Console Review I: Nintendo / Family Computer

The year was 1983... Well within the second generation of video games, there were console and game makers seeking dominance, and at the time, there was no bigger a name than Atari. But by trying to be a monopoly of sorts, Atari was releasing games without paying royalties to the original makers and designers, leading them to desert Atari to start companies like Activision to make games for, but at the same time rival, Atari's consoles, the more notable at the time was the Atari 2600. You can ague that back then, Atari was trying to be like today's money-hungry conglomerate, Disney... only to eventually fall on its ass, and over time become nearly obsolete. As if it wasn't enough that their greed forced the rise of other companies, there were the surge of incomplete and unfinished titles, infamous among them were E.T.: the Extra-Terrestrial (a video game adaptation of the Steven Spielberg blockbuster), and their rushed by Christmas port of Pac-Man, a character and series explicitly tied to Namco Bandai. To worsen matters, their successor, the Atari 5200, as well as a failed 1200X Computer (aimed to succeed the Atari 800, yet didn't), essentially became the death nail for Atari in that era, even though the 2600 is still hailed to this day as an innovative masterpiece to gaming. As for Atari, you can say they were treated as Pewdiepie was for the Adpocalypse of YouTube, even though Atari was justifiably blamed for this mess, to compare to how unjust Pewdiepie was.

But my focus here is not on the failures of Atari or the vindication of that YouTube creator. For that, we turn the page to 1985, 2 years following the Video Game Crash of '83, The hiatus in video game has now expired, but at the cost of the USA seceding their dominance in the video game industry to Japan (sounds familiar?). You can say it was thanks to Nintendo that an industry long thought to be near extinction somehow remained strong.Even though Nintendo's name already came across with their handheld Game & Watch series of games, they, along with the already existing SEGA, were ready to ignite the third generation of home video game consoles, and (almost in succession) the Bit Wars. Though technically a rival to Sega's Mark III / Sega Master System (their second hardware), and successor to the Color TV-Game console that was essentially a plug-and-play Pong unit in the first generation of consoles, Nintendo fired things off with the Family Computer in Japan in 1985 the same year and day Sega unveiled their SG-1000 console, as if to make a preemptive strike against their rival. The rest of us on the other hand got a similar, yet separate beast: the Nintendo Entertainment System, or the NES for short. Rollout for these came stateside in October the same year, before the rest of North America and the PAL (EU) region got it in nearly a whole year after that,  and eventually worldwide the succeeding year from there. In presentation and functions, there were ways that painted them the same, yet also distinguished them from one another.

CASE 1:
Nintendo Entertainment System / NES

The Nintendo Entertainment System (NES)

This white/grey box called the Nintendo Entertainment System is an export that didn't have the perks it's native-born sibling, but it played similar, if not the same games the other saw, with some exceptions. Unlike the Famicom, the cartridge slots were augmented to the front as opposed to the top, likely to distance their USA release from association with the Video Game Crash of '83. There is a nickel slot inside the NES that revieves the inserted game pak and holds it in place. Players had to press it down prior to shutting the door in front in order to play the game. While the concept was neat, it was not without its flaws, as the nickel slot can be disoriented, with the springs wearing down after a fair amount of use. To add, the copper connector ports were prone to tarnishing over time as well, which prompted a top-loader model in 1993 that still somewhat differed from the Famicom, but to even the original NES as well. This model, called the NES-101, was made to counteract the design flaw the original had, making it akin to most consoles to which one can simply insert and remove a game pak, or cartridge, normally. However, it was also known to be used to bypass any lockout chips in order to play unofficial games, to which there were quite a few, one of which requiring another cartridge to be attached in order to play it, similar to the lock-on mechanic of Sonic and Knuckles on the Sega Genesis, except unofficial.

The NES-101 model

The games, at least those officially done by Nintendo, came in a boxy, rectangular form with a ridged strip on the left, with a cascade area to grip the game pak on top. They usually came in grey, and each game featuring the offical Nintendo seal of quality, though there were some exceptions, such as The Legend of Zelda, Zelda II: Link's Awakening, and the rare Nintendo World Championship (1990) coming in golden paks instead of the default grey. There were others, but there was always a design quirk with the cartridge that differed from the official pak, or didn't resemble it altogether, with none receiving the seal of quality, making them unlicensed games. In addition to those, there were accessories to expand gameplay experience, but often fail to deliver. Majority of these were later succeeded or redefined for another Nintendo platorm or reincarnated outside of Nintendo. Infamous among them were 2 accessories called the Nintendo Zapper and the Power Glove. While the Zapper was a light gun device that worked erratically, it was created for certain games like Duck Hunt and Hogan's Alley. Originally grey with an orange trigger, the colors were inverted after the passing of the Federal Toy Gun Law in 1988, prohibiting the Zapper to resemble the likeness and color scheme of established firearms, and the inverted color Zapper was released the following year. The Super Nintendo Entertainment System and Nintendo Wii had their Zapper successors in the form of the Super Scope and Wii Zapper, respectively... though in the case of the latter, Hasbro released their own blaster under the Nerf brand that did double duty as a single fire dart gun and third-party Wii Zapper, which was a bit more faithful to the NES original. The Power Glove, created by Mattel, was intended to be Nintendo's first attempt at motion controls. aimed at using hand motions to control an on screen character as opposed to a d-pad.

