If there is one system that deserves the ultimate salute, it’s the Nintendo Entertainment System, Not only was this console fantastic with in it’s 8-bit glory but it brought back video games after a terrible crash in the 80’s. Once Atari was the standing king, having other consoles like ColecoVision and Intellivision follow, but after the video game crash, out of the ashes one console would come and show everyone how it’s done, and that’s console is the good ole Nintendo Entertainment System.
Known as the Famicom overseas the NES was an outstanding system at the time, even now. Coming packaged with Super Mario Bros. and along with Duck Hunt was marvelous. Duck Hunt used the Nintendo Zapper and demonstrated what the Nintendo was capable of while Super Mario Bros. Demonstrated what the NES was all about. This hunk of a side ways toaster with its family friendly colour scheme of grey did bring families together and did create the video game industry we all know today.
That is to say it did have its problems, for one thing the cartridges pins and the consoles pins would sometimes bend out of shape which would cause a lot of games to “screw up” as we would say back in the day. Nothing worse than wanting to play WWF Wrestlemania only to have Hulk Hogan flashing for a second repeatedly, or sometimes not at all. Sometimes the system would flash a bunch of colours on the screen, but we all had our ways of fixing it.
20 years later with the beauty of the internet, I’ve discovered that the reason why the Nintendo would “screw up” was because of the pins being bent inside of the NES due to force of the insertion on the side. Damn.
Either way, the NES had an impressive library of games including, Double Dragon, Battletoads, Super Mario Bros. 1 2 & 3, Dr.Mario, Tetris, Kirby’s Adventure, Metroid, Kid Icarus, too many to list. The NES also introduced us to the Nintendo “Light gun” as well as the other peripherals like the famous Power glove, the Power Pad and of course ROB. Which today’s version would be the Wii remote, Wii Mat and um….Still not ROB, unless of course they bring it back, which would be great, I’ve always wanted a robotic buddy….or a buddy 
The NES opened up gaming to a new worl
d, Atari, CollecoVision and Intellivisions were all about high scores. (Pong, Pac-Man, Space Invaders), where the NES actually gave gaming a story line, fight aliens in Contra, Save the Princess in Super Mario Bros. , Find Zelda in The Legend Of Zelda, and the option of walking back and or forth in Super Mario Bros. 3. The controller is one of the best controllers ever made, not only for the simplicity behind it, but it was strong and very durable, I’ve chucked this surprisingly sharp corner object at the floor, the wall and my dog, and the controller survived, everything else unfortunately did not.
The Nintendo Entertainment System is one console that tried to bring gaming to homes, by converting arcade favorites to home consoles, sometimes it succeeded (TMNT Arcade, Double Dragon) and sometimes it did not (Tengen and Mindscape). If it wasn’t for the NES gaming wouldn’t be what it is today, with games constantly trying to one up (Clever) each other , focusing more on graphics then game play, the Nintendo just had one thing to worry about. FUN!!!
For that The Paranerds Salute it!
-Max
Email us your tricks on getting the NES to work to theparanerds@gmail.com and we’ll talk about it on our next podcast!
I know that Tengen Pac-Man for NES was good. I have also heard that Tengen Tetris was also good.