An Ode To Nintendo Text 8-Bit The very first videogame console I ever owned was a Famicom (Family Computer) which was the original Japanese version of NES (Nintendo Entertainment System). At that time I did not have many cartridges, just a few popular and easy-to-get ones like Super Mario Bros and Legend of Zelda. Of all the people I knew as a child, my cousin was a real videogames fanatic (and he still is, after all these years), he can stay up all night to play games and I have to say his skills are really good. He was also the first person around who owned a NES; however, comparing to Famicom’s red and gold colours and its simple design, I thought my cousin’s NES and cartridges were dull and boring to look at. The most amazing thing of Famicom was its add-on component called Famicom Disk System (FDS), on which not only cartridge games could be played but also games in 3-inch floppy disks format. It meant games now could be supported with better graphics and richer content (as you could have more than 1 disk for each game). Most importantly: games could now be copied and shared among friends since the cartridge games could be literally sliced into portions and saved onto disks. Not long after the release of FDS, apart from serious gamers or collectors, no one was buying the original cartridges anymore; we simply brought some blank floppy disks to local games shops for “dubbing”. This marked the up-coming rise of the Hacked-Copy (Disk)System such as Game Doctor, Goldfinger and UFO. 16-Bit What dominant my high school era was Super Famicom (SNES) with its various button actions. I remembered there was a rich classmate who lived close to the school. We used to spend a lot of time in his place during lunch break or after school - playing videogames and smoking cigarettes on his balcony, enjoying the unlimited supplies of soda and other soft drinks brought on by his maids. Meanwhile, there were other (even better) videogame consoles in the market. Examples were Sega’s Megadrive (Genesis), NEC’s PC Engine (TurboGrafx-16, the first console that came with a CD-ROM Drive!), and other decent games like R-Type on PC Engine, or Sonic The Hedgehog on Megadrive. However, my eyes were still on the Super Famicom, maybe because Super Mario Bros 3 was the best game in the world to me at that time, or maybe, I was merely attracted by the candy colours of the buttons on the joypad - the blue, the red, the yellow and the green. 32-Bit+ After Super Famicon, there were N64, Gamecube, the new Nintendo Revolution as well as other consoles like Sony’s Playstation or Microsoft’s Xbox. Do I still enjoy playing videogames? Yes, I do. I love Katamari Damacy and We Love Katamari on Playstation 2 - they’re the best games in the world to me now. What I truly appreciate is the simpleness of the game (you just have to roll around) and the vivid colours of the characters. Simple as that, is what all videogames should be. So while we are waiting for technically astonishing Revolution (edit: now named as Wii), perhaps we can expect a little more. Maybe Katamari on Revolution or a Famicom colourway are on their way, just like what they did with the Gameboy Micro. It would be fun. References http://www.nintendo.com/ http://www.classicgaming.com/museum/ http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nintendo_Entertainment_System/ Credits Sleepatwork for Gamepaused Text edited by Jennx