Nintendo Ent. System

Type: Console
Publisher: Nintendo
Firstly released in: Japan
First release: 1983
Release and compatibility details: Named in Europe and USA as NES (Nintendo Entertainment System), in Japan as Famicom (shorcut for FAMily COMputer). After Japan release in 1983 it was released in USA in October 1985 and 1986 in Europe.

Success and unsuccess:

Most popular years: 1988-1991
Most popular countries: Japan, USA, West Europe
Amount of games in database: 2526 (list)
Amount of music records in database: 945 (list)
Amount of downloadable MOD tunes: 81 (list)
Amount of downloadable MIDI tunes: 230 (list)
Importance on the market in the most popular years: Very high

Characteristics:

Very successful 8-bit console and one of Nintendo's biggest successes ever. This consoles created the famous Mario and Zelda characters and until now was sold more than 50 million consoles and 350 million games.

Hardware:

Processor : 6502 (using a custom Motorola 6502 class), 1.79 Mhz
Display : 256x240
Colors : 52
Colors on screen : 16
Max sprites : 64
Max sprites pr. line : 8
Sprites size : 8x8 or 8x16
Picture Scroll : 2 h.v
RAM : 2 kb
Video RAM : 2 kb

Games and music info:

Most common media for storing games: Cartridge
Average packed game size: 85 kB
Music formats: NSF

Emulation info:

Though it's an 8-bit console, it's not easy to emulate it. That's why there was long time lag of really near-100% emulator, while the SNES emulator ZSNES reached this limit very close already. Also todays emulators are not exactly 100%, but they are very close to it, and also the most problematic game Castlevania 3 is playable with NNNesterJ and FCE Ultra well at the time.

NNNesterJ - Great emulator from Japan (but also in english version :) ) with very few issues left.
Zophar's emulators - Check out the Zophar domain's NES emulators links especially for FCE Ultra, NESten and RockNES, these ones are in fact very good with almost same overall rating, one faster second a bit more accurate.

This emulation info was written on 15.January 2003. (This time is very important, because emulation info very depends on the time it was written - emulators can improve a lot after this time..).