The general Nintendo Entertainment System (NES) appreciation thread.

[Manga4life]

Personally, the NES is the greatest video gaming console I've ever played. The ammount of hours logged playing classic games and having friends over to tackle 2-player games together could never be touched, and some of the awesome memories I've had over the years will stay with me until I'm loopy in a old folks home. Think about all the classics that you would stay up late playing, the Mario series, the Zelda series, Castlevania, Metroid, TMNT II, Punch Out, the Ninja Gaiden's, Tetris, Dragon Warrior, and other amazing titles, there is just too damn many to list! At my peak back when I had my original NES (1988-1993) I had about 25 games, but then I purchased a used NES in 1995 from Funcoland and ended up with a massive game collection I've put together over the years that's reached 120 total games. I don't play it regularly like I used to of course, but visit it a few times a year and I make sure that I have a "NES-A-THON" at least once a year where I fire up all my NES games over the course of a weekend, so I stay in touch with it quite a bit.

It's funny, I got rid of my NES back in late 1993 and then bought another one in mid 1995 and even though it was only 2 years it seemed like it had been a lifetime between ownership and my experience was quite amazing in 1995 as I got re-aquainted with it. Actually, I've build some amazing memories between 1995-1996 with the NES that rival some of my memories I've made with it between 1988-1993 thanks to me playing the darn thing multiple hours a day. That year was amazing, I still have the machine and play it every now and again but there was something about that 1995-1996 time frame that was simply amazing for me.

So, let's discuss the greatness that was the NES and the memories and favorite games you've had with this amazing system. This will be the first of many system threads I plan to create over the next several months, I want to help bring classic gaming into the public eye once again to help people remember their roots and to remember what true video gaming fun was.

[treismac]

Part of my undying love for the NES is that it connects me to old memories while also creating brand new ones. Tetris is a perfect example. I use to and still play the heck out of the Nintendo licensed version of Tetris. As much as I loved the game as a kid, I use to wonder what the Tengen version was like. It seemed so much earthier and Russian than the Nintendo version in pictures. Lacking the Big N's approval, Tengen's version burned with exotic forbiddenness. Well, now I own both versions- a marriage of the "new" and the old- as a result of the renaissance of my love for the NES.

Since I've started playing (collecting) the NES again, there are many "new" games like Bionic Commando that I've picked up that I watched way more than I ever played at a friend's house. Let's face it: with one player games, the controller didn't swap back and forth all that often- at least not with the selfish sons of bitches in my childhood neighborhood. Anyway, now I own Bionic Commando and I have loved every minute of playing it. In a lame kinda way, I have righted a wrong from my past.

One final note: beating Contra with old friends from childhood is probably the greatest thing you can do with a Nintendo in my opinion. Just saying.

[PC-ENGINE HELL]

I had quite a few fond memories growing up during the Nes days. One Xmas I got Lifeforce and Renegade, and though Lifeforce was already a fav renter for me, I had never played Renegade before, and ended up liking it a bit more then Double Dragon 1. Beating it felt like a achievement back then, because some of the areas seemed to require a bit more strategy then Double Dragon did. There was other times, like when I had rented Tecmo World Wrestling and beat it. That game seemed amazing at the time it was released.

Prob the most Nes games I ever owned as a kid was maybe in the mid 20 range. Back then it was stuff like Bad Dudes, Double Dragon 1-2, The Punisher, Bionic Commando, SMB 2-3, Castlevania 2, ShatterHand, Street Fighter 2010, etc. I did get to rent quite a bit back then too, but was limited to 3 diff rental places, most only having maybe 30-50 games on hand. One place called MovieLand though had a massive amount of Nes games on hand to rent, and also sold games for 10 bucks a pop, so I was able to pick up solid titles on the cheap there.

Regardless, there was a lot of games that I really just missed out on, so now I have my main Nes deck, a few spares, and a tad over 100 games, many of which I didn't get to play as a kid, or played a little via renting but never beat. What I have on Nes right now is in the pic below:



UPCLOSE:

[treismac]

[QUOTE=PC-ENGINE HELL;1871421]What I have on Nes right now is in the pic below:


Beautiful!

[MarioMania]

I love the NES, But I love the Master System more

[treismac]

I love the NES, But I love the Master System more

What reasons do you have for loving the SMS more than the NES? I am all ears. I have been playing around with buying one and collecting its games for a while. The fact that I only saw one ONCE in my younger years for about 10 minutes makes it almost a phantom in my childhood gaming. I wouldn't mind owning Shinobi, Double Dragon, Ninja Gaiden, Wonderboy, or Hero either.

