NES

"Now you're playing with power."

The NES
The legendary console that revived a dead industry, the Nintendo Entertainment System launched shortly after the video game crash of '83 and became the uncontested winner of its generation. Even though its main competitor, Sega's Master System, had better specs, the NES had a much wider game library, thanks to colossal third party support. 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.

On November 2016, Nintendo released the NES Classic Edition. However the damn thing sold out very quickly, mainly due to scalpers buying them in bulk and selling them at an extreme markup, which pissed off a lot of people. To make matters worse, it was discontinued only five months later. Nintendo did restock them in 2018, but once again the demand far outstripped the supply available for the mini console and it's considered a collector's item today. Purists have argued that the NES Classic's short controller cables, small library of games, and quality of emulation leave much to be desired, but if you're looking to getting into the NES library, the NES Classic Edition is a good starting point. Video

The US and PAL versions has a design flaw within its front-loader, where the connector pins wear out through repeated usages (read here for more details). It also has that 10NES lockout chip that prevent unlicensed and foreign games to be played. It was made because Atari "gave too much freedom to third-party developers and their [sic] market was swamped with rubbish games", even though people have found ways to circumvent it, making it all for naught. It also caused the blinking red power light effect, in which the system appears to turn itself on and off repeatedly. This is caused by the connectors being dirty and bent due to age. Both of these issues makes maintaining the NES a pain-in-the-ass.

In 1993, Nintendo released the NES-101, known simply as "the top-loader". It was fashioned to look more like its successor, the Super Nintendo, and not only that, but it also eliminated many of the issues of the original design. Without the 10NES, Americans can play PAL region games, although some games will either glitch or not play at all. However, it has its own faults, namely the fact that it doesn't have an A/V output, but instead a R/F output, so no RGB output. 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). But if you really don't want to go through all that just to play some NES games, keep reading.

If you're looking for NES clones that can be played in HD, consider looking at FPGA-based hardware such as the AVS by retroUSB and the Analogue 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.

For portability, check out the Nintendo 3DS' Virtual Console. It's NES library is kind of limited, but if you have it modded, you can inject other NES games or romhacked versions to make up for it. It's also the only official way to playing NES games on the go for the time being (until Virtual Console for the [Switch|Nintendo Switch] finally comes around). But if you don't want to do that, or if you don't have a 3DS and just want to play from retail cartridges, then check out the NES Portable System or the RetroDuo Portable, though be aware that the build quality for both are kinda shoddy and have crappy sound quality.

For flashcarts, the EverDrives are the only things worth mentioning, with the choices between the NES and Famicom versions. Well, there's also retroUSB's NES PowerPak, but it hasn't been updated in years, meaning compatibility is not as impressive, and it uses Compact Flash cards instead. Not to mention it costs 20 dollars more, thus making the Everdrive NES/Famicom the better option.

Romhacks and translations can be found at romhacking.net under the relevant sections. Although you might luck out and find a pre-patched translated Rom image along with the original versions if you don't know how to correctly patch a rom.

For better organization, Japan-only titles are kept in a separate list.

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