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CPU: Custom 8-bit Motorola 6502 1.79 MHz Processor: 8-bit PPU (Picture Processing Unit) RAM: 2KB Video RAM: 2KB Resolution: 256 x 240 Colors Available: 52 On Screen Colors: 16 Max Sprites/Line: 8 Max Sprite Size: 8x16 Pixels Min Sprite Size: 8x8 Pixels Sound: 2 Square Waves, 1 Triangle Wave, 1 White Noise (PSG sound) Cart Size: 128Kb - 8Mb       *History of Nintendo* Back in 1980 the guidelines for a new, more powerful videogame system emerged when Hiroshi Yamauchi, Masayuki Uemura, and their engineers began work on a new console much more advanced than the Color TV Game systems Nintendo had sold before. The new system should be able to play many different games, each stored on different cartridges/disks. Nintendo wasn't the first company with that idea, however. Atari, Commodore, Bandai, Takara and Sharp had all released or were developing similar systems. Yamauchi told Uemura that they had to make a system that would be much better than all the competitors' machines but also cheaper so that anyone could afford it. Yamauchi set a goal for the price of the machine at 9.800 yen (about $75). At first, Masayuki Uemura thought about using a 16-bit CPU, but that would have been way too expensive so he settled with an 8-bit CPU instead. Masayuki spent a lot of time with his engineers looking at Nintendo's current arcade games, trying to find the most suitable key components for a fast, yet inexpensive console. At last he settled on a cheap, not so powerful CPU called the 6502. The 6502 CPU couldn't do all the graphical work by itself so a PPU (Picture Processing Unit) was needed. They met with representatives from many semi-conductor companies but most turned down their offers. Nintendo wanted components at rock bottom prices but promised enormous orders. Unfortunately, most companies couldn't afford "gambling" like that. The lucky one was a company called Ricoh, whose semiconductor division didn't have much to do at the time. Yamauchi wasn't willing to pay more than 2,000 yen/chip which Ricoh thought was an absurdly low price. However, after Yamauchi guaranteed them a 3 million chip order within a 2 year period, they agreed! The employees at Nintendo started wondering what the heck Hiroshi was thinking. A 3 million chips order?! The most Nintendo had ever sold was 1 million copies of their Color TV Games system! The memory of the new system had to be cut down to only 2,000 bytes (16 kilobits). The suggestion to include a keyboard, modem, and a disk slot was turned down because Yamauchi wanted the system to be as cheap as possible. However, he did add some pretty expensive circuitry with a connector that could send and receive an unmodified signal to the CPU. This later enabled the NES to be hooked up to any accessory plugged into the connector (modem, keyboard etc.). Yamauchi was a perfectionist when it came to the design of the NES, spending countless hours on it. Nintendo released their first console in 1983 for the home market, the Famicom or Nintendo Entertainment System as it was called when released in the west. Famicom is short for Family Computer. The console was sold for around $100 ($25 more than it was intended to in the first place, still it was less than half the price of the competitors' machines). The Famicom sold very well in Japan and became very popular but, due the video game crash of early 1984, Nintendo had a difficult time releasing the system in America. During this crash the market was flooded by mediocre games and e.g. Atari games were sold for 10% of the suggested retail price. The American retailers promised themselves to never again sell video game consoles or computers... To prevent the same thing from happening to Nintendo's console Nintendo included a software licensing program, the famous Nintendo Seal of Quality, so Nintendo would only license games that met their minimal standards of quality. Atari's fault was that they hadn't been able to control that the games from the third party developers were good enough. This was a part of Yamauchi's plan, he knew that if Nintendo released their system when the video game market was as good as dead, there would be no competition and if successful their NES would be the only choice for gamers around the states! What few people know is that one of the first companies that Nintendo turned to, for help in the American launch of their console was Atari. Nintendo approached Atari, who by then had a big share of the American video & computer - game market, in 1983. They were ready to sell Atari the