10 Weird NES Facts! [Nintendo Entertainment System] | Nintendrew 

You are talkin about NES in 2022? No way buy a modern console

That was very interesting, but did you know that Super Mario Bros 2 is actually a reskin of Doki Doki Literature Club? 🙃

Moisture in breath… I had a friend named Rocky. We were at his house and couldn’t start Blades Of Steel. I recommend alcohol on a cotton swab. Rocky was like… naw. He put the game under the kitchen faucet and let the water flow. I was doubtful, but Blades Of Steel booted up, and we were having hockey fights in no time.

I know it's common knowledge now, but my brother and I had our minds blown when we accidentally figured out that player 2 can control the duck in Duck Hunt.

The NES' VHS-inspired design is the reason why we have the term "Nintendo tapes".

I'm an old school NES fan who bought my console at the age of 13 back in 1987. I love the system and know a lot about it, but still learned a lot today. Great job!

i dont remeber cd cases being a thing in 1985. so i dont see how they would design the cartridge to conform to that type or size of media storage such as cd cases. just sayin

God, it's crazy how nostalgia works. Just hearing game boy camera music at random just completely threw me into another stage of my life, and everything that came with that.

I grew up when video games first hit the market. I remember the days of the 2600, intellivision and colecovision. My family had the intellivision and I saved up my money to by a vectrex. Playing Super Mario 3 and Zelda on the NES was what kept my attention in my days as a young man. Clearly the titles all look very dated now but back then, it was amazing. Thank you for posting an actual informative video and lighting up the nostalgia in my mind.

I love the bonus at the end. I have one of those SHARP NES TVs out in my garage. I bought it at a garage sale in Sioux Falls SD in 2010 fpr $10. Still works great!

That was the first NES list of this type that didn't repeat the same thing as everyone else. Good job!

Never understood calling the NES versions the "top loader" and a "toaster." *_A toaster is a top loading device._*

10:31 Thanks for the chemistry lesson but here's another interesting fact: This color issue didn't (and doesn't) happen to all models, at some point they changed the composition in the platic, not with the intention of preventing this but because of durability, fixing the coloring issue was just luck.

you could have just said "yeah, its the sunlight that makes it yellow" but you gave the actual in depth explanation and explained it, i love the little bits of above and beyond you put into your videos

Has this been reuploaded? Congratulations on the marriage, and please do more of these videos, I love them!

There's another reason they might be so big: I had a friend that was a toy tester. He got a game to test that had a prototype "save system" built in. At that time, you weren't able to save games at all. It was a large circuit board that actually stuck out a few inches from the top of a smaller cartridge. I wish I could remember the title. It's possible that they thought they'd need all that space.

Well done video. You impressed a still active old fart gamer and actually got me interested in getting various NES hardware again. I was 12 when the NES came out in the United States and consisted of a huge chunk of my fanboy years as a gamer. I went out of my way to like this video and subscribe to this channel because I was so impressed by your knowledge. No joke.

The hidden expansion port has since been used for all sorts of homebrew projects. Google Maps and a Twitter bot for NES were both made this way; pretty mind blowing that internet would even work at all

Congrats on the marriage! Also I love these types of videos, keep it up!

Loved it! Thanks for the material. The NES was my first console ever and played till my fingers hurt. I had calluses on my thumbs from playing super Mario bros.

great video. thanks for making this.

This was incredibly fascinating! I love all the details you're able to discover about things that I would never even think to explore! Thank you for always adding to my ever growing list of obscure game knowledge!

I love these type of informative, educational and entertaining videos. Thank you so much for sharing!

I remember being in a service merchandise in the early '90s and seeing one of those sharp game televisions and it was running Fester's quest as a demo and for years I thought I was having a fever dream because I couldn't find the TV or the game which I was so convinced was a sequel to blaster Master. Years later, thanks to the internet, I discovered both and was glad to know I'm not crazy

Never knew about the famicom converter in some Nes titles! I’ve been collecting for years too!! Now I need to check my nes library lol! So cool! Thanks for the info! Love learning something new about retro gaming!

This was pretty interesting. A lot of good stuff in here. There’s so many weird nes facts, thank you for seeking out some lesser known ones for this video :)

The unused expansion bay will remain as elusive as the Virtual Boys link cable port.

Wow, that was incredibly informative AND deep diving!!! Had no idea that Sharp made TVs with an NES built in!!!

