A top-loader NES and a standard NES.

  NES stands for Nintendo Entertainment System, which is only slightly more descriptive than its original name in Japan, Family Computer (abbreviated Famicom). The larger ROM size, more powerful CPU, and better graphics made it a huge success with game developers, and those games made the system a huge success in the market. The controller was also special; while the competition had gamers controlling their game with a one-button joystick or a telephone keypad, Nintendo established the standard with the NES controller, with its simple but versatile D-pad, Start, Select, A, and B. (Select would prove to be used very infrequently, as has been the case with Select buttons on every game console since.)

Left to right: NES Max, NES Advantage,
Dogbone controller, standard controller,
Arkanoid Vaus controller.

  One of my favorites, the Arkanoid Vaus controller, is just a potentiometer and one fire button. It controls the movement of the ship from left to right not unlike the paddle controller for the Atari 2600. This accessory is as valuable to the game Arkanoid as the stylus is to many Nintendo DS games. It may be possible to play with standard controls, but it is much harder and clumsier.

  There are so many other NES accessories that I do not have much credible information on, so I will only say what I know. If anyone has links to resources on some of the odder NES accessories, E-mail me. One example is R.O.B. the Robot. This robot interfaced with only two games for the NES, and not very well. For more information on R.O.B. see this site.

  The American NES came in two versions. The first version, which loaded from the front, was around for the vast majority of the NES's life. Games loaded from the front into a tray, which then snapped down into place, resting against a sideways cartridge slot inside. The only problem with this slot is that it is very fragile, and all it takes is one bent pin to stop games from loading. Also, dirt on the connectors would cause just enough resistance to cause the game to fail the NES's finicky bootstrap process; often times, if the problem was slight enough you would see the game load fine but the system would still "blink" on and off trying to reboot the game. My advice to anyone who still owns an NES: Look before you... insert! I have been playing the same NES that I got in 1990, and I had never had any major problems with my original connector. It was flawless, thanks to my due care (not for any lack of use; I played it frequently). However just a few years ago I bought some cheap games on eBay, and I didn't bother to clean one of them before I inserted it. If I had, I might have noticed a piece of carpet fuzz that was stuck on the connector, but I only noticed that after I had inserted the cartridge and irreparably damaged my connector.

  Fear not, if this story sounds familiar to you! There is an easy answer to this problem. It seems that the design of the connector was good enough that it can be replaced with no solder; you just snap in a new one. For reasons unknown to me, Lik-Sang does not sell these connectors (possibly they ran out of stock and never re-ordered). However, they are readily available on eBay. Don't pay extra for "gold" or "silver" or "copper" connectors - they are all made of materials that have sufficient conductivity to work, and if anything, gold, silver, and copper are more flimsy and corrosive, so you're better off with one made of steel (as I believe mine is).

  An alternative, which is very collector-friendly, is the revised top-loader NES, released in 1993. As you can see, I own both - I play my front-loader more frequently, but I would be no NES fan without my top-loader! The controller included with it is shaped like a dog bone, thus its eternal nickname, but because of its hard, convex buttons, I find it much less comfortable than the standard controller. One annoying problem with the top-loader is its lack of composite A/V out jacks, it only has an RF jack. There is an A/V mod that will get them back. I performed this mod on my top loader and it works great; the picture quality is so much better, even for the NES.

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  First, I built the SNES-PC interface (see SNES page for details, plans from the PSXPad website) and installed the PSXPad drivers. Then, I built a converter that goes from the NES to the SNES (since both controllers use the same circuitry, you can do this - see here). The only problem with this converter is that the remaining buttons from the SNES controller register as pressed by default, so you have to make sure they are not mapped to anything. This only works with the PSXPad interface, not the Super SmartJoy. It is important to note that in my testing, my parallel port did not supply exactly 5 volts, so the SNES controller worked, but the NES controller didn't. When I connected the power leads to a USB port (see my Saturn adapter for details) the problem was solved and most NES controllers work fine. Unfortunately, the interface does not support the Power Pad, Zapper, or Vaus controller.

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