NES

"Now you're playing with power."

The legendary console that revived a dead industry, the Nintendo Entertainment System was the uncontested winner of its generation, and to this day its name is shorthand for game console.

Even though its main competitor, Sega's Master System, had better specs, Nintendo was much more aggressive at courting third-parties, which gave the NES an unbeatable game library. Also, the introduction of memory mappers (chips built in the cartridges) let games get past the limits of the original hardware. Of course, if you lived in Europe, feel free to remember things a bit differently: it didn't get as much traction there, trailing behind not only the Master System but a variety of home computers like the Commodore 64 and ZX Spectrum.

The NES List
For better organization, Japan-only titles are listed in a separate page.

Variants
The Famicom had a traditional game console styling, with a cartridge slot on top. But American retailers were still traumatized by the crash of '83. So sneaky Nintendo gave the US/EU version a front-loading design, to make it resemble a VCR, and bundled the console with a toy robot to cover up the fact that their video game console was, in fact, a video game console. Annoyingly, the new design can cause a serious problem: the connector pins wear out through repeated usage (see here). When that happens, the 10NES lockout chip also can't function properly, causing the blinking red power light effect, in which the system appears to turn itself on and off repeatedly.

A top-loading model came out later, the New-Style NES. It eliminated the 10NES, making it possible to play PAL games on US consoles (although some games will glitch or not play at all), and came with a more comfortable controller. However, it had only RF output, no AV or RGB. It also displays faint vertical "jailbar" lines across the screen, which is annoying. You can find repairs online, and even replace the NES's PPU module with mods for RGB/HDMI output (see here).

Clones and mini consoles
There were hundreds of models of "famiclones" sold all over the world, especially in countries where Nintendo didn't have a presence and patent laws were hardly enforced. They often came with a multi-game bootleg cartridge. Some were compatible with Japanese games, some with Western games, and some had the slots for both. There were handheld models, even. Their quality varies wildly.

Nintendo released their own mini-console, the NES Classic Edition, in 2016. It has 30 included titles, running under emulation. It's a decent device, but it has some shortcomings: subtle emulation imperfections, short controller cables, a limited selection of titles, and the fact that scalpers quickly gobbled up the limited supply and made prices skyrocket. See a more indepth analysis here.

More recently, FPGA-based NES clones were introduced, and they have the huge advantage of being designed for modern screens. Most notable are the retroUSB's AVS and Analogue's Nt mini. While the Nt mini is more premium than the AVS, it makes up for it by have more output options (HDMI, RGB, Component, S-Video, and Composite), light gun support, and the ability to jailbreak the system to play more than just NES games via SD card.

If you'd rather just play ROMs and not use actual cartridges, there are many more devices that can emulate the NES (such as the PC or smartphone you're using to read this right now).

Flashcarts
If you want to play on the actual hardware, but not with the actual cartridges, you can't go wrong with Krikzz's EverDrives. They load ROMs from a microSD and have very high compatibility. There's also retroUSB's NES PowerPak, but it's discontinued and compatibility is not as good.

ROM hacks
Lots of hacks and fan translations can be found at Romhacking.net.

Videos
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