems like the PS4 and Xbox One.
Until now, that is.
In the wake of the exciting new video game systems hitting stores this season, our reliable Japanese friend Nintendo is taking us onboard the nostalgia express train with a Wii U game that puts a new spin on 16 well-known NES (or Famicom in Japan) games, like Super Mario Bros. and Excitebike. Besides turning these popular games into mini-game levels where players challenge their own high score, NES Remix changes these games up a bit with new challenges, like playing Donkey Kong in the dark or playing tennis against an invisible opponent.
Dear Santa,
I know it’s December 24, but is it too late to change my Christmas wish-list?
Let’s forget about the Power Rangers pyjamas I originally asked for, and we can put the Super Sonico hug pillow on hold this year. *This* is what I really want, and there’s only one of them in the whole world: a backlit Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles NES and four amazing controllers.
For those of us that find it hard to believe that the NES (called “Famicom” in Japan) turned 30 this year, Nintendo is putting out an album of 26 of the best theme songs from classic games like Super Mario Brothers, The Legend of Zelda and Metroid. The two-disc album comes out December 4, making it the perfect holiday gift for that person in your life that loves the simple 8-bit tunes of yesteryear.
Thirty years ago today, on July 15, 1983, Nintendo released the Family Computer game system, affectionately (and pretty much officially) called Famicom. The designing process began back in ’81 by Masaki Uemura and his team who dealt with tight budgets and little hope of success. However, this machine breathed much-needed life into a suffocatingly over-saturated gaming market that was only in its infancy.
Launched in 1983 in Japan, Nintendo’s Family Computer, or Famicom as it is more fondly known, quickly became a household name thanks to titles like Donkey Kong and Mario Bros. Strikingly different in design to its Western counterpart, the NES, the Famicom’s low profile with its multitude of buttons and ridges and docking slots for a pair of gold and burgundy controllers is now considered to be an iconic piece of video game hardware, frequently bought and sold at auction or at used game stores.
While many gamers would no doubt quite like the idea of picking a Famicom up for themselves and reliving a few 8-bit classics, we’re not entirely sure how many people would be in the market to buy 1,000 of the things all at once…
This year Nintendo and fans celebrate the 30th anniversary of the Family Computer (Famicom) game system originally released in 1983. It was the machine that revitalized home gaming worldwide with its later incarnation, the Nintendo Entertainment System (NES). In a story of shocking success, no one was more shocked perhaps than the system’s head developer, Masayuki Uemura who revealed the details of the Famicom’s rocky beginnings in an interview with Shupure News.
Yahoo! Auction in Japan has been used in creative ways before, but now we are seeing an auction that’s not even an auction at all.
The item in question is a set of 10 vintage 80s Nintendo games, but this auction isn’t about the item. It’s a contest that would require some keen detective work to solve. The person who can correctly identify the location where the games were photographed will get them all for free. To spice things up, the “seller” also put up some hints and further photos of the area. Think you can figure it out?
At 00:00 a.m. on March 1, 1997, a 14-year-old version of this writer- extremely lanky and awkwardly dressed- was standing outside a videogame store alongside his mother and a few slightly bedraggled-looking young men, clutching the pocket-money he’d saved for nearly 18 months, absolutely desperate to give it away.
This was undoubtedly the nerdiest moment of my life, and I’ve never since gone to a midnight launch of a videogame console, despite owning about a dozen since. But when I’d waited more than a year for the UK launch of the Nintendo 64, and, having convinced my infinitely-patient mother to drive me into town in the middle of the night, I was excited. Incredibly excited. Perhaps more excited than a night before Christmas with Santa, Willy Wonka and a dozen sugar-rushing puppies, even.
Back at home, opening my new console on my bedroom floor (it’s called “unboxing” now, and people post painfully long videos of it online…), I was hit by that curious smell of new electronics. But not just any old electronics smell; this was the smell of a new Nintendo 64. Clean, new, professional, yet somehow extremely welcoming…
Up until now, I had thought I was the only one who noticed these things- that videogame consoles, new mobile phones, whatever- had a distinct smell of their own, not just ‘electronics’.
But over at our Japanese site, Mamiya-san has written a great little article about his own experiences with much-loved games console the PC Engine (perhaps known to some as TurboGrafix-16), and, in particular, its own very special smell. Since the machine remains relatively unknown outside of its native Japan, I can’t help but share his experiences with our English-speaking readers. Read More
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