[Nes]

Random thoughts,

Great memories like playing Ducktales and Super Mario 3 and the original Zelda over and over again. Never being able to beat the original Super Mario Bros. nor could any of my siblings or their friends or my friends. (Embarrassing sure). Never being able to figure out how the heck to even play Star Voyager. Lending friends my games and vice versa which is how I learned of the greatness of the Mega Man series. Coming so close to beating Rad Racer only to hear that stupid sound that pops up when time runs out and you're just praying your car can glide across the line. Doing my best not to get all my guys electrocuted underwater in TMNT. 10 yard fight battles with my dad. Being able to whoop everyone at Mike Tyson's punch out only to have the game's namesake hammer me repeatedly. Played lots of Tiger Heli, in the pre-internet day not knowing that no matter how long I played it, there was no beating the game.

[Bloodreign]

I didn't own a whole lot of NES games back in the day, but I had a lot of friends who had NES's, a cousin with an SMS, so I got to play a wide variety of NES games and the occasional SMS title. Looking back now I wanted to have more back in the day, so two years ago or so I took action, now own over 300 NES and FC titles, and about 20 SMS titles. All the NES Mega Man games, some Irem goodies (Kickle Cubicle and Metal Storm), some Taito stuff, some Nintendo games, some Tengen. Of course I limit myself to what I liked when from memories or what I tried in emulation over the years (I took the time to play as much as I could to judge a game collection from), so I'm picky as to what I like.

[Manga4life]

Triesmac is right, there is just something about playing and beating Contra with friends back in a day that I often think about with fondness. Me and my friend Chris stayed up late one night and promised ourselves that we wouldn't go to bed until we finally got around to beating the game, so we did the classic "Konami Code" and we finally got the job one. He brought this night up a few months ago and we had a great discussion about it, its really hard to believe that this was like 20 years ago......I'm getting old.

[substantial_snake]

What reasons do you have for loving the SMS more than the NES? I am all ears. I have been playing around with buying one and collecting its games for a while. The fact that I only saw one ONCE in my younger years for about 10 minutes makes it almost a phantom in my childhood gaming. I wouldn't mind owning Shinobi, Double Dragon, Ninja Gaiden, Wonderboy, or Hero either.

I'm with MarioMania on this.

I have no real reason to love the SMS over the NES, it was just the system I grew up with. I loved playing Ghouls n' Ghosts and Aerial Assault on it as a kid along with Missile Defense 3D...even though we didn't have the glasses. I also really liked the way the console looked like some sort of futuristic computer with its hard angles and over design, it was just cool back then. Objectively now I would probably pick an NES over it but I am still always going to have fond memories of the SMS as my first real console that I played with.

I respect the NES for starting up so many great series and popularizing one of my personal favorite series of games, Metal Gear. The console was just the starting point of so many series that blossomed into some of gaming greatest from SuperMario, Castlevania, Megaman, Metroid, Zelda, etc. It was a great console that was largely simple enough for people to easily get into it while still having a lot of great challenge. The most fun game I have ever played with friends though on an NES is Dunk Hunt by far. Everyone had it and it was easy to pick up and play, tons of hours on Dunk Hunt at friends houses is my most fond memory of the NES. lol

[treismac]

Never being able to beat the original Super Mario Bros. nor could any of my siblings or their friends or my friends. (Embarrassing sure).

You know, I never beat Super Mario as a kid either. The whole experience stressed me out way too much. Level 4-1 with Lakitu just made me sick with anxiety for whatever reason- reason being raining spiny, red death. I don't think after warping at 4-2, I ever made it as far as 8-3. Now, however, hardly a week goes by that I don't beat the game at least once. Hell, sometimes I beat it multiple times in a day. I've beat it without losing a life, I can do a decent "speed" run (no, it isn't comparable to the insane stuff on youtube), I've gone all the way with the fire flower glitch, and I've held on to my sanity beating the Dream Mary modded cart. Honestly, beating the game is a digital ritual of sorts. It kinda sorts everything out for me the way wearing a lucky hat might for some people, I suppose. Going to Minus World is also something I do as a matter of course too. Soooo, Super Mario Bros... I suppose I'm over the dread now.

[BlastProcessing402]

I'll never forget the first time I saw Super Mario Bros. running on an NES. It was so far beyond anything I'd ever played on my dad's Intellivision or any of my friends' Ataris that I thought video gaming must have finally hit its peak. Oh to be young and naive like that again.

But anyway, I had to have one. A kid I knew had gotten one (complete with ROB) but that wasn't good enough, I needed to be able to play SMB on my time, not his. I didn't even care about ROB or the Zapper, or any of the other half dozen or so early games he had, I just needed SMB.

I saved and saved, and saved some more, always trying to get my parents to pay me for some chore or something, but it was slow going. Then one weekend when a friend was coming over to stay the night we stopped in Toys R Us for some reason. My parents were acting somewhat suspiciously, and sure enough as we were going through the register, turns out they had grabbed one of the tags for an NES Control Deck (w/SMB pack in) and were going to cover what was left that I hadn't quite saved up yet.