rights to distribute the NES everywhere outside Japan. They were so close to an agreement that they actually planned to sign the agreement on C.E.S. in June the same year. However when Atari saw that Coleco demonstrated a (unlawful) prototype of Donkey Kong for their home computer Adam on the C.E.S. they refused to sign the deal since they assumed that Nintendo was also forging a deal with Coleco. You might speculate what would have happened if Atari hadn't seen that Donkey Kong prototype and actually signed the deal. The worst case scenario would that they would just have abandoned the Famicom. This way they would have eliminated one possible opponent on the video game / home computer -market and their own 8-bit system, the Atari 7800 ProSystem with backwards compatibility with the current library of Atari 2600 CVS games would have had a much better chance of success... (Atari was in fact a doomed company when they were negotiating the deal with Nintendo. They were loosing the incredible amount of $2 million - Daily. The only thing that kept the already crashed company from going bankrupt was the fact that 20% of the company was owned by Warner Communications, which now is Time Warner.) Nintendo continued to search for distributors for their console and in 1985, Mr. Arakawa (President at Nintendo of America) managed to persuade one retailer to release it as a test in New York, and you know the rest, don't you? Within 10 years of the release in February 1986, the NES sold around 30 million copies in the US only, and had approximately 90% of the 8-bit market! The NES was released in Europe 1986. At first the NES was sold for $249 in a package (Original set) consisting of the control deck, 2 controllers, the gray Zapper lightgun and ROB (Robotic Operating Buddy), which came with the games Duck Hunt and Gyromite. Soon, Nintendo decided to change this set and simply release the Action Set for $199, which did not include ROB and Gyromite, instead including the best platformer the World has ever seen - Super Mario Bros. This must have been the most successful of the many different sets! The Power Set was like the Action Set but with a new improved controller called the Power Pad and a new NES game called World Class Track Meet. Around 1990 - 91, Nintendo, in fear that the public had lost their interest in the NES, released two new sets: The Basic Set including only the control deck and 2 controllers and the Sport Set, including everything that the Basic Set did, plus the 4 player adapter NES Satellite and a double gamepak with two games: Super Spike V' Ball and World Cup Soccer. In a last desperate attempt to pump life into the NES, Nintendo 1993 released a redesigned version in Japan and later in the US (See picture below) under the name, "video game beginners console". It came bundled with a double gamepak of Final Fantasy 1 and 2. This collection sold 1 million copies, selling even more than the SNES in some cities! After the success of the Final Fantasy collection, Square (the makers of the Final Fantasy games) produced another Final Fantasy game for the NES, Final Fantasy 3 (not released in the west). Although this newer Famicom sold fairly well, Nintendo officially gave up the NES in December 1994, releasing its last game ever, entitled Wario's Woods. Most of the above text was taken from nintendoland.com *Timeline* 1889 - Fusajiro Yamauchi, great-grandfather of the present president, began manufacturing "Hanafuda", Japanese playing cards in Kyoto. 1902 - Mr. Yamauchi started manufacturing the first playing cards in Japan. Originally for export, the product became popular in Japan as well as abroad. 1933 - Established an unlimited partnership, Yamauchi Nintendo & Co. 1947 - Began a distribution company, Marufuku Co. Ltd. 1950 - Hiroshi Yamauchi took office as President and absorbed the manufacturing operation of Yamauchi Nintendo & Co. 1951 - Changed the company name from Marufuku Co. Ltd. to Nintendo Playing Card Co. Ltd. 1952 - Consolidated factories were dispersed in Kyoto. 1953 - Became the first to succeed in manufacturing mass-produced plastic playing cards in Japan. 1959 - Started selling cards printed with Walt Disney characters, opening a new market in children's playing cards. The card department boomed! 1962 - In January, listed stock on the second section of the Osaka Stock Exchange and on the Kyoto Stock Exchange. 1963 - Changed company name to Nintendo Co. Ltd. and started manufacturing games in addition to playing cards. 1969 - Expanded and reinforced the game department; built a production plant in Uji City, a suburb of Kyoto. 