As a kid, I owned the NES game Caveman Games from Data East. I knew it showed 6-player support, but didn't know about the Four Score or other adapters to connect them all at once. So in the case of this game, up to six controls are divided by 3 uses of the 2 natural NES controller ports. Every minigame on Caveman games uses 2 players at a time, but also having multiple rounds like a tournament, such as Clubbing. Players A-B would have one game, then Players C-D, then Players E-F, and winners from those (like B-C) would have a third round. I tested this out around this time last year to figure out how it works. Also, I hope you like the B-C pun I left in there :)

I need more Drew, I’m old and need more videos like this to make me feel I’m back in the early 90’s

First Nintendrew in a bit and damn that new intro theme caught me off guard. Really awesome video, taught me some things I didn't know :O

Got my NES when I was 6 years old. And its so nice that it reached Legendary status so early in its life.

Not sure why RU-vid recommended this but very good video. I loved the NES as a kid.

Its so cool that even today we have stuff we can still learn. Thanks for putting all that work into this video!

The top loader is the version of the NES I grew up playing since that's the one my sister had. It wasn't until maybe the mid 2000s when I saw what the original NES looked like and found the original rectangular controller design weird since it was so different from the dogbone controller I was used to.

Thank you for bringing back some very fond memories of my childhood NES system. As I get closer and closer to the "over the hill" milestone I still remember defeating duckhunt in a basement with a scape-hole window. Never worked in my living room, lol. I remember the dedication to defeating the game back then, coming out on top. I spent untold amounts of my allowance on cheat guides/walkthroughs and have never regretted a single expenditure. The best high was defeating games with a very complex hierarchy like Tex Murphy "Under A Killing Moon". My parents probably still have all those original games, including all of my moist/hot breath corrosion. I think I have a f22 game on the 1.44? diskettes. UAKM was too much fun, playing all the funny cutscenes my childhood brain could replicate, and then when I defeated the game (thanks to a walkthrough)I was like "oh, what do I do now?" My old Pentium 100 (with a de-clock to 66 mhz) was given to my Uncle, and probably scrapped. I will miss that old beast, what with it's separate tray for a CD optical drive. I still get annoyed when an OS takes over 20 seconds to boot, but I remember waiting what felt like 20 minutes for a change of map cutscene to load. Hah, I actually remember being freaked out when my circa-1999 nokia caused those old speakers to spazz out and make very strange noises when I came back from college. Good memories refreshed all thanks to Nintendrew. OH yeah, great "forgotten" info, I don't really need to know it, but appreciate every bit I will remember!

Thanks Drew. Brought back great memories. When I was a kid I went to my cousin's house after school all the time. He had a NES, and I didn't. Good times.

8:43 Just a warning: "The higher percent the better" is true, however *very* high concentration isopropanol (like 97-99%) can damage some plastics. I don't know if the plastic in NES carts is susceptible, but I think it's worth bringing up in case someone is really worried. 91% should be enough--the 9% water content ends up pretty insignificant given how little alcohol you use, and it's also free of dissolved ions.

I remember the controller expansion module, a buddy of mine brought that over so we could play 4 player games. Fun times!

5:51 the purpose was to prevent theft. Back in the days we had a place called block buster. You could rent games for a couple of days or a week. Like a library book. Bad and poor kids like myself who didnt have $60 in 87 to buy a new game would rent the newest games unscrew the game and put some corney sports title in the case and rescrew it and they would never know. The solution to prevent this was to make the new screws to stop us from stealing the boards out amd the tabs was supposed to be "tamper evident." We started melting toothbrushes to make new bits to open the games lol. The 80s was crazy.

This was really fun AND informative! Some great info in here. Awesome stuff!

I bought a 5 screw copy of Wrecking Crew building I had no idea that 5 screw games are worth more than the 3 screw. I saw people asking around $25-$40 for them. But I’m not selling it because it’s a fun little game. Still interesting to know though! Keep up the good work dude!

For #2 I had a bootleg cartridge that was actually 2 cartridges in one. If you separated them the first half worked in a Famicom console but combined they were the same size as a NES cartridge. The bottom half was essentially a Famicom to NES adapter.

I was a 90's kid and grew up around NES and super Nintendo. Loved the video...this info was super fascinating to me 😃

Nice. I knew there were NES carts with Famicom PCBs + adapters, but didn't know about the five screws. I always love hearing the nitty-gritty details of how controllers and stuff work, too. I still remember that Nintendo Power bonus issue all about 4-player NES games.

I have my NES on my desk next to me and I am ready to learn more!

