The Nintendo Entertainment System (often abbreviated as NES), released in Japan as the Family Computer(JP) (abbreviated to Famicom(JP) or FC) and in Korea as Hyundai Comboy (Korean: 현대 컴보이 Hyeondae Keomboi) is an 8-bit video game console produced and distributed by Nintendo. The system has been sold to retailers in most of Asia, North America, Europe, and Australia, and it plays games on interchangeable cartridges that vary by shape depending on the region the system was released in.
The NES helped revitalize the North American video game industry following the video game crash of 1983. The system's use of interchangeable cartridges allowed video game companies other than Nintendo to produce and manufacture games for the system. However, Nintendo would only allow these third party companies to make the games on their terms. Nintendo's use of third party licensing would also be applied to their future consoles.
The NES sold nearly 62 million units sold worldwide. It had been the best-selling Nintendo console of all time until January 31, 2010 when it was overtaken by the Wii. The best-selling game on the console overall is Super Mario Bros., while the best selling non-bundled game is the American Super Mario Bros. 2 and the best-selling third party game is Enix's Dragon Quest III.
Specifications
CPU: 8-bit microprocessor operating at 1.79MHz on PAL systems and 1.66MHz on PAL systems.
Memory: 2 kB main RAM (random-access memory), 2 kB video RAM, 49,128 bytes ROM (read-only memory)
Video: Custom-made picture processing unit (by Ricoh) named RP2C02 (in PAL models, operates at 5.37 MHz) and RP2C07 (in PAL models, operates at 5.32 MHz)
Colour palette of 53 colours (48 colours and 5 greys), 25 colours on one scanline
64 sprites displayed on the screen simultaneously (sprites can be either 8 x 8 pixels or 8 x 16 pixels)
Display resolution is 256 x 240 pixels (effective resolution of 256 x 224 pixels)
Audio: Ricoh RP2A03 on NTSC systems and Ricoh RP2A07 on PAL systems. Has 5 separate audio channels. Two pulse-wave, one triangle-wave, one white-noise and one DPCM channel.