While it may have been comprehensively outsold by the likes of the PS1, Nintendo DS and (most recently) Switch, there's no denying the incredible impact of the Nintendo Entertainment System, a console that turned 40 this year.
Released at a time when the North American market was still reeling from the effects of the 1983 crash, the NES was, in many ways, a risky bet for Nintendo – which, at this point, was still finding its feet outside of Japan.
However, it paid off handsomely – cementing the company's position as one of the leading forces in the video game industry globally, a position it has maintained to the present day.
The Video Game History Foundation has been doing some amazing work this year in celebrating the legacy of the system by speaking to those who made it a success. To round off 2025, VGHF founder Frank Cifaldi has published a short documentary that digs into the genesis and launch of the NES.
Not only does it cover the very early years, when Nintendo attempted to get Atari to license the Family Computer console that would form the basis of the NES (released in Japan in 1983), but the video also looks into internal documents to illustrate how Nintendo's vision for the machine would change over time; at one point, it was envisaged as an educational device.
Ultimately, Cifaldi concludes that the NES is significant due to three key things: the introduction of the D-Pad as standard on a game console (it made its debut on the Donkey Kong Game & Watch handheld in 1982), playing host to the first Super Mario game, and the arrival of "lockout" technology in the form of the CIC chip.
The latter example was directly influenced by the 1983 crash, which resulted from a flood of poor-quality games for Atari's 2600 / VCS console. Nintendo was determined to avoid the same thing happening and therefore introduced a licensing system, which meant that software makers had to purchase the cartridges from Nintendo itself and were limited to the number of games they could release each year. The CIC chip enforced this approach, as it meant that unlicensed games would not run on the NES.
If you can spare 45 minutes this festive season, we highly recommend watching this documentary.