R.O.B., as a character in the Super Smash Bros. series

The principle was similar to the far more successful Nintendo Wii, but since the NES didn't have an inherent motion censor, extra equipment was required, and unless specifically made for it, one has to input game codes to tune it for every game. While it was licensed for the NES, Nintendo had no part in development, making this a third-party item that, outside of the Wii, saw no re-incarnation, but is referenced about a great deal present day. The last known accessory, yet surprisingly the least talked about, is the Robotic Operating Buddy, or R.O.B. Released by Nintendo in 1985, it was made to be a symbol to set the NES apart as more than just a video game system, yet failed at doing so. Not helping was the fact that only 2 games were released for the purpose of R.O.B. in mind: Stack-Up and Gyromite. It still remains a historical artifact in spite of his failure, and is currently digitized as a playable character in the Super Smash Brothers series of games, starting from Wii's Super Smash Bros. Brawl.

CASE 2:
Family Computer / Famicom

While we got the NES here, its Version 1, the Family Computer (or Famicom / FC), remained overseas in Japan, though as I said, even with cosmetic and catalog differences, it's essentially similar to what we got, just with extra quirks. While the NES had detachable gamepads, the Famicom's were hardwired and impossible to disconnect without breaking. As opposed to the greyish color scheme, Famicom opted for a more vibrant white/red combination. The controllers, which had a gold and red scheme, were even more unique. Controller 1 had the more traditional setup not unlike the original NES controller we are so familiar with, but the difference comes in with Controller 2. In addition to the hardwiring to the console itself, each controller had a specific function in mind.

FC Controllers 1 and 2

While it does work as your typical player 2 remote, notice the absence of the start and select buttons, and while you're at it, pay close attention to the area above where they would be. That is a microphone. Unless you were lucky enough to be bilingual in reading Japanese and somehow got your hands on this as an export, this is a feature we did not see until the rise of the VRU on the Nintendo 64, let alone integrated into the system, which did not happen until the Nintendo Wii (console) and the Nintendo DS (handheld). What's more, this came in handy on the Famicom's release of The Legend of Zelda, as per their instruction manual, the Pols Voice enemies can be defeated by sound, something that has carried true to all Japanese releases down to the Nintendo Switch Online release. Because the original NES had no such thing, and each digital release in the states/PAL regions being a port of the NES version (not Famicom's) of the game here, we never take advantage of that, with their weakness becoming arrows.

Comparison of the FC Controller 1 and NES Controller

Aside from those features, the controller itself seems slightly smaller in comparison to the NES controller, likely to conform to the docking capability of the Famicom unit. The cartridges are naturally shaped different as well. Nowadays, there seem to be ways around it, even with the NES Classic and Famicom Classic releases, but the internal tech of each made it incompatible with one another, without going into the difference in cartridge sizes. Naturally, this meant that unless you somehow emulated a rom, or just so happen to have a third-party retro game device and import the games themselves, there were exclusives that, unless you really dug deep on the net, or found some inkling of via other Nintendo media (like Super Smash Bros.), you'd have no way of knowing of how many titles you were missing out on. Such is the case for the Mother series of games, to which we know of Ness and Mother 2 (which we received here as Earthbound), but then we have the case of Lucas from Super Smash Bros., whose game, Mother 3 for the Game Boy Advance, never officially came to existence here, but a fan translation does exist. Though to be more to the point, the original Mother for the Famicom, is one of the many titles we did not see, along with a fair number of Fire Emblem titles until following the Super Smash Bros. Melee inclusion of Marth and Roy, to which western popularity would spark following the release of Fire Emblem (which was actually Fire Emblem, Rekka no Ken/The Blazing Blade, a prequel to Roy's game), with the protagonist of the very first game, Marth, being seen in the west via a remake of the original a while afterwards.

Even R.O.B. had a different palette due to the platform it was associated with, and such is reflected in the region or settings of Super Smash Bros. Ultimate after changing the language.  It essentially ad similar accessories, though the FC equivalent to the NES Zapper resembled a revolver, but it had a few things that stood out from the American counter part. One of which was a disk system that was in a way similar to, and succeeded by (despite it's shortlived span) the Nintendo 64DD add-on.  But as with the N64DD, the Disk System expired after just 2 years. Speaking of expiration, the NES lasted a good decade before North America and Europe saw no support for it anymore.

NES Classic

By this time, people moved on to the next level in the Bit Wars with the succeeding 16-bit Super Nintendo Entertainment System, along with the release of the original Game Boy. In Japan, however, the Famicom held on until 2003 before it retired. In addition to the Super Family Computer, Game Boy, and the Pocket and Light versions, it somehow persevered alongside the N64, Game Boy Color, and the Nintendo GameCube before calling it quits. The lifespan of the Famicom is slightly over that of the original Game Boy. To this day, be it the Famicom or the NES, there are many ways to remember it by. Though difficult to come by, Nintendo released in their respective regions miniature versions of the NES and Famicom consoles that, while lacking in physical cartridge support, as well as using controllers that pay respects to, yet aren't the original, seems to tailor their games to run as well as on the actual hardware itself... an official emulation box, of sorts. Most current generation devices has a design motif or color scheme that serves as a nod to the NES/FC. To be more close to current day, there even exist NES and Famicon controllers designed for use on, and can connect to physically, the Nintendo Switch console, designed to work for the Nintendo Switch Online service, that upon pauing a monthly fee, gives you access to a growing library of NES titles to play, similar in aspect to the NES Classic Edition. There exist even editions and casings with this scheme for the Switch and 3DS family, though finding it will be difficult as these were limited in availability.

The NES and Famicom were footnotes in the game industry, and while there are little to distinguish between the current Nintendo wares now, the third gen titan will always be remembered as a diamond of the past. And as long as emulation and the Switch Online service exist... I don't see the love of 8-bit goodness ever dying quite yet.