Nintendo Entertainment System

The Nintendo Entertainment System is a video game console released in August 1985 (US) by Nintendo. Originally it shipped with two hand controllers and the Super Mario game; special packs also included and a [Zapper Light Gun]? and the Duck Hunt game and/or a [Power Pad]? floor controller.

Tech specs

Specs:

• CPU: Nintendo 2A03 8 bit processor based on MOS Technologies 6502 core, running at 1.79MHz, with four tone generators, a DAC, and a restricted DMA controller on-die
• Main RAM: 2 KB
• Palette: 48 colors and 5 grays in base palette; red, green, and blue guns can be individually darkened somewhat on a particular scanline
• Onscreen colors: 25 colors per scanline (background color + 4 sets of 3 tile colors + 4 sets of 3 sprite colors)
• Sprite sizes: 8x8 and 8x16 pixels
• Maximum onscreen sprites: 64
• Maximum number of sprite pixels on one scanline: 64, dropping out the lowest-priority sprites on overflow
• Video memory: PPU contains 2 KB of tile and attribute RAM, 256 bytes of sprite position RAM, and 28 bytes of palette RAM (allowing for selection of background color); 8 KB of tile pattern ROM on cartridge (bankswitchable to up to 512 KB)
• Scrolling layers: 1 per scanline
• Resolution: Most games used 256x240 pixels; for additional video memory bandwidth.
• Expansion port on the bottom right hand side used originally for the Famicom Disk System, but piracy concerns kept this device from being released in the US
• 2 seven pin controller ports in the front of the machine

Publishers have released over 700 titles but no longer produce new commercial games. However, there is a strong independent community producing demo?s and games for the NES. (Learn more about the "NESdev" community [here].)