Platform: Nintendo Entertainment System

There are two different candidates for the video game console with the longest lifespan, from official introduction to discontinuation, and which one holds the distinction depends on one's metrics.

In terms of support from its original developer, the longest-lasting video game console is the Famicom, the Japanese version of the Nintendo Entertainment System. The Famicom was introduced in 1983 and remained on store shelves until 2003, lasting twenty years on the market.

However, when counting support from third party manufacturers, the distinction instead goes to the Sega Master System. While Sega incrementally discontinued the device between 1991 and 1994 depending on the region, Brazilian manufacturer Tectoy received a license from Sega to continue manufacturing clones of the Master System due to its high popularity in Brazil. These clone consoles continue to be manufactured in the present day, decades after the original Master System's launch in 1985.

Popular conceptions about Nintendo's release history in Europe claim that their hardware was never released in the former Eastern Bloc until the 21st century. Rather, these countries instead saw the proliferation of various clone consoles called "Famiclones", such as the Dendy (a Taiwanese-built bootleg that achieved widespread popularity in the Commonwealth of Independent States, made up of the ex-republics of the former Soviet Union) and the Pegasus (which became as popular in Poland as the Dendy did in Eastern Europe). However, while Famiclones did indeed dominate the Eastern European gaming market during the 1990s, Nintendo was not only aware of this, but actively attempted to halt the spread of bootlegs in these regions in favor of officially sanctioned products.

In 1994, Nintendo made a deal with Steepler, the Dendy's distributor in Eastern Europe, to permit continued sale of the Dendy in exchange for equal distribution of the Super Nintendo Entertainment System and Game Boy in the Commonwealth of Independent States; official Russian releases of these systems even included Dendy stickers on the packaging to reflect the arrangement. Meanwhile, in various other parts of the former Eastern Bloc, Nintendo made deals with other third-party distributors; among others, the NES, SNES, and Game Boy saw official releases in Poland, Hungary, and the former territories of Yugoslavia and Czechoslovakia during 1993–1994.

In a rough time span from 1987 to 1988, a commercial for the Nintendo Entertainment System - often colloquially referred to as either "Scary Nintendo Commercial" or "We Are Nintendo, You Cannot Beat Us" - was aired on Australian television by Mattel, the region's Nintendo distributor at the time. The commercial featured primitive CGI renditions of antagonists from different NES games (Smick from Gyromite, Bowser and Lakitu from Super Mario Bros., and the laughing scent hound from Duck Hunt, led by an original character resembling Max Headroom, a dystopian TV character who was being used to market Coca-Cola at the time) mocking the viewer with the phrase "you cannot beat us", set to the ominous castle music from Super Mario Bros.

This commercial has sustained a decent viral popularity, often being featured on listicles and review videos related to bizarre 1980s or Nintendo commercials, but it is not as well known that the advert was part of a larger Nintendo campaign, and that "you cannot beat us" is a variation on another, more frequently-used Nintendo slogan from the country - "it can't be beaten!" This phrase was used in a series of significantly less frightening live-action commercials showing children playing the games while doing imitations of the voice from the CGI commercial, winning, shouting "Beat 'cha!", and then having a hazard from the game enter their room (a tennis ball while playing Tennis, a martial artist while playing Kung Fu, and a generic effect where their chair blasts into the sky for Super Mario Bros.) while a filtered voice announces "We are Nintendo, we do not like losing!"

Multiple early "black box" NES releases' cartridges produced during the console's US launch in Winter 1985 didn't use NES ROM chips, but rather Famicom ROM chips with a built-in converter. The 15 NES launch titles, and the only games known to have these chips, are:

•10-Yard Fight
•Baseball
•Clu Clu Land
•Duck Hunt
•Excitebike
•Golf
•Gyromite
•Hogan's Alley
•Ice Climber
•Kung Fu
•Pinball
•Stack-Up
•Tennis
•Wild Gunman
•Wrecking Crew

All of these games would eventually be reprinted with regular NES chips.

Shortly after the Famicom's launch in 1983, Atari approached Nintendo offering to distribute the system outside of Japan as the Nintendo Enhanced Video System. Negotiations for the arrangement stalled when Atari saw a demonstration for the Coleco Adam home computer system that used the ColecoVision port of Donkey Kong as a demo title. Because Atari previously gained the exclusive PC port rights to the arcade game, they assumed that Nintendo was also working with Coleco behind their backs. By the time the misunderstanding was cleared up, the North American video game industry had crashed and Ray Kassar had stepped down as CEO of Atari, causing the agreement to be called off entirely. The Famicom wouldn't reach international shores until 1985, when Nintendo began distributing a revised version in North America themselves as the Nintendo Entertainment System.

Both the NES and Famicom saw official releases in British Hong Kong, but the region received the NES first despite it being a later hardware revision of the Famicom. Because of this, the Hong Konger Famicom was itself marketed as an upgraded model despite the opposite being true. A switch was also added to the back of the system that toggles the Famicom's output between PAL 50Hz and PAL 60Hz outputs.

In 2018, rapper Soulja Boy attempted to sell his own line of video game consoles, called the SouljaGame line, sold for $149.99 for a console and $99.99 for a handheld. Advertising claimed that the consoles would be compatible with a variety of consoles' games, including modern platforms like the PlayStation Vita, Nintendo 3DS, and Nintendo Switch. They obviously did not have such compatibility, and were rather a generic retro emulator console one could find on small business-oriented retail websites such as Wish and AliExpress loaded with pirated and modified games sold at a markup. Game libraries featured included the Neo Geo, NES, SNES, Game Boy, Game Boy Color, Game Boy Advance, Sega Genesis, Sega Master System, Sega Game Gear, and PlayStation. The only difference from these pre-existing consoles is a photograph of Soulja Boy printed onto the box. He would eventually stop selling SouljaGame consoles, with the website for the console redirecting to Nintendo's 3DS website.

