The Nintendo Entertainment System: Brilliant, Influential, Overexposed.
Learning to Love the NES Again
Nintendo is Great is a Substack exploring every game ever released for a Nintendo console/handheld, starting with the NES and continuing through to the Switch. Some articles are free, some are for paid subscribers only. Don’t forget to sign up below. Thanks for reading!
In the article “Young, Poor, and Happy…” I shared my NES origin story.
“One random day, my dad came home with an NES Action Set, the one with two controllers, a Zapper, and the Super Mario Bros./Duck Hunt combo cartridge. My four-year-old mind was blown, I couldn’t believe it. Could we afford this? Did I even know what my parents could afford at this point?
All I knew was life had been hard for awhile. We had moved into a house in midtown Tucson, but it was a rundown fixer upper. Dad was more than up to the task of making the house look great, but it took time. Especially when you’re four and every day felt like a year.
My room was the worst of all. It had an eerie feel, like someone was always watching you. The walls and floor were pure concrete, which gave the room a prison vibe. I wasn’t a fan of the dark on any occasion, but my room was like that rich oil black darkness, pure evil; night light was required for me to get any sleep. I also fell out of bed one night while I was asleep and smashed my front teeth. Baby teeth, thank God, but it hurt, and there was blood everywhere. Whatever demonic thing that was creeping on me was probably thrilled.
My dad gave me the NES in the midst of the chaos – I think. I don’t know for sure. But it would make sense. Consoles were expensive even back then, and my parents were pouring thousands of dollars into renovating their new house. If life was going well, they would have no need to give their child a huge gift not at birthday or Christmas.
I not only appreciate my dad’s generosity, but I see his gift as the gateway into my lifelong fascination with video games as a medium. None of us could have known in the late 80s/early 90s what video games would become, but to see games evolve in real time into what they are now has been a unique pleasure and privilege.
So thanks Dad (and Mom, who would buy me future consoles and games) for inadvertently starting your only son on a journey that continues three decades later. I know that was not your intent, but I’m grateful, nonetheless. Love you both forever.”
Growing Up With the NES
My NES story may not be like yours, but if you’re an American of a certain age (late 30s-40s), you probably have an NES story of your own. For millions of older millennials and Gen-Xers, there is life before the Super Mario Bros./Duck Hunt combo cart and life after.
Gaming was mysterious in the late 80s and early 90s. Game magazines and trips to the video store or local Toys ‘R Us were the only places to both learn about games and find them in the wild. Even then, maybe you’d read about a game in GamePro or Electronic Gaming Monthly and it would sound interesting, but your local Premiere Video or Target didn’t carry it. You’d call around to different stores to try to find the game. If those efforts proved fruitless, you’d have to convince your parents to order the game from those shady mail-order businesses in the back of magazines. Or, more realistically, you’d just do without.
I rented a handful of NES games – kid stuff like Road Runner, Bugs Bunny Birthday Blowout, and The Little Mermaid – and owned the Mario trilogy and Stealth, of all games1.
But the NES soon became old hat to my fickle young self with the arrival of the Sega Genesis in Christmas 1991. Sonic the Hedgehog was my new best friend… at least until Christmas ‘92 and the arrival of Super Mario World, the SNES, and Super Mario Kart. Yeah, I was spoiled for a couple years there. Still don’t know how my parents pulled that off financially.
Anyway, by 1992, I was deep into 16-bit territory, and I hardly played my NES at all. My mom asked if she could sell it, I said sure, not thinking that I might want to play it down the line, and that was that. In a few short years, the NES had gone from my first system, my pride and joy, to an afterthought in the wake of “better” consoles.
And yet, even though my own NES moved on to parts unknown, the NES never vanished from my life. My grandparents owned an NES and they played it extensively, and their library was far more interesting and eclectic than mine had been. Any time I visited them, I usually played a round of Ninja Gaiden II or Paperboy or the bootleg 42-in-1 cart that had Famicom games like B-Wings and Antarctic Adventure.
By 1998, I had downloaded NESticle, a complete NES ROM set, and was slowly playing each game in the NES library, a prospect that seemed like pure black magic at the time.
For some reason, in the early 2000s, I was also perusing NES game information on GameFAQs and reading as many user reviews as I could. Shoutout to King Broccoli, wherever you are, I always appreciated your contrarian positive takes on universally despised games.
NES Nostalgia
In 2003, I walked into a Hot Topic, 18 years old, flush with cash from bussing tables. But what to buy? Perhaps an edgy Deftones or Disturbed t-shirt, or some oversized jeans that would completely cover my size 10 ½ feet. Ah, but what was this? NES Controller-styled wallets, complete with sick metal chain. Legend of Zelda tees featuring the old man in the cave and his famous cry, “It’s Dangerous to Go Alone.” Super Mario Bros. mints! Were they mushroom-flavored? I wasn’t brave enough to find out.
These items were my first taste with NES nostalgia, but certainly not the last. For the next 10-15 years, I watched the NES’ likeness (complete with young, pixelated Mario and Link) get plastered onto all sorts of content. The aforementioned wallets, shirts, and candy, yes, but also NES controller belt buckles. Hats featuring the Mario question mark block. The worst plushies you’ve ever seen, somehow approved by Nintendo themselves.
