This old Nintendo console is ugly and rectangular, but there’s a very specific reason for that

Article written by: Regis Monterrin

In her white and gray dress, Nintendo’s NES is recognizable at first glance. Rather bulky and suffering from blinking button syndrome (due to a connector that cannot read cartridges), the console has won the admiration of several generations of gamers thanks to an eclectic yet comprehensive game library.

Many of us remember without emotion our first digital adventures in Mario, Kirby, DuckTales, and even Mega Man. But like many previous projects The fate of the NES could have been very different. Especially if we had bought the Japanese model…

High-performance and cheap are the leitmotif of the Japanese version of the NES

Today, the vast majority of electronic devices have the same shape from one continent to another. Whether we are European, American or Japanese, we find it strange that the latest iPhone or PlayStation does not have the same appearance. Due to cost and homogeneity, manufacturers now produce the same model for everyone! In the 1980s this was not the norm and it was not uncommon for consoles to differ from one geographical region to another, often with a different name. So someone we know It does not carry this form and this nomination at all in Japan under the name NES (for the Nintendo Entertainment System). In the Land of the Rising Sun, the machine is called Famicom, a diminutive name from its official name, Family Computer. In short, a computer for the whole family!

Besides that name, you only have to look at its carcass to understand. It has absolutely nothing to do with the Western model. It’s white and red, its controllers (ultra short) are inseparable from the system, and it has a somewhat childish design. This console is the result of a request made by the president of Nintendo to one of his engineers, Masayuki Uemura. The latter, who passed away in December 2021, was in charge of one of the company’s research and development laboratories.

One evening in November 1981, while wondering about his future (blame it on projects that ended in failure), he received a call from Nintendo president Hiroshi Yamauchi. At first I was surprised by this late phone call, He listened carefully to his boss’s request and almost rolled his eyes. “I was responsible for the second Research and Development department (R&D 2), which had a decreasing workforce at that time.” he explained during an interview. “I had a lot of free time and was able to return home quite early. He then explained to me that the next big hit would be video games to be played on the living room television screen and asked if my department could develop these games. He no longer wanted the games to be integrated (as was the case with electronic games), but instead wanted the console to use cartridges, a system that was gaining popularity at the time. He also added that he wanted a machine that the competition had not been able to match for three years. »

Famicom will be born based on this phone call. The challenge was daunting, but it allowed Masayuki Uemura’s team to rebuild its image. To meet your boss’s demands still, the engineer had to prioritize power and price over the console’s appearance. This explains the cheap color, somewhat fragile plastic and the presence of non-removable controllers. Yes, we can’t have everything.

How did the Japanese Famicom become the Western NES?

In Japan, the Famicom was such a huge success that Nintendo quickly considered it an international release, first in the United States and then in Europe. The first discussions about the Western model took place between Nintendo in Japan and its American subsidiary Nintendo of America. Undisputed, It was unthinkable that Americans would launch such a machine with this name.. Everything had to change!

Then American engineers, in a frenzy of grandeur, that the console should be closer to the spirit of family computers started to spread in the market. They envisioned a prototype called AVS (for Advanced Video System), which looked like a cassette recorder and included a keyboard, joystick, and fun controllers. A hybrid object that certainly did not convince the public during its presentation at the big CES winter show in 1985. Nintendo had to react…

Masayuki Uemura heard about the popular failure of AVS. At the request of his management, he thought of a look that would suit a Western audience. The engineer then imagined a rectangular box with the cartridges protected by a lid that could be opened and closed. A kind of A very ingenious video recorder… linked to the weather! He explained: “The humidity is high in Japan, so there isn’t a lot of static electricity. But if you go to America, especially somewhere like Texas, it’s very dry, so there’s a lot of static. That’s why we wanted to make sure kids didn’t touch the connection ports. That’s why the cartridge got bigger, because that’s how the product was designed. »

You are not dreaming! If Nintendo’s NES has this form here, This is, first and foremost, a security issue… itself is due to weather conditions in some Western countries. Masayuki Uemura designed the look of the console and Nintendo of America through the team of American designer Lance Barr, then imagined a visual (with its front diode, white/grey suit, cosmetic ventilation grilles…) blending into homes. This name (Nintendo Entertainment System in good French) was chosen to stand out from the later emergence of family computers.

Unlike the Super Nintendo, Europe takes back the American model of the consoleThis explains why we too had the pleasure of having fun with the NES and its famous wing! We were pretty lucky we didn’t get the Japanese model, which was a bit cheap, although there wasn’t any appeal between us. NES was much more stylish with its cover and stylish design! Can’t find it?