oldThe Nintendo NES revived the games industry after the 1983 crash and became the console that defined modern gaming. It gave birth to Super Mario Bros., The Legend of Zelda and Metroid.
- Maker: Nintendo
- Since: 1983
- Play via: EmulatorJS
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▶NewDoraemon: Giga Zombie no Gyakushuu1990Nintendo NESKart Fighter▶NewKart Fighter1994Nintendo NESvan der Merwe en Boetie▶Newvan der Merwe en Boetie1992Nintendo NES
info onlyRiver City Ransom1989Nintendo NES
info onlySpartan X 21991Nintendo NES
info onlyZombie Nation1990Nintendo NES
info only'89 Dennou Kyuusei Uranai1988Nintendo NES
info only10-Yard Fight1983Nintendo NES
info only1943: The Battle of Midway1987Nintendo NES
info only4 Nin Uchi Mahjong1984Nintendo NES720°info only720°1986Nintendo NES
info only8 Eyes1988Nintendo NES
info onlyAbadox1988Nintendo NES
info onlyAbarenbou Tengu1990Nintendo NESAdian no Tsueinfo onlyAdian no Tsue1986Nintendo NES
info onlyAdventure Island1986Nintendo NES
info onlyAdventure Island 31992Nintendo NES
info onlyAdventure Island II1991Nintendo NES
info onlyAdventures in the Magic Kingdom1990Nintendo NES
info onlyAdventures of Dino Riki1987Nintendo NES
info onlyAdventures of Lolo1989Nintendo NES
info onlyAdventures of Lolo 21990Nintendo NES
info onlyAdventures of Lolo 31990Nintendo NES
info onlyAir Fortress1987Nintendo NES
info onlyAirwolf1988Nintendo NESAkagawa Jirō no Yūrei Resshainfo onlyAkagawa Jirō no Yūrei Ressha1991Nintendo NES
info onlyAkira1988Nintendo NESAkū Senki Raijininfo onlyAkū Senki Raijin1988Nintendo NESAkuma-kuninfo onlyAkuma-kun1989Nintendo NES
info onlyAladdin1995Nintendo NES
info onlyAlfred Chicken1993Nintendo NES
info onlyAlien 31992Nintendo NES
info onlyAll-Pro Basketball1989Nintendo NES
info onlyAlpha Mission1986Nintendo NES
info onlyAmagon1988Nintendo NESAmerica Daitōryō Senkyoinfo onlyAmerica Daitōryō Senkyo1988Nintendo NES
info onlyAmerican Dream1989Nintendo NESAnger Bird 2info onlyAnger Bird 22012Nintendo NESNintendo released the Family Computer — Famicom — in Japan on 15 July 1983. The redesigned Nintendo Entertainment System reached a test market in New York in October 1985 and spread across North America and Europe over the following two years. Its Ricoh 2A03 chip was a modified MOS 6502 running at about 1.79 MHz with the sound hardware built into the same package: two pulse channels, a triangle, a noise channel and a crude sample channel. The picture unit produced a 256x240 image with 25 colours on screen drawn from a fixed palette of 54, and could show 64 sprites, though only eight on any one scan line — which is why NES games flicker when the screen gets busy.
The cartridge did half the work
What kept the NES alive for a decade was that the cartridge could contain extra hardware. Memory mappers such as the MMC1 and MMC3 added bank switching, extra RAM and scan-line counters, so a 1990 release could do things the 1983 machine plainly could not. Compare the tight single-screen design of Balloon Fight or Excitebike with the scrolling, multi-world scale of Super Mario Bros. 3 or Castlevania III: Dracula's Curse. The library set the shape of several genres at once: Metroid and Blaster Master for exploration, Mega Man 2 and Contra for action, Final Fantasy and Dragon Quest for the console RPG, Gradius and Life Force for shooters, and River City Ransom for the brawler. Nintendo also enforced a licensing regime through a lockout chip and the Seal of Quality, a direct response to the flood of poor software that had wrecked the American market in 1983.
Playing NES games in your browser
Emulation runs inside the page here — no installer, no download. But be aware of what this platform's catalogue actually is: of the 994 NES entries, the large majority are games Nintendo and its partners still sell through Virtual Console-style re-releases and subscription services, so we do not host them. Those pages are reference profiles with links to official stores. Only a handful of unlicensed and regional titles, such as Kart Fighter, are playable directly.