NES nostalgia entered the media landscape in the mid-2000s, with early YouTubers like James Rolfe and Pat the NES Punk waxing profanely about the best and worst NES games.
Remember when the Wii Virtual Console came out in 2006 and you could purchase old NES games for $5 a pop? Seems quaint now, but nothing like that had existed before. Millions of people downloaded tripe like Urban Champion, and Nintendo made a fortune.
In 2010, I started my own NES review site called Questicle. For the next 3 ½ years, I proceeded to play and review every North American NES game, all 754 of ‘em.
That’s right, I’ve done this “review ‘em all” song-and-dance before.
But why? Why was it impossible to escape the NES? Why was there such heavy nostalgia around this one system in particular?
Two reasons.
First: The NES is revered as The Chosen One That Saved the Gaming Industry from Complete Destruction.
Story goes that Nintendo surveyed the shattered American gaming landscape in 1985. Broken Intellivisions, abandoned 2600s, and rundown arcades as far as their eyes could see. A single tear trickled down their fluffy corporate cheeks, and they cried, “No more.” Mario rode into America on a white horse with Super Mario Bros., and the console gaming market was reborn.
Second: Many of the genres and franchises we know and love today – Mario, Zelda, Metroid, Mega Man, Castlevania, Contra, etc. – all started on the NES. Platformers, RPGs, racing games, arcade games, beat-em-ups, and shooters didn’t originate on Nintendo’s first console, but they absolutely flourished into widespread popularity there.
Make it Stop
The NES is legendary, no question, but I’m also kinda sick of talking about it. I can’t be the only one, right?
In online retro gaming circles, whether via blogs, YouTube, or Reddit, the NES and its influential titles have been receiving attention for decades now. Decades. The constant fawning, the ooh-ing and aah-ing over its accomplishments. The NES deserves the kudos it gets, sure, but also- shut up, we get it. Let’s talk about other systems.
Admittedly, the NES nostalgia train has finally quieted down in the last few years, and not a moment too soon. Zoomer content creators have moved onto their beloved N64 and Gamecube. I even see Wii nostalgia beginning to pop out here and there, which just makes me sigh all the sighs.
Revisiting the NES again is obviously necessary if I want to actually do the dang thing of playing and discussing all the games ever released for Nintendo consoles and handhelds. But how do I approach this endeavor in a way that doesn’t drive me crazy and also entertains those of you reading? How do I appreciate the NES and its games anew in 2024, removed from the never-ending waves of nostalgia emanating from places like Reddit and YouTube? Is such a thing even possible?
Acceptance
Perhaps the correct approach is to remember what it felt like to play the NES as a kid, when video games were still a relatively new and novel concept. To be caught up in the mystery and wonder of playing these 8-bit games, as if for the first time. Put aside any snark or criticism of the console itself (the NES can’t help that the Internet won’t allow it to rest) and ask the child within to emerge once more. To play some video games and enjoy myself. Can’t be that hard, right?
The NES will be 40 years old in 2025. The “youngest” games for the console just turned 30 this year. And yes, the console itself and the bulk of its library have been discussed and analyzed to death, but for good reason. The system remains one of the most influential consoles of all time and its legacy will be felt for generations to come. No amount of incessant online prattle - my own or anyone else’s - can diminish that.
I think because my dad liked planes and thought he might enjoy it - alas, it was terrible.
Nostalgia is a funny thing. I didn’t have an NES growing up, I had a Master System. Yet seeing the NES invokes more warm and fuzzy feelings than the Master System does.
‘00 Zoomer here, I have to say it, but I’m not a fan of the NES. There’s a few games on it I love: Mario 3 and Megaman 2 will always be some of my favorites, and Mother 1 is a criminally underrated game. But I mostly find the NES to be a console of games trying their best to do something and not having the tools they need to do it very well. These games tend to feel clunky, like they’re really straining for ways to implement their ideas and really wish they had more than two buttons on the controller. I love Castlevania 1, but it hurts using special items without a dedicated special items button.
Sometimes simple is best, but for the most part I find that everything I wanted an NES game to do, an SNES game does it better. It has the tools to implement the game’s vision and provide a satisfactory experience that doesn’t feel watered-down by technological limitations. Super Metroid vs. Metroid, LoZ1 vs. Link to the Past. I didn’t grow up with SNES, but I can go back to an SNES game and enjoy it as thoroughly as a Wii game from 2009 or PC game from 2011. Same goes for GBA and a handful of Gameboy games. Not a big fan of N64, barely played GameCube, so I won’t comment on those.
Culturally, the NES nostalgia really got old by the late 2010s, but it’s basically totally disappeared. You’re right, Wii nostalgia is showing up, and I understand because I grew up with it. I think Millennials who grew up with the NES and gushed about it as adults just got old enough to move on and got it all out of their system. Or maybe they didn’t, and were just drowned out by Zoomers who didn’t care to hear it anymore. Don’t worry, we’ll be next!