NES

The Nintendo Entertainment System (often abbreviated as NES) is an 8-bit video game console that was designed, developed and manufactured by Japanese company, Nintendo. The NES is strongly associated with the revitalization of the US video game industry after the crash of the industry in 1983.

Nintendo used the NES to bring to life some of what are they most popular game series to date, these being Super Mario Bros, The Legend of Zelda and Metroid. It also so the birth of Capcom’s Mega Man franchise, Konami’s Castlevania franchise, Square’s(Now Square Enix) Final Fantasy franchise and Enix’s(Now Square Enix) Dragon Quest franchise. All of these franchises are still highly popular and still exist today.

While Nintendo’s NES brought to life some of the greatest game franchises it also gave console manufactures a new outlook in their relationship with third-party software developers by restricting developers from publishing software without licensed approval from the manufacturer. This led to the consoles having much more high quality software titles, and in turn better public outlook on the console.

While the console is no longer being manufactured, the console has been emulated to the point where almost all hardware functionality has been replicated on the computer, with some emulators such as Nestopia providing cycle accurate emulation of the original hardware, meaning what is shown on screen should be exactly what the original console would of produced.