Nintendo Entertainment System(NES)
Company: Nintendo of America(NA), Nintendo of Japan(Japan)(System known as Famicom in Japan)
Released: 1985(US)
Lifespan: 1985-1994(US)
Processor: 8-Bit

Ahh, the old classic Nintendo Entertainment system. Nintendo did great with this system and it had a 10 year life span from 1985-1994. Nintendo spent a lot of money marketing for the system and it easily destroyed the competition such as the Sega Master System, and Atari 7600. Of course, Nintendo monopolized the market from 1985-1990, using illegal practices such as making companies signing contracts where they can't make games for any of the other consoles, but only for the NES.

Many great games got there start off the old NES, such as the Mega Man games, the Final Fantasy series started here too, as did the Dragon Warrior/Quest games, but of course there was also a large library of crappy NES games with such horrible releases as Advanced Dungeons and Dragons: Heroes of the Lance, Bebe's Kids, and the Barbie Doll games. But the greatest series of games for the NES had to be the Mario games, because Super Mario Bros. 3 went on to become the best selling video game of all time.

The NES couldn't pull off the greatest graphics, as a matter of fact the Master System indeed pull off better graphics than the NES too. Most of the games had horrible sprites, and lots of flickering, but as year's passed new techniques were discovered to get pass the limited capabilities of the NES, and produce games with simply amazing graphics.

Sound was a problem for the NES, because most of the games for the NES featured horrible midi music samples, most of the background music is horrible and sounds like the stuff you hear off that hamster dance web page. But some games did manage to come by this and pull off some great tunes like the Mario Bros. games, Final Fantasy, and Tetris.

The video game market was dead before the release of the NES, the Atari basically killed off the market, and the only striving part of it was the arcade, and Nintendo took a chance and delivered a system that came out with shining colors. And if it weren't for the release of the NES, who knows where the home console video game market would be today.

All right, now that I'm done with my review of the NES, I can go ahead and get down to the final ratings rundown.

Graphics capabilities: 7
Sound Capabilities: 5
Variety of games: 10
3rd Party Support: 10

Overall: 9