Despite its large grip in the US, the Nintendo Entertainment System struggled to gain footing in the British market due to botched marketing from Mattel, stiff competition from an already-established Sega, and microcomputers that had well-renowned games as cheap as £1.99. The console's fortunes in the region would turn with the release of a bundle containing the Teenage Mutant Hero Turtles video game which, despite Nintendo of America's objection to it, would go on to increase sales of the console by 2,000 percent and establish Nintendo as a player in the UK gaming market.

In the mid 1980's, Nintendo began producing Famicom Disk Writer Kiosks in Japan where a customer could pay ¥500 yen (roughly $5 US dollars) as opposed to ¥2600 yen (roughly $26) for a game and have the game's data written onto a blank cartridge, and replace that game with another game whenever they wanted for ¥500, as an alternative to renting video games which is prohibited in Japan. The Kiosk played a 6 minute demo reel featuring three original music tracks and a short remix of the "Ground Theme" from Super Mario Bros., and cutscenes primarily featuring Mario and Luigi (and a brief appearance by two unknown characters) demonstrating the transfer process using updated assets from Super Mario Bros.

The light gun was called "The Gun" or "Beam Gun" and looks like a revolver gun in Japan. Outside of Japan, it was renamed "NES Zapper" and redesigned to look like a futuristic gun, rather than a real gun. Then later, another futuristic gun called "Zapper" was dyed orange to tone down the gun look for all versions.

Nintendo released the Famicom Titler, a Famicom variant console manufactured by Sharp, exclusively in Japan, which could record gameplay footage. The console could edit the footage, add subtitles and record narration using an in-built microphone. The console also featured S-Video instead of RF Output which the normal Famicom had, produce footage in RGB color, and connect to other recording devices.

Nintendo created a hands-free controller for the NES, which was intended for quadriplegic or others with physically-debilitating conditions. The controller would be strapped to the person's chest and the user would use a straw and joystick for the controls; For D-Pad movement, the player would use their chin to move a cupped joystick, and for the A and B buttons, the player would "blow" or "suck" through the straw piece.
The development of the controller was sparked by a letter from a mother of a handicapped girl requesting a controller that her daughter could use to "play the video games she loved." The development project took two years until it was finally released in April 1989, selling more than 100 units since then.
A number of the controllers were also present during the first Nintendo World Championship, for players that required it.

When the NES was first released in North America in 1985, it was only possible to purchase it from a few stores in New York and Los Angeles. This came soon after the great video game crash of 1983.

People expressing interest in the console wrote to Nintendo of America who provided them with information packs about the console, the games and peripherals that were available, and the then only three stores in North America which offered mail orders for the console.

For creating the animation for the show Robot Chicken, Dillon Markey, one of the show's stop-motion animators, uses a modified NES Power Glove to operate the stop-motion equipment to create the sketches.

The Famicom comes built in with the 2A03 chip, and has five audio channels: two square waves, one triangle wave, one noise generator, and one digital sample (DPCM) channel. On top of this, six expansions were created by both Nintendo and third parties. They are:

• Famicom Disk System sound: adds an extra channel with custom wavetable capabilities. (Example: Zelda, Metroid, etc. Most but not all Disk System games)
• Nintendo MMC5: Adds two square waves identical to the 2A03 square waves and a PCM channel. This is the only expansion that the international NES could use. (Example: US/European Castlevania III)
• Konami VRC6: Adds two square waves but has 8 duty cycles (voices) instead of the standard 4. Also adds a sawtooth wave. (Example: Akumajou Densetsu (Japanese Castlevania III)
• Konami VRC7: Adds six FM channels with 15 built-in patches (instruments) and the ability to create 64 unique patches. (Example: Langrage Point)
• Namco 163: Adds up to eight channels with definable waves. (Example: Digital Devil Story: Megami Tensei II)
• Sunsoft 5B: Adds 3 50% pulse waves (stuck on one voice). Can be manipulated to generate noise, sawtooth, or triangle waves. (Example: Gimmick!)

The NES light zapper used a complex program in order to detect a hit. First, the screen would go black. If the zapper's light sensor didn't detect any light, it went onto the next step. The screen then displayed a white square where the target was. If the gun detected the square, then it was registered as a hit. If it failed one of the tests, it was a miss.

In the film Ghostbusters II, the Ghostbusters used a modified NES Advantage controller to guide the Statue of Liberty through New York.

Actor and martial artist Jackie Chan had once endorsed a Chinese Famicom (NES) clone console called the "Little Tyrant", produced by the company of the same name (known in English as Subor). The console was marketed as a "learning machine" to avoid China's ban on video game consoles at the time.

Nintendo had strict licensing policies for the NES as a way to encourage quality over quantity, in hopes of avoiding the fate of Atari during the video game crash of 1983. Third parties were limited to releasing 5 titles per year for the NES, all titles had to be reviewed by Nintendo before they would be licensed, and the console had a system to lock out unauthorized games that did not contain the necessary patented chip as a way to enforce Nintendo's control.

A combination of third-party developer pushback, legal challenges, and competition from other console manufacturers such as Sega eventually forced them to relax their policies.

The first production builds of the Famicom had different controllers. The original controllers featured rubber squares buttons. These controllers were reworked due to their weak lockout and soft buttons that could be worn down. Future Famicom controllers had buttons that were round and hard, instead of square and rubbery.