1970 - Stock listing was changed to the first section of the Osaka Stock Exchange. Reconstruction and enlargement of corporate headquarters was completed. Started selling the Beam Gun series, employing opto-electronics. Introduced electronic technology into the toy industry for the first time in Japan. 1973 - Developed laser clay shooting system to succeed bowling as a major pastime. 1974 - Developed image projection system employing 16mm film projector for amusement arcades. Began exporting them to America and Europe. 1975 - In cooperation with Mitsubishi Electric, developed video game system using electronic video recording (EVR) player. Introduced the microprocessor into the video game system the next year. 1977 - Developed home-use video games in cooperation with Mitsubishi Electric. 1978 - Created and started selling coin-operated video games using microcomputers. 1979 - Started an operations division for coin-operated games. 1980 - Announced a wholly owned subsidiary, Nintendo of America Inc. in New York. Started selling "GAME & WATCH" product line. 1981 - Developed and began distribution of the coin-operated video game "Donkey Kong." This video game quickly became the hottest selling individual coin-operated machine in the business. 1982 - Merged New York subsidiary into Nintendo of America Inc., a wholly owned subsidiary headquartered in Seattle, Washington, U.S.A., with a capital of $600,000. 1983 - Built a new plant in Uji city to increase production capacity and to allow for business expansion. Established Nintendo Entertainment Centers Ltd. in Vancouver, B.C., Canada, to operate a family entertainment center. Raised authorized capital of Nintendo of America Inc. to $10 million. In July, listed stock on the first section of the Tokyo Stock Exchange. Started selling the home video game console "Family Computer" employing a custom CPU (Custom Processing Unit) and PPU (Picture Processing Unit). 1984 - Developed and started selling the unique 2-screen interactive coin-operated video game "VS. System". 1985 - Started to sell the U.S. version of Family Computer "Nintendo Entertainment System" (NES) in America. The system included R.O.B. - Robotic Operating Buddy - and the games Duck Hunt and Super Mario Bros. Mario and Luigi became as big a hit as the NES. 1986 - Developed and started selling the "Family Computer Disk Drive System" to expand the functions of the Family Computer. Began installation of the "Disk Writer" to rewrite game software. Game Counselors were organized and players from all over the world could call Nintendo for advice on games and strategies. 1987 - Sponsored a Family Computer "Golf Tournament" as a communications test using the public telephone network and Disk Faxes to aid in building a Family Computer network. The NES achieved the status as the #1 selling toy in America and The Legend of Zelda became the first new generation home video game to exceed sales of one million units. 1988 - Nintendo of America Inc. published the first issue of Nintendo Power magazine in July. Researched and developed the Hands Free controller, making the NES accessible to many more Nintendo fans. The game library for the NES grew to 65 titles, helping to broaden the demographics to include more adults. 1989 - Released "The Adventure of Link," sequel to the top-selling game "The Legend of Zelda" in the U.S. Started "World of Nintendo" displays in U.S. to help market Nintendo products. Studies show that children are as familiar with "Mario" as they are with Mickey Mouse and Bugs Bunny! Introduced Game Boy, the first portable, hand-held game system with interchangeable game paks. Nintendo Power magazine became the largest paid-subscription publication in its age category. 1990 - Nintendo Power Fest featuring the Nintendo World Championships tours the country. Japan enters the 16-bit market by releasing the Super Famicom in the fall. 1991 - Nintendo introduces World Class Service Center locations across the U.S. The 16-bit Super Nintendo Entertainment System (Super NES), along with "Super Mario World," is released in the U.S. 1992 - The Super NES Super Scope and Mario Paint with the Super NES Mouse Accessory were released. The long-awaited "Zelda" sequel, "The Legend of Zelda: A Link to the Past," arrived for the Super NES. Nintendo of America Inc. developed portable Fun Centers to assist the Starlight Foundation in bringing happiness to hospitalized children by allowing them to enjoy their favorite video games during hospital stays. 