OMG Bible Adventures! My super Christian grandmother knew my brother and I were into Nintendo games and bought us Bible Adventures. I honestly just thought it was a game no one had ever heard of but seeing that cartridge brought back so many memories. I had a blast playing it too.

I had tears in my eyes when I seen that Bible Adventures game my grandmother had got me when I was younger. I used to play hours and hours Gathering animals bringing back to the ark. What Memories

this video was an excellent salve for an otherwise stressful morning. thanks so much! great bits of trivia were learned! I like and subscribe because of this

So when you said the part about the voltage rating bypassing the NES's lockout chip, is that why when I insert reproduction cartridges into my Retron 5 it comes up with a voltage warning? I never understood that, but it makes sense now.

The Famicom yellows too. It’s very easy to get a used Famicom pretty much everywhere in Japan for about $5.00. They are super common and used game shops carry tons of old games, so getting tons of Famicom games is really easy. There is one shop that has a mint condition, sealed copy of Super Mario Bros for $800.00!

AMAZING VIDEO MAN!!! I'm 41, grew up with tail end of Atari and Born into the NES World... U showed me atleast couple things I HAD NO IDEA exsisted!!! I only own around 40-50 NES Games, packed away because I live on couch trying to get my own place while the world is in a Hiccup... So when I get my own place, hopefully this year 2024... I'll DEFINITELY investigate collection now I know what I know now THANKS TO U!! I appreciate ur effort and deep dive into these old worlds, ur one of my Top-3 Gamer Fellas I enjoy watching... Keep up the Awesome Detail Work u provide, Sincerely, Josh A. Cyr (From Maine)

I abused the hell out of my game carts when I was younger. I quickly learned blowing hot breath into it actually yielded better results than simply blowing onto the contacts. That humid air was able to help the contacts, but it definitely did have an effect on my cartridge pins. When I was in my early teens, I had to go at them gently with a scotchbrite pad and give them a well deserved cleaning.

I knew you shouldn't blow in the cartridge. Had a copy of Top Gun: The Second Mission and it corroded. Appreciate you mentioning that, Drew!

I worked for Nintendo in the 90's. After every repair we had to put a red sticker on the NES cover that said "Do not blow in the cartridge". Isopropanol works for cleaning moderately dirty carts, but for the bad ones Nintendo recommended Turtle wax chrome polish. Had to take the game apart and use alcohol to remove the polish afterwards.

Man this is the first time I've ever seen or heard of the Sharp Gaming TV! I WANT!!

Im 42 and have always been an NES person. This video answered alot of questions for me. I now have the NES mini here in Australia

Nintendo and Vincent van Gogh were around at the same time when Nintendo made playing cards , and these cards were somewhat popular amongst artists in Europe , so it is not impossible to imagine that Vincent van Gogh may have played with a Nintendo product.

I just remembered how he looked 4 years ago, our little boy is all grown up Keep up the good work Ps sick beard

Dude! You are a nerd in the greatest sense of the word (and with a dash of hipster). This is great quality obscure knowledge on a pretty niche topic. I just got my NES back after not having had it for some 25 years. I'm enjoying rediscovering my "classical training" -- thanks for helping me with that. Rock on!

this was very informative. didnt know half of the things about the NES system you mentioned but I also knew some things that you spoke on about the games and how to clean them and stuff even before youtube and the internet was available. lol.

I swear I watched this already

Doesn't the "4 Player Game" icon at 13:29 look A LOT like the self-titled album cover of the band Friendship (aka the band that Koji Kondo "took inspiration from" for Super Mario Bros 1 "Underworld" music)? Looks a lot like it to me!

Great walk down memory lane. I'm happy to have grown up in the early days of consoles; from the Atari 2600 to the Playstation to the Xbox

The nostalgia that you unknowingly manifest is very intoxicating one must watch in moderation, for that I am grateful . Namaste , is in order.

Excellent video Drew! I actually learned a few things about the NES!

Huh?, no any mention about nes enhancement chips? Oh well, because most nes games especially those later ones uses enhancement chips to expand the nes ram and rom virtually to exchange data on the fly back and forth in order to allow better graphics and dpcm sound(thus instead using 1bit dpcm to save on space, they could use 4bit adpcm sound instead trough bankswitching), Those enhancement chips also allowed splitting screen scrolling updating entire tile sets and allow roms to be bigger then normal, so despite these are not coprocessors or graphicsl accelerator chips, they just allow better graphics & pcm sound on nes, Also the nes toploader lacks the expansion port,and my complain about those dogbone controllers is albeit cool, they are much smaller and it’s D pad is also very stiff(has nobody ever noticed that????) Other then that you did such good honerable mentions about it. BTW i was back then also very very happy with my nes.

