This is the end, my only friend: NES support dropped

After a whopping and unbelievable life-span – at least in today’s fast moving technology world – of 22 years, the Nintendo Entertainment System, better known as NES, the console is being retired. Effective as of October 31 this year, the NES is officially history and no longer recognized by Nintendo, the company who invented the 8-bit video game console. No other console ever released after the NES has had a life-span as long as this.

Here comes the night: the legendary console NES is finally retired, after it lived for 22 years

Released in USA in 1985 and a year later in Europe, the device mostly gave birth to the gaming generation as we know it today. Other competitors were in the market, like Sega and it’s Master System and later Mega Drive, but they could not make it to the top. Sega also tried to beat Nintendo in the handheld game with their Game Gear, it was too expensive for most people. So the Game Boy stayed on top. The NES has featured a lot of popular and legendary titles that spawned healthy and also popular series available today.

The titles that are clearly and vivdly left behind in the hard drive of my brain from the era of the NES are these one’s here.

Super Mario Bros. 3

Not only is my favorite game on the console, it was also the one that sold the most copies, and the number of available levels superseded the number of Super Mario World on the Super Nintendo. It is one of the most complex games ever written for the console and stood out by far at the time of release. The shot above is the map of World 1 (of 8 ) on which Mario could move. After a while you eventually knew that you could find two out of the available three Warp Whistles in this world. The third one was to be found in the Desert Land, which was World 2. When used wisely, all three whistles could take you to World 8 and skip all other worlds. But that really ruined the fun, there were so many cool things in the game. World 5 is definitely the best of them all.

Insert Hyrule Overture Theme here

So there’s Princess Zelda, and this one evil guy. Evil guy wants to spread evil over the world, needs princess to do so. But he didn’t think that Link, the hero, would emerge. And not only once, time and time again would Link come to make his way through dungeons and castles, to save the day and make the princess fall in love with him. In terms of complexity: This was the most complex one at the time, the top of technology. This game has made its way into the history books for having been such a great puzzle to be solved, never before seen in a game. You could not progress into other parts of the map until you got a certain item, and so on. This title spawned an unforgettable series about the Legend Of Zelda, all of them were just incredible. Twilight Princess is where we are now on the Wii, and again, it’s mind-blowing.

Plumber and princess? Could work you know

So there is this guy Bowser, some sort of mutated turtle which only does evil, kidnaps a princess (but he doesn’t want to spread evil over the world like in Zelda – he only actually wants the princess). And there’s this Mario guy with his red overall and a cap and his initial M on it. He thinks that the princess is hot, and wants to rescue her. So he embarks on a journey to do so. By doing so, he gave us the most memorable video game tune there has ever been. The Mario Theme became famous with this one. But noy only that: Mario is one of the most recognizable characters there has ever been in the digital world, his journeys to rescue his potential girlfriend also unforgotten. Bowser is at it again in Super Mario Galaxy for the Wii, which will be in the shelves in mid November.

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There were certainly many other games I played, but these three are the ones I will most definitely remember.

This is the end, my only friend. Take care, good night, fare well.