25 years of NES

Twenty-five years ago, Nintendo launched the Nintendo Entertainment System (lovingly known as the NES) in the United States. The iconic gray-and-black 8-bit console (which sold 61.9 million units worldwide) pushed boundaries in both hardware and software design and served as a rallying point for the suffering video game industry in the post-Atari era.

In honor of this anniversary, let's take a peek inside the console that first brought Mario, Zelda, and Metroid to life.

This is the NES. On the left we see the main console, which measures roughly 10 inches by 8 inches by 3.5 inches in size. To its right sits the now-iconic control pad, which plugs into the console via one of two black connectors on the right side of the console's face. The front of the NES also contains two switches (power on/off and reset) and a hinged door that conceals a slot for game cartridges.

The NES in Japan (known as the Famicom) received accessories like a disk drive, 3D glasses, a modem, and a keyboard/computer kit, so Nintendo likely had those possibilities in mind for the NES.