It was the first system I got that was MINE not for the entire family (though I did share it sometimes ) and that means a lot to me. So did all the hours spent playing with friends over the years.

I still have that NES, and while I haven't turned it on in a couple years, last time I did it still ran fine. The only real problem it's ever given me was at one point the mechanism for the carts wouldn't stay down, and I had to use some creative ways to get them to stay down so I could play, but one day, losing at some game or another in a particularly maddening way, I slammed my fist on the top of the system. Somehow the spirit of the Fonz must have been with me that day, as the mechanism was suddenly fixed, and it still works to this day.

[sayewonn]

Growing up you fell into 3 categories: you either had an NES, knew someone that had one, or wanted an NES badly. I was a bit fortunate during that period in that all of my older brothers still lived at home when the system came out, so nearly every week we got a new game. I think the most we had was around 40 or so, there was a little bit of competition with my friend down the street, who eventually amassed something like 70 games, how I don't know.

[Nes]

I'll never forget the first time I saw Super Mario Bros. running on an NES. It was so far beyond anything I'd ever played on my dad's Intellivision or any of my friends' Ataris that I thought video gaming must have finally hit its peak. Oh to be young and naive like that again.

But anyway, I had to have one. A kid I knew had gotten one (complete with ROB) but that wasn't good enough, I needed to be able to play SMB on my time, not his. I didn't even care about ROB or the Zapper, or any of the other half dozen or so early games he had, I just needed SMB.

I saved and saved, and saved some more, always trying to get my parents to pay me for some chore or something, but it was slow going. Then one weekend when a friend was coming over to stay the night we stopped in Toys R Us for some reason. My parents were acting somewhat suspiciously, and sure enough as we were going through the register, turns out they had grabbed one of the tags for an NES Control Deck (w/SMB pack in) and were going to cover what was left that I hadn't quite saved up yet.

It was the first system I got that was MINE not for the entire family (though I did share it sometimes ) and that means a lot to me. So did all the hours spent playing with friends over the years.

I still have that NES, and while I haven't turned it on in a couple years, last time I did it still ran fine. The only real problem it's ever given me was at one point the mechanism for the carts wouldn't stay down, and I had to use some creative ways to get them to stay down so I could play, but one day, losing at some game or another in a particularly maddening way, I slammed my fist on the top of the system. Somehow the spirit of the Fonz must have been with me that day, as the mechanism was suddenly fixed, and it still works to this day.

Simple fix. Put in the cartridge you want to play and then place another cartridge on top of that. In more modern times, I finally purchased the cart loading mechanism from someone off ebay to replace mine with. I still have the same NES I got for Christmas in 86 or 87 though I replaced the pin connector a few years ago but still got cruddy video quality. I'm thinking of picking up a top loader for Christmas.

[Parodius Duh!]

Famicom is better. Thats my input.

[treismac]

... one day, losing at some game or another in a particularly maddening way, I slammed my fist on the top of the system. Somehow the spirit of the Fonz must have been with me that day, as the mechanism was suddenly fixed, and it still works to this day.

Sweet.

[Emperor Megas]

What reasons do you have for loving the SMS more than the NES? I am all ears. I have been playing around with buying one and collecting its games for a while. The fact that I only saw one ONCE in my younger years for about 10 minutes makes it almost a phantom in my childhood gaming. I wouldn't mind owning Shinobi, Double Dragon, Ninja Gaiden, Wonderboy, or Hero either.

I'm another who liked the SMS better. I owned and LOVEDA my NES, but I never purchased a single game for it in my youth. As a kid, all of my spending money went to the Master System. It wasn't a fanboy thing, it's just that the NES was so popular that everyone had NES games I could borrow. Granted, almost as many of my friends had a Master System as those who has an NES, but no one else seemed to purchase games for theirs like I did.

As for reasons I liked the SMS better, it was mainly because of the first party SEGA games. SEGA was my favorite developer back then, so the SMS was a shoe in for my favorite. I also had issues with the NES controller. I hated the + shape with those sharp edges and no corners -- your thumbs would get sore after a while. The shape of the Master System's Power Base was also ridiculously awesome to me when I was young, too, as was the gimmicky SEGA Card game slot.

To me, the main thing the NES had over the SMS (besides third party support) was the pause and select buttons on the controller. I don't know who at SEGA thought that it was a good idea to put the pause button on the console itself, and there were some games (like Zillion) that required a second controller be plugged in for alternate buttons, which a select button would have eliminated.

[treismac]

Famicom is better. Thats my input.

Why do you prefer the Famicom, Parodius Duh?

[Parodius Duh!]

larger selection of the specific types of games I want to play.

[treismac]

larger selection of the specific types of games I want to play.

What types of games are you into? RPGs?