Nostalgic Nintendo Entertainment System

I remember one Sunday back in around U.E. 711563924 plus/minus 10! (back in 1992 June - Aug) when my uncle (my aunt's husband) bought a Nintendo Entertainment System (NES) intending to re-sell it in his store in a far town. Since it was almost dark, he stayed overnight at our place and let my dad and I to test the console that night and the next morning. It was the first time I ever see an NES and play a game on it.

The NES (Asian version).

I was very excited. Since it was the first time I saw a game console, I thought the D-pad (the + shape button -- that is usually use to move around a character or a cursor) is a button to ask for help (red-cross) in case my game avatar is hit (with bullet etc). The first game I played was "The Legend of Kage".

I died a lot. :D

The NES was by today's standard, a child's play but it was a formidable machine back then. It sported a Ricoh's 8-bit processor running at 1.79MHz (for comparison, Samsung Galaxy S II's processor runs more than 500 times faster; no wonder Galaxy S II can run emulators to play NES games) donning 2kB of onboard Random Access Memory (RAM) plus 2kB more for graphics. Yet, it design allows 16kB of memory to come in the game catridge. That means, if your game needs more than 2kB, you (the game developer, not the player) can add some memory module in your game catridge so that your game can use it.

I loved NES on the first sight. After a few years, my parents bought one (in fact, two as the first one was broken after a while) for us mainly because my dad also wanted to play. For many more years, it was our sole mode of entertainment. My mom didn't allow us (my brother and I) to play unless it was long holidays partly because she worried it would harm our eyes (TVs are still with Cathode Ray Tubes not donning LCDs) and partly because she didn't want it to distract us from our education.

I love NES.

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