1993 - Nintendo announces the advent of the Super FX Chip, breakthrough technology for home video systems. The first game using the Super FX Chip, "Star Fox," is released in April. 1994 - The Super Game Boy accessory was released, expanding the library of games that could now be played on the Super NES! Everyone's favorite heroine, Samus, returns in another long-awaited sequel, Super Metroid. Nintendo helped pioneer the development and implementation of an industry-wide rating system. This year also saw the introduction of a game that would set a new standard in video game excellence. Using proprietary Advanced Computer Modeling (ACM) graphics, Donkey Kong Country took the holiday season by storm! Nintendo Gateway projected to reach 40 million travelers. 1995 - Thanks to the outstanding success of Donkey Kong Country, ACM graphics were introduced to the Game Boy system by way of Donkey Kong Land. Along with this great boost to the Game Boy system line, Nintendo also introduced the Play It Loud! series of Game Boy systems. ACM graphics made another appearance on the Super NES with the release of the arcade smash-hit, Killer Instinct. At the same time, Nintendo introduced a 32-bit Virtual Immersion system known as the Virtual Boy. Next, Nintendo responded to the demands of fans with the release of Yoshi's Island: Super Mario World 2. Nintendo even enhanced the quality of ACM graphics for the upcoming release of Donkey Kong Country 2: Diddy's Kong Quest. Cruis'n USA and Killer Instinct available in local arcades. Celebration of the one-billionth game pak sold. 1996 - Nintendo 64 launches in Japan on June 23. Thousands line up to be the first to experience the world's first true 64-bit home video game system. More than 500,000 systems are sold the first day. In early September, Nintendo introduces the Game Boy pocket, a sleeker, 30-percent smaller version of the world's most popular hand-held video game system. On September 29, Nintendo 64 launches in North America. The entire initial shipment of more than 350,000 units is sold out in three days. Super Mario 64 is proclaimed by many as "the greatest video game of all time!" For the Super NES we saw the release of the third game in the continuing Donkey Kong series, Donkey Kong Country 3: Dixie Kong's Double Trouble. 1998 - Nintendo introduces Game Boy Color and innovative devices Game Boy Camera and Printer, bringing new life to the longest running hit in the history of interactive entertainment. Pokémon, a breakthrough game concept for Game Boy, was introduced to the world and generated a nationwide craze to collect 'em all! With the release of Banjo-Kazooie for Nintendo 64, new characters were added to the ever-growing list of popular Nintendo characters. The most anticipated video game ever, The Legend of Zelda: Ocarina of Time for Nintendo 64 was released, setting new standards and breaking records for pre-sell for any video game to date. 1999 - The success of the Pokémon franchise expands even further with the release of Pokémon Pinball, Pokémon Yellow, and the first Pokémon title for the Nintendo 64, Pokémon Snap. Nintendo releases several notable N64 titles including Star Wars: Episode 1: Racer, Mario Golf, Super Smash Bros., Donkey Kong 64, Mario Party, and Perfect Dark. At E3, Nintendo announces development plans for a new system, code-named Dolphin, that will utilize an IBM Gekko processor and Matsushita's proprietary optical disk technology. 2000 - Nintendo sells its one hundred millionth Game Boy unit, ending the year with more than 110 million sold. Game Boy is responsible for 47% of all U.S. hardware system sales (an all-time high for a portable device). Pokémon Stadium is the top-selling console game, followed by The Legend of Zelda: Majora's Mask, both for N64. Pokémon Gold and Silver for Game Boy Color make their U.S. debut in October, becoming the fastest-selling games of all time by selling a combined 1.4 million copies in one week and 6 million through December. 2001 - Beloved Nintendo characters Mario and Donkey Kong celebrate their 20th anniversaries. Nintendo launches its highly anticipated Game Boy Advance in Japan on March 21. The portable powerhouse debuts in the U.S. on June 11, and sells one million units in six weeks. Following the success of the Game Boy Advance, Nintendo launches the Nintendo GameCube home video game console in Japan on September 14. The U.S. launch on November 18 smashes previous U.S. sales records, becoming the fastest-selling next generation hardware system.                                  These are the classics. Emulate them & play the games for the best system ever made.