8 Bits, 25 Years: The Nintendo Entertainment System Is Now A Quarter-Century Old
Posted by Joshua_Kopstein on Tuesday, Oct 19, 2010
Where would videogames be today if it weren’t for the Nintendo Entertainment System? It’s a question that’s almost impossible to answer, considering the pivotal role that the celebrated 8-bit console had in bringing videogames back into our living rooms following the great game crash of the late 70’s / early 80’s. Having raised our glasses yesterday on the occasion of its 25th anniversary, let’s take a brief look back at the machine that many credit as the vanguard of modern interactive entertainment.
In the era after video arcades had reached their peak, the NES was the first system that brought the arcade experience into the American home. Its custom Ricoh 2A03 chipset was ahead of its time for game consoles, allowing it to produce an unprecedented density of smoothly-animated graphics. The way people controlled games, too, was changed forever by the legendary console — With their controller design, Nintendo completely re-envisioned the way people could interact with their game systems. Fast-forward 25 years: Controllers may have gotten more buttons and fancier, ergonomic designs, but a brief glimpse will show you that the NES was the true game-changer in this department.
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Even with its limited color palette and constrained audio capabilities, the NES churned out some of the most defining gameplay experiences in history, thanks in no small part to games like Contra, Mega Man, Castlevania, Metroid, Gradius …the list goes on and on. It was a system that, even when faced with its technologically-superior rival, the Sega Genesis, was able to stand its ground, proving again and again that it would take more than advanced hardware to wrest this 8-bit champion from its throne. With these and so many other successful franchises launching on the NES, the Nintendo name quickly became synonymous with quality. There was even a label for it — the official Nintendo Seal of Quality.
Of course, I’d be horribly remiss not to mention the system’s best-selling game, which is also celebrating its 25th birthday, Super Mario Bros. Packaged with a majority of the consoles sold in the U.S., Mario made its way into the hands of more gamers than any franchise before it. Before long, the red and green-overalled plumbers became inseparable from their parent company: Mario and Nintendo were one in the same, and the moustached hero would continue to stand as a beacon of Nintendo’s videogame empire.
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But the legacy of the NES goes beyond even the games themselves. Here is a piece of videogaming history so iconic that its influence has penetrated nearly every conceivable corner of our lives — From Super Mario Bros bedsheets and all manner of modern ‘geek-chic’ apparel to DIY alarm clocks and MP3 players made out of NES controllers, the success of the NES established Nintendo not only as kings of videogames, but undisputed champions of popular culture.
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Naturally, the NES has also become a prime player in DIY electronics culture and chiptune music. Philadelphia hacker-artist Don Miller (aka NO CARRIER) has created two pieces of software for the NES to date which turns the game machine into an video mixer and graphics creation tool, allowing for authentic 8-bit visual presentations that can be controlled in real time, typically accompanying live chip music. Software music trackers like Famitracker also allow for the creation of 8-bit music that can be exported and played back on the console itself.
Rarely does a piece of tech ascend to become a revered cultural object in the way the NES has. Constantly redefined and re-purposed by artists, tinkerers and other, more casual admirers, it’s fairly safe to assume that the decades-obsolete console will be sticking around, in one form or another, for generations to come.
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Electronic musician and computer culture journalist. Contact: josh ◢at◣ motherboard ◐dot◑ tv
