The Nintendo Entertainment System, more commonly referred to as the NES, is an 8 bit home console released in the third generation of systems. The NES was originally released in Japan in 1983 as the Family Computer, more commonly referred to as the Famicon or FC for short. The NES is the redesign of the Famicon that was released to North American markets in 1985.
In the 1980s, Nintendo released a series of successful arcade games that did quite well. Nintendo saw how well their games performed and decided to get into the home video game console market. They ultimately decided on a simple cheap console that ran games stored on cartridges. The controller’s design came from Nintendo’s portable handheld, the Game & Watch.
Over the course of the NES’s lifespan, Nintendo released several different official peripherals and add-ons like the light gun, Rob the Robot, and more.
The NES sold gangbusters and was one of the best selling consoles of the time. Not only did it do massive numbers for Nintendo sales and profit wise, but it single handedly helped pump life back directly back into the video game industry in the U.S. after the devastating video game crash back in 1983.
The NES was groundbreaking in other ways as well. It also helped standardize the process of video game publishing, licensing games created by 3rd party developers to produce and release to the public. The NES birthed some of the greatest video game mascots and franchises of all time. Games such as Super Mario Bros., The Legend of Zelda, and Metroid all debuted on the system and would go on to become behemoths in gaming culture.
The Nintendo Entertainment System ceased production in 1996. The Famicom was later discontinued in Japan in 1995 as well. The NES was superseded by the Super Nintendo Entertainment System.
How To Emulate the NES
Mesen is a very popular NES emulator that runs most Nintendo Entertainment System games very well. Mesen is hands down the best NES emulator for PC, Mac, and Linux and doesn’t only run NES games, but also supports SNES, Game Boy Color, and PC Engine games.
In addition to Mesen, another popular way to emulate NES games is with the use of the emulation frontend, the RetroArch emulator. With RetroArch, players can install the Mesen NES core to easily play their NES games. Mesen is by far the best NES core RetroArch has and it is the most popular option both as a standalone emulator and when used as an emulation core.
The best NES emulator for Android is the Nostalgia.NES emulator which has both a free and paid version available. It can be installed from the Google Play Store and is very simple to install and use.
