while throwing a suprise party (read: excuse to drink my wieght in vodka) I too discovered the wonder that is Party City. Truly a life changing experience. and you gotta love the abundance of plastic crowns.

mmmmmm… plastic crowns….

Chestnuts roasted by Donny Wahlbergs left nipple @ 03/05/2003 10:12 AM

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PS. The link to the nintendo cereal article isn’t working either. X-E is full of lies and false hope… similar to Nintendo Power. Maybe XE ISSSS Nintendo Power?!?

Chestnuts roasted by chad @ 03/05/2003 11:11 AM

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Wait… in the "Howard and Nester" comic, if Nester is supposed to be playing a Nintendo Entertainment System, why is there a cartridge visible sticking out of the top of the system… like the Sega Master System but not the NES, which you front-loaded the cartridge into and then closed the door before playing? Well, okay, Nester can’t be playing the obviously superior Sega Master System, since the Sega Master System was black (sucka). I suppose Nester might be playing a Famicom, the Japanese 8-bit Nintendo system upon which the NES was based… but why? Unless, of course, this comic is actually translated from Japanese, if there was a Japanese equivalent to Nintendo Power… the art looks vaguely Japanese, but the panel design is wrong if it were Japanese, since most manga panels are taller than panels in American comics to accomodate vertical-text-oriented speech ballons. (In Japanese, the panels would be right-to-left, but this comic could be flipped.)

Most likely explanation… they just sent a script to a commercial comic artist who didn’t even know what a NES looked like.

Chestnuts roasted by Steve Brandon @ 03/05/2003 3:10 PM

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Don’t forget about the Power Team on Video Power!
http://www.nesplayer.com/television/vidpower_files/power.htm

Chestnuts roasted by Famicon @ 03/05/2003 4:41 PM

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I hope you all (where you all = Steve Brandon) realize that there was a NES system that was a top loader. I’m not sure what it’s name is, but it does exist, my friend still uses his.

They also made Atari for Girls, it was pink, and supposedly worked better than the normal version. I’m not sure how, but mebbe the pink had something to do with it.

Chestnuts roasted by Ryan @ 03/05/2003 6:32 PM

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I remember the toploading NES. It was ghastly looking. The worst thing about it was that if your game started to crap out on you, you couldn’t just open up the little door and blow on it, magically rendering it serviceable again. Does anyone else question the logistics of that?

Chestnuts roasted by Jeremy @ 03/05/2003 8:06 PM

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I’d buy an XE shirt in a heart beat. My hand cramps up from writing "x-entertainment" on every bathroom wall in every bar I go to. Yes, I vandalize in the name of Matt.

Chestnuts roasted by Jeremy @ 03/05/2003 8:55 PM

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Along with the X-E shirt, how about a genuine X-E knock-off Pokemon figure? Yes, it can in the shape of a peanut.

Chestnuts roasted by !@#$%^&*()~ @ 03/05/2003 10:12 PM

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For those of you who don’t know about the origins of NES/Famicom (Family Computer) please gather ’round, all will be explained by the Flying Dutchman.

Magnavox Odyssey (1972) was the first removable cartidge game console; it sucked and had no microprocessor, only diodes and transistors. It couldn’t produce backgrounds, so you had to put an overlay on your television screen. Fairchild Channel F was released in 1976. In 1977, Atari released cx2600. Coleco followed up with ColecoVision in 1982. In 1983, Family Computer was released (the Japanese edition of the NES, called Famicom for short) hit Japan. The system was ugly. Really ugly. You see, back then companies wanted to stress educational possibilities of video games, so they called them "computers". This worked until Mystique released Custer’s Revenge for the Atari Video Computer System, cx2600, and people could have General George Custer rape a Native American women tied to a pole. PlayAround re-released Custer’s as General Retreat/Westward Ho later after Mystique went belly up (and one has to wonder how a company that made shitty "adult" games for Atari, meaning about 4KB total available memory on the cartridge so nothing was very clear, could fail), which allowed women to play as the Native American women. It was then that people realized video game consoles were solely for recreation; many people also realized that spending $50 on a stupid pr0n game for Atari was the biggest waste of money ever as you couldn’t tell what was going on in them. Back to Famicom, if I ever found one I would get a hammer and send it to hell. eBay search or GIS for Famicom or Nintendo Family Computer and see what I mean. It was top loading, and the games were about half the size of US games, because the actual boards inside the games are small compared to use cart sizes. The controllers on the original Famicom were hardwired to the system; they couldn’t be disconnected and you couldn’t use any accessories like the then not-yet-existent Power Pad or Power Glove. The game carts were basically the same size as Sega Genesis cart, so this where the confusion is coming in. The system was redesigned and re-released in 1993 as the sexy top loader most Americans are familiar with. The top loading NES is worth quite a bit of money now, as they are pretty rare. You cannot use a Famicom on a US television set, so don’t bother buying one unless you plan to modify it. Thus you are unable to buy a Famicom version 2 and pass it off as a top loading Nintendo Entertainment System.

The games were also different for each system (aside from the obvious language difference), Famicom used 60 pins, while the US carts were 72 pin connections (to console). So, you will also need an adaptor to play the games on your US NES. You are probably asking, but where do you get one of these "adaptors"? Ebay has them, but you might already have one and not even know it. Some older games like Excite Bike, Stack Up, and Hogan’s Alley may feel heavier than a "normal" cartridge. This is a good sign, unless you filled them with sand or something, then it would a good sign that you are frigging retarded. If you don’t care about the cart, crack it open (I mean unscrew, not bust it open like a coconut; you will need a 3.8mm security screwdriver bit) and you may see that there are two boards in the cart, connected by an adaptor of some sort. This is the 60 to 72 pin adaptor. Nintendo kind of rushed production, and instead of making new boards for US NES games, just "adapted" some of the Famicom ones. You can remove the adaptor and use it to play Famicom games on your 72-pin US NES system.

A note of warning, I don’t advise you to open or unscrew anything unless you know what you are doing. There are inherent risks to such undertakings and you may not only ruin your cart, you may ruin your NES and other games. This has been verified as being authentic; and the adaptor is guaranteed to work as it is made by Nintendo specifically to run 60-pin games using a 72-pin connection. As always, opening/servicing any part of a system or game may void your manufacturer’s warranty.

So in conclusion, there was a top loading Nintendo console in existence in 1988; only it wasn’t the NES, it was Famicom. Hope this clears everything up for those of you who were/are confused.

Chestnuts roasted by Gary Coleman S+1LL pWNz j00!!1! @ 03/05/2003 11:54 PM

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AIEEE!

Chestnuts roasted by dollarstore @ 03/07/2003 8:26 PM

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ALSO: that site PROVES that there WAS a top loading american NES before the ‘redesign’ in 93′. just take a gander at http://www.nesretro.com/machines/NESOrig.jpg">THIS. i’m not sure if this was official or anything, but it’s there nonetheless.

Chestnuts roasted by evin @ 03/09/2003 5:55 AM

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