Nintendo Entertainment System (NES)

The console that restarted the home market

The Famicom went on sale in Japan in July 1983. Two years later the same machine arrived in North America as the Nintendo Entertainment System: grey, front-loading, and deliberately sold as a toy rather than as a games console, because the American home market had collapsed in 1983 and shops did not want another one. One of the launch bundles even shipped with a robot accessory and a light gun. Nintendo also decided what got published — it manufactured the cartridges itself and put a seal on the box of every licensed game.

The cartridge is why the machine still feels the way it does. There is no loading: you press Start and the game is already running. And because a cartridge was hardware, publishers could put extra chips inside it, which is why a 1990 release scrolls further, holds more levels and animates more than anything the console could manage in 1985.

What to play first

Mega Man 2 is the usual first stop: you choose the order of the stages, and every boss you beat hands you the weapon that makes another one easier. Castlevania is stricter — your jump cannot be steered once you leave the ground, so every leap is a decision you commit to. Contra is the two-player run-and-gun everyone remembers, and the code entered at the title screen (up, up, down, down, left, right, left, right, B, A) still gives you thirty lives.

For something lighter, Excitebike lasts a few minutes and lets you lay out your own track, and River City Ransom is a brawler where the money you knock out of people goes on food and permanent stat upgrades.

Why these games are so hard

Ninja Gaiden and Battletoads have a reputation and they earn it, but the difficulty was not spite. Cartridge memory was small and most games could not save, so length had to come from repetition: you were meant to lose, learn the pattern and start over, the way an arcade game worked. Double Dragon and Punch-Out!! are built on the same idea — Punch-Out!! in particular is a memory test, where every opponent has a tell you either read or you don’t.

That game is in the catalogue twice, and the reason is worth knowing: Mike Tyson’s Punch-Out!! is the 1987 release, and the plain Punch-Out!! is the later one, published after the licence lapsed and the final opponent was replaced.

Two buttons and a cross

The whole console is a direction pad, A, B, Start and Select, which is why these games are easy to pick up and hard to put down. Everything is playable on the keyboard by default, and the controls table on each game page shows the exact mapping. Any USB or Bluetooth gamepad is detected as soon as you press a button on it.

Progress is kept in your browser, so a run you started today is still there tomorrow on the same device — which is how most people finish games that shipped without a save.