Boy do I miss being a kid in the late 80's and 90's! Blowing in the video games when they quit working ever 10 minutes, "please be kind and rewind", tape players eating the tapes and having to use your finger or a pencil to wind the tap back together, playing with all the stickers that came with blank VHS tapes, stomping/jumping on the floor when your wood floor model tv started getting lines on the picture, your parents making you be the remote and getting up to manually push the buttons on the cable box, no phones or social media just using the sun setting as your "clock" to tell you to go home, etc.

Aaaaah the NES! I was one of the first designers working on NES titles outside of Japan. We actually had to bust the thing open to reverse engineer it, then send Nintndo some games material designed for the systyem to prove to them that we could do the job!

Dude your videos are always keeping me interested in retro games and gaming as a whole! Congrats on getting married man I wish you the best!

I'm kinda shocked no one's made a expansion port for the famicom disk system to the nintendo entertainment system idk if it would be possible at all but it would be cool

so informative! awsome stuff! ty!

I’ve been an avid NES player and I found this video very informing. Thanks!

I prefer to make the comparison that a JPG of the Super Mario Bros title screen takes up around the same size as the actual game itself.

Man NinDrew really knows his Nintendo stuff really well especially with good information to

This is so informational. Thank you for this video.

Just subbed. Been Nintendo since a young boy. Now 43yrs later still a Nintendo fan. Own my original, top loader and Japanese version Famicom. Your videos are great. Very informative. 👊 bump

I remember laughing at an NES game manual when it said the NES used "complex circuitry". I suppose swapping 8bit signatures every frame between the two controller ports to manage four was pretty complex..... By 8bit standards at least.

Dang Drew - we're converging on the same timeline - lucky for you I just got a haircut. Love these facts, man - the animations are a nice touch as well!

I love the toad face in the background. You can tell he’s cultured to have that in his own room.

Kudos! I actually learned some things I wasn't already aware of in this video.

When you brought up the screw counts and how Punch-Out with five screws is really rare I checked to see how many screws mine has. Sadly, three. Oh well.

Thank you all so much for your patience during my recent video break! I promise it was for a good reason. 😉 Stay tuned for some exciting news on an upcoming project, and make sure to turn on notifications!

I enjoyed your video. I grew up in the 80s and while it's nice to look back every once in a while, I certainly don't miss the days when the yellow pages where the closest thing we had to the internet.

Loved the video! I did learn some new things thanks

Why the re upload?

*When The World Needed Him Most... HE RETURNED.*

Another not well known and fun fact.. a large portion of the sounds used in the original NES library were composed of recordings of farts that were slowed down or sped up.. same was used in Super Mario World on the SNES.. example the sound of going through doors in Castles.. that was a recording of someone selfishly ripping a fart into a microphone.. pretty amazing really

Great video! I just subbed. Gotta say, the blowing did work. Looking forward to your other videos Nintendrew!

*tells us this video won't have facts that everybody already knows* *proceeds to talk about the nes top loader* Great job...

I’ve never seen the NES-101 before, and honestly, I would’ve been totally ok with living in ignorance. 😬

It's good to see an interesting fact video that doesn't just reiterate what virtually everyone knows.

Omg your channel makes me happy! Nostalgia!!!!!

What? Going to look at my collection of NES Cartridges tonight & see if any of my games have the Famicom Converter! I can play Famicom games for the NES now?!? Oh this is a huge game changer for me! I have tons for my Game Boy as they were region free, but now I can collect them for my NES too! Dude. Mind Blown!!

I'm just glad I got to grow up during the Atari / NES & SNES eras, I had the most fun. My life was school, sports and gaming. Today gaming is the only thing I do from back in the day so it's fun to relive old games and hear all sorts of history you didn't know about. Sure miss that era.

Wow. Great video. And your space is amazing. But all I could think of was "that must need a lot of dusting!" 😂 Cheers! 🙂

The last thing made for the expansion port was the ENIO Expansion board by Chykn. It allows for Famicom accessories to work on the NES and enables the other sound channel.

Thanks for sharing this information. I grew up on the original NES and some of your info is new to me. I'm curious, were there any original NES games, consoles, accessories, still being made when you were born? I have to go look at some of your other videos now to see if there are answers to questions I didn't know I had. Again, thanks for sharing this.

i could watch retro video game hardware videos all day long. subscribed!

I like that you keep the price stickers and stuff on your games. I do the same and keep it as part of the cart history.