Nintendo Entertainment System From Birth to The Future

Super Nintendo Entertainment System – Successful Story.

Gaming is always a hot topic. For the gamer, gaming consoles are all times favorite gadgets. Before the era of Xbox, Sony PlayStation the most favorite gaming console for the gamers was Nintendo Entertainment System. It was an 8 Bit home video gaming entertainment console which was named Nintendo Entertainment System. In a short the commonly abbreviated as NES.

 

It was initially released in Japan which is mostly used for the Family Computer gaming console on 15^th July 1983. The later released on Nintendo Entertainment System in North America in the year of 1985, Europe in 1986 and Australia in 1987.

 

Later on, in South Korea, one of the world tops ranked company Hyundai released their gaming console named Comboy. This console was distributed globally by SK Hynix. It was known on that time as Hyundai Electronics. The console was succeeded by the Super Nintendo Entertainment System.

 

On that time being, Nintendo Entertainment System was one of the best-selling gaming consoles. This console was made an evaluation in the US video gaming console industry after the game crash happened in the US at the year of 1983. The Nintendo Entertainment System introduced a standard business model that was developed for the third-party developers. So, at that time being, it was the biggest blast to the businessman to make an investment to produce and distribute titles for Nintendo platform.

 

 

History, Development & Released:

In the year of 1980, the arcade game was in a successful stage. After seeing this, Nintendo made some plans which can make some changes in the gaming history. So, the company decided to plan to create a cartridge based console video gaming system. At that time, it was called the Famicom. It was the short version of Family Computer. A Japanese engineer named Masayuki Uemura designed the Femicom system.

For that time being, the original plan was to build a 16 Bit system machine, that would be more advanced than any other gaming devices on that time period. This 16 Bit system was the full-fledged computer which includes a keyboard and floppy disk drive.

 

But for the low cost and budget the president of Nintendo named Hiroshi Yamauchi rejected this plan and made a plan for which become a more conventional cartridge based gaming console on that time era.

 

For the fulfillment of the next proposed plan, a test model was constructed by the company in October 1983 to verify the entire hardware system of that console and other working programming tools. On that time, 65xx CPUs had not been manufactured or sold Japan, so the beginning test for the system machine was necessary steps or precision for the company.

 

After developing and verifying the hardware system of the Nintendo Entertainment System, the company started working on the development of the gaming system of Famicom. The company started to written games on an NEC PC 8001 computer and LEDs on a grid system methods. But that time it was difficult to the digitizer to design graphics as on software design tools. The project was named as GameCom at that time.

 

The actual plans for the Famicom’s cartridges to be the size of a cassette tape. But at the end, it was come with twice big from the proposed one. The company made some careful design attention that is paid for the cartridges so that it can be ignored the loose and faulty connections that were often happened in the arcade machines. So, the company made some necessary connections that were lined up with 60 connection lines for the memory system and extended it a little bit. So, the company produced their own connectors via third party supplier rather than in-house connection system.

 

Game pad controllers on that time were most popular things. It was firstly introduced in the market by the Game & Watch machines. Here Nintendo Entertainment System directly copied this thing from the Game & Watch machines.

 

Beside all of these, there also added an unnecessary cartridge slot on the Nintendo Entertainment System to make some entertainment for the child by pressing it. A microphone was also added as a second controller in the console. As well as a TV speaker idea also proposed at that time being to make players voices.

 

Hardware:

The Nintendo Entertainment System/Femicom hardware consists the following configuration at that time.

RAM & Processor:

The onboard RAM of NES/Femicom was 2 kilobytes along with a custom second source that came up with the MOS Technology 6502 based processor the Ricoh 2A03 in NTSC system and 2A07 in the PAL system. This processor also had a built-in sound system.

 

Sound System:

The Ricoh 2A03/2A07 processor consists of 5 channels of sound system with the combination of 1 triangle channel and 2 square wave channels. Besides, there are also 1 noise channel and 1 DPCM channel on it. This helps, the system can play some samples from the memory.

