Jeremy Parish

NES Works 1989: Peak NES

Added 2024-06-05 11:59:53 +0000 UTC

It's a Very Special Episode of NES Works this week as we hit August 1989 and perhaps the single most seismic month in the entire history of video games... or at least since Famicom, SG-1000, and MSX all landed in Japan at the same time. But even August 1989 puts July 1983 to shame, really, with the launch of four new game consoles all at once! The NES has been running the tables to this point, but can its luck hold out? How will Game Boy fare against the technologically superior Lynx? Will TurboGrafx-16 dampen the NES's glow the way PC Engine had in Japan?

We know the answer to these questions now, of course. But at the time, it could have gone any way. This episode touches on those questions, but it also celebrates all the NES has done to this point while attempting to convey just how pervasive Nintendo had become in youth pop culture as of 1989. If you were there, you remember. And if you weren't, well, here's this episode. Enjoy.

Beginning next week, we dust off our boots, climb back on the Sega horse, and embark on the road to Genesis.