48 Fun Facts About NES

Before the Famicom turned it into a video game giant, Nintendo had spent most of a century making what?

Playing cards. Its hanafuda, Japanese flower cards, led a market that kept shrinking, the Famicom's designer recalled, which is why Nintendo turned first to toys and then to video games.

Where did the NES first go on sale as a US test market in October 1985?

New York. American shops were so wary after the 1983 crash that Nintendo began with a single city, selling the console as an 'entertainment system' with a toy robot rather than as a video game.

Masayuki Uemura, who designed the Famicom, first came to Nintendo as a salesman for which electronics company?

Sharp. He was selling its light-sensing solar cells, which went into Nintendo's toy light guns, and as he later joked, 'I ended up selling myself to Nintendo.'

Which Nintendo president demanded a simple, cheap console that ran arcade games?

Hiroshi Yamauchi. When early units began crashing a few months after launch, his staff suggested replacing only the faulty ones; he ordered every console recalled instead.

The Famicom's hardware was based on that of which Nintendo arcade game?

Donkey Kong. The engineers wanted the arcade hit to play at home just as it did in the arcade, so they took the machine itself to their chip maker to be studied.

Generations of NES owners tried to fix a game that would not load by doing what to the cartridge?

Blowing into it. The ritual spread from playground to playground, but the moisture in breath only tarnished the metal contacts faster; the real fault was a worn or dirty connector.

The Western NES was styled to resemble which household appliance?

A videocassette recorder. Nintendo feared a top-loading 'game console' would flop after the 1983 crash, so the NES hid its cartridges behind a front-loading door like the VCRs then booming in American homes.

What was the name of the NES light gun?

Zapper. Asked years later why the American console had been given a gun at all, the Famicom's designer got the biggest laugh of his lecture: 'America loves guns.'

What does R.O.B. stand for?

Robotic Operating Buddy. The robot's game had flopped in Japan, but in America it let Nintendo present the NES to parents and toy shops as something more than a video game console.

Which console was the NES's main rival in the third generation?

Sega Master System. It was crushed by the NES in America yet outsold it in Britain and much of Europe, where Sega's machine was still the best-selling console in 1990.

Why did a broken controller often mean sending an entire original Famicom back to Nintendo?

It was wired into the console. Detachable connectors cost too much in 1983, the machine's designer said, and he later called the fixed cables the one thing he felt he had not got right.

The Konami Code cheat is best known for giving players 30 lives in which NES game?

Contra. A programmer had written the code two years earlier to get through his own testing of Gradius, which he found too hard to finish, and it was left in the finished game.

The name Famicom is a contraction of which two English words?

Family Computer. The designer's wife suggested the short form, reasoning that it was neither a home nor a personal computer; Nintendo's president disliked the nickname, but all of Japan used it anyway.

A DX Antenna billboard is said to have inspired which feature of the Famicom?

Its red and white colours. Driving past the hoarding, Nintendo's president remarked, 'That's a good colour', and the next day he brought his own scarf to the designer's desk to show the shade he wanted.

Which American console did a Famicom engineer take home to his family, who loved its smooth graphics?

ColecoVision. Coleco's staff had shown Nintendo a prototype just before work on the Famicom began, and its smoothly moving pictures astonished the whole hardware team.

Which chip maker produced the Famicom's Picture Processing Unit?

Ricoh. It was the only chip maker willing to take the job, and Nintendo's president sealed the deal by guaranteeing an order of three million chips.

Why did Nintendo swap the square buttons on the very first Famicom controllers for round ones?

They kept getting stuck. The buttons had passed a million-press test in the lab without trouble, but the designers had not expected how much hammering real players would give them.

At whose suggestion did the Famicom gain a cartridge eject lever, added purely to amuse children?

Gunpei Yokoi. Cartridges came out perfectly well by hand, but he argued that children would love making them pop up with a lever, and would play with it even when the console was switched off.

The D-pad and two-button layout came from which earlier Nintendo product line?

Game & Watch. An engineer wired one of the handhelds to a Famicom prototype and found players steered by thumb without ever looking down, so the joystick plan was dropped.

What unusual feature did the Famicom's second controller include?

A microphone. The console's designer added it himself, sure that players would love hearing their own voices come out of the television, but very few games ever made use of it.

Why were Japanese retailers surprised by the Famicom's ¥14,800 price at its 1983 trade preview?

It was lower than expected. Rumour had Japan's electronics giants planning consoles at more than ¥20,000, so the wholesalers went home confident the Famicom could compete.

Which arcade port was one of only three games on sale with the Famicom at its 1983 launch?

Popeye. Like the other two launch games it was a home version of one of Nintendo's own arcade machines, exactly what the president had ordered the console to deliver; outside publishers arrived a year later.

Which NES controller owes its fame to a starring scene in the 1989 film The Wizard?

Power Glove. Mattel's motion-sensing gauntlet looked like the future on screen, but at home it was so imprecise and awkward that its legend now rests on the film rather than on anything it could do.

In Ghostbusters II, which NES controller do the heroes use to steer the Statue of Liberty?

NES Advantage. The arcade-style joystick was a real accessory, and its 'Slow' button faked slow motion by pausing and unpausing the game many times a second.

Which company was originally going to distribute Nintendo's Famicom in North America?

Atari. The deal stalled at a 1983 trade show, when Atari's executives saw one of Nintendo's arcade hits running on a rival's new home computer, and it was never signed.