 

The Ricoh system mostly same with the regular 6502 but it is a little bit different. In Nintendo Entertainment System, the decimal mode from the binary code configuration was removed.

 

Video & Graphics:

The video generator hardware of the Nintendo Entertainment System was maintained by the Ricoh 2C02 in NTSC system and Ricoh 2C07 in PAL system. The total system uses the hardware of PPU (Picture Processing Unit). So, the pictures and graphics in Nintendo can generate the sprites and background images onscreen.

 

Additional Mappers:

There some additional mappers which can increase the graphical capabilities that can extend the RAM and even the better sound system qualities. Actually, the main mappers here are the MMC2, 3, 4 and Konami VRC6. This helps to add extra pulse wave for the channels so that, the other RAW PCM channel can maintain the wave pulse more smoothly.

 

The Konami VRC6 adds additional saw tooth wave channel with extra square waves where VRC7 adds FM Synthesis capabilities.

 

 

Accessories:

NES Controller:

NES controller is the basic brick shaped case controller that comes with the console. It has four buttons and a directional pad. Button A and Button B are stationed on the right along with Start Button. In the middle, there is a Select Button. This D-Pad was first time used on the Game & Watch in the place of bulky joysticks.

 

NES controller was various kind of versions. Each version had some change on it. NES Max and the NES Advantage were the most popular NES controller at that time. The addition feature of that button had a Slow Button and the Turbo Mode Button.

 

Later the company changed the shape of the controller. Its new shaped like Dog Bone instead of Brick shaped design. This new shape design is very similar to the Super Nintendo Entertainment System controller.

 

Power Glove:

The most amazing controller for the Nintendo Entertainment System was the Power Glove controller. It was a handheld controller system worked on hand movements. This controller also had the same featured as the NES main controller. But this controller didn’t business well. It was sold so poorly because it was criticized for being imprecise on that time period.

 

 

Games:

The most popular games of Nintendo Entertainment System were Super Mario Bros and Donkey Kong. Because under these two types of game, most the games released in the sequel.

 

All Night Nippon Super Mario Bros, Dr. Mario, I am a Teacher: Super Mario Sweater, Mario is missing etc. were the under the super Mario bros sequel whereas Donkey Kong Classics, Donkey Kong Junior, Donkey Kong Junior Math, Donkey Kong 3 etc. were under the Donkey Kong sequel.

 

Besides those games, there were others popular games were released for the Nintendo Entertainment Systems like Famicom Grand Prix, Pinball, Golf, Yoshi were also popular games on that time period.

 

 

Nintendo 3DS &Wii U:

In the present situation, the company releases their latest gaming consoles Nintendo 3DS and Wii U. The Nintendo 3DS was released in the year of 2011. This gaming console based on a glasses-free 3D display.

 

Later in the middle of the year of 2012 the company introduced another latest gaming console named Wii U. But this time, it cannot struggle in the gaming console market place. So, the selling rate of this device was the little bit slower. So, the company decided to introduce cheaper gaming console in the year of 2013. They named it Nintendo 2DS. In this version, they removed the 3D graphical systems so the cost of the production reduced. Though this version of the console of lacking 3D graphical system but they introduced the cosmetic autostereoscopic 3D feature on this version. Besides this, the company also released the mini version of Wii.

 

In July 2016, the company introduced the new version of Nintendo Entertainment System. They called it the NES Classic Edition. It is a plug and plays the console that supports HDMI and also two player modes. It has also a controller system that was very firstly released on the original NES controller system.

 

But here it is more different functionality than the first one. This controller can connect via Wii Remote system. So, this controller also used as the virtual console. In the latest version of NES Classic Edition, there are more than 30 games are being pre-installed which includes most popular games like Final Fantasy, Kid Icarus, The Legend of Zelda, Dr. Mario etc.

 

Currently, the Nintendo Classic Edition Price starts from $70. This gaming console comes up with the controller and other accessories as well.