Play NES Games Online

177 games playable in your browser · Also known as Famicom, Nintendo

The Famicom launched in Japan in 1983 and reached the West as the Nintendo Entertainment System two years later, pulling the console market out of the crater left by the 1983 crash. Its 8-bit hardware gave developers a limited palette, four sound channels and very little memory — constraints that forced an economy of design still studied today.

Nearly every long-running franchise starts here: Super Mario Bros., The Legend of Zelda, Metroid, Mega Man, Final Fantasy, Castlevania and Contra all shipped on this machine, alongside a deep bench of Japanese-only releases that never had an official Western run.