GameGavel

25 Years ago a Japanese company came to the aid of video gamers around the world and brought the video gaming industry back from its darkest days. You see prior to Nintendo’s launch of the Nintendo Entertainment System the video game industry had taken a turn for the worst. Atari, who had been leading the way for so many years, along with a number of other U.S. based video gaming companies were on the outs with consumers. The year was 1984 and the video gaming industry was imploding under piles of sub par systems and loads of disappointing games. Times were dark to say the least for gamers everywhere.

Then out of nowhere comes a savior of sorts. A savior from across the globe that in the end was responsible for getting the video gaming industry back on track and helping to continue its growth to the now dominating industry of today. And gamers everywhere were and continue to be thankful for the little white box with spring loaded cartridge slot that brought the industry back to life on October 18, 1985. It all happened innocently enough and wasn’t all that much of a surprise considering Nintendo’s early days developing arcade games and handheld electronic games. First introduced to American consumers prior to the holiday buying season in the fall of 1985, the NES was being sold as an “entertainment” system, not a video game system. The games were nothing like we, in America had seen before. Gone were the boxy graphics of days gone by. This was a new era in gaming. An era that saw significant graphical upgrades, a completely new control device that had replaced the tried-and-true Joystick controllers and probably most importantly, an entirely new way to control how third party developers created and distributed games. Nintendo learned a great deal from the video gaming crash of 1984 and had more involvement with its third party game developers to make sure only quality products were released for their systems.

Today the Nintendo NES carries fond memories for many of us who grew up playing video games in the 70’s and 80’s. Finding systems today is quite easy and there are no shortages of inexpensive games to fill ones collections. Just recently I came across this, a perfectly boxed and preserved NES system.



I normally resell these when I find them but am keeping this one as it looks and plays like new with no glitchy cartridge interface. It looks, plays and even smells like it just came off the shelf 25 years ago. It takes a proud spot in my collection of classic video gaming systems and I can’t help but wonder if sitting down there in the dark, along side gaming systems that came out years before, that it doesn’t talk a little bit of smack now and again.

Happy Birthday NES. You forever changed the video gaming landscape for the better.