Under what name was Nintendo's Famicom first shown to Americans at the January 1985 CES?

Advanced Video System. With a keyboard, cassette drive and infrared wireless controllers it looked like a home computer, but the trade was lukewarm and Nintendo stripped it back into the NES.

Which 1984 arcade line brought Famicom games to American arcades?

VS. System. Its cabinets secretly ran on Famicom hardware; head-to-head play had flopped in Japan but thrived in American arcades, which persuaded Nintendo the console itself could sell there.

Konami's LaserScope, a headset light gun for the NES, shot at the screen when the player did what?

Shouted 'Fire!'. That was the instruction, but in practice almost any loud noise would do, and a cough or a sneeze fired a shot just as well.

Which emblem on an NES game's box told shoppers that Nintendo had approved the game?

The Seal of Quality. Nintendo introduced it because a flood of shoddy, unvetted cartridges had helped crash the American market in 1983, and only games it had approved could carry the gold seal.

Worlds of Wonder made shops stock the NES to get which of its hit toys?

Teddy Ruxpin. Its salesmen told retailers that anyone who wanted the talking bear or Lazer Tag would have to stock Nintendo too, and once the console was a hit Nintendo took its distribution in-house.

What did the NES Satellite, packed with the 1990 Sports Set, add to the console?

Wireless four-player play. The battery-powered infrared hub let four controllers reach the console from across the room, but so few games supported more than two players that it saw little use.

What causes the NES's infamous blinking red power light?

The lock-out chip resetting it. When worn or dirty contacts stop the console's security chip talking to its twin inside the cartridge, it restarts the machine about once a second, over and over.

What was the 1993 redesigned NES controller nicknamed?

Dog bone. The rounded pad came with the slim top-loading NES and borrowed the curves of the Super NES controller, replacing the flat, brick-like rectangle of the original.

Which game came in the 1985 Deluxe Set alongside Duck Hunt?

Gyromite. It was there to show off the toy robot packed in the same box, yet only one other game was ever made for the robot, and players in Japan had not warmed to this one.

Which home computer's popularity stymied the NES in the United Kingdom?

ZX Spectrum. Sinclair's cheap computer had given Britain a home-grown games scene years before Nintendo arrived, with local software and prices that an imported console could not match.

Which unlicensed Famicom clone became Russia's most popular console?

Dendy. The Taiwanese-made copy went on sale through the Russian firm Steepler in 1992, and two years later Nintendo struck a deal that let it stay on the shelves if Steepler also sold the Super NES.

Under what name was the NES sold in South Korea?

Hyundai Comboy. South Korea's import rules kept Nintendo from selling there directly, so, like Sega and NEC, it handed its console to a Korean manufacturer to sell under a local badge.

The NES's CPU was a variant of which 8-bit chip, from the same family as the Apple II's processor?

MOS 6502. Almost nobody in Japan used the chip, and Nintendo's programmers, raised on the rival Z80, floundered until a recruit nicknamed 'the living 6502 manual' joined the team.

In late-1980s Japan, a modem add-on let Famicom owners do what from their living rooms?

Trade stocks. Nintendo built the modem with the brokerage Nomura Securities just as Japan's bubble economy took off, and a later service turned the console into a betting terminal for horse races.

Which licensed NES game shipped in a gold cartridge instead of gray?

The Legend of Zelda. The shiny shell hid a bigger novelty: a built-in battery that kept a player's progress alive, making it the first NES game that could save without passwords.

Which label did Konami create to get round Nintendo's yearly cap on NES releases?

Ultra Games. The shell label opened with Metal Gear and went on to publish Konami's Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles games, doubling the number of titles the company could release in America each year.

What did the 1991 FTC settlement require Nintendo to send to NES game buyers?

$5 discount vouchers. The coupons were good only towards another Nintendo game, so a settlement over price fixing ended up sending customers back to the company it was meant to penalise.

How did the unlicensed publisher Tengen obtain the secret code inside Nintendo's NES security chip?

It misled the Copyright Office. Its lawyer asked for a copy of the program by claiming it was needed for a lawsuit that did not yet exist, and Nintendo later won its copyright case against the clone.

Which rental chain did Nintendo sue over game rentals?

Blockbuster Video. Nintendo lost on the rentals themselves and won only on a side issue, the copyright in its instruction booklets, so the chain began handing out its own short how-to-play cards.

What could Famicom Disk System owners do at special kiosks in Japanese shops?

Rewrite a disk with a new game. At a Disk Writer kiosk it cost about 500 yen, a fraction of the price of a new disk or cartridge, which is one reason publishers soured on the format.

Why did the Famicom Disk System fade within a few years?

Roomier cartridges. A disk at first held far more than a cartridge, but cheaper memory chips soon let cartridges hold more still, without the disks' long loading waits.

Which unreleased NES accessory did Nintendo show at CES in 1987?

A knitting machine. Nintendo's brochure promised a gadget that would 'actually knit sweaters' under the line 'Now you're knitting with power!', and its own spokesman had to demonstrate it to the head of Toys R Us.

The 1986 Famicombox was a pay-to-play Famicom built for which venues?

Hotels and resorts. Staff could start a session by key, a room surcharge or a coin slot, and in 2026 a game historian found the boxes still working in all but one room of a Japanese love hotel.