The Nintendo Entertainment System. It’s the best selling video console of all time and the platform for some classic titles: The Legend of Zelda, Kung-Fu Master, Metroid, Super Mario Bros and Pinball. But according to today’s teenagers, it “looks like a brick from the 1920s”.
In a video that has been viewed over 4.5 million times since it was uploaded on 9 September, youngsters – aged between 15 and 19 – struggled to plug the NES in and boot it up, before they were advised of the age-old trick of blowing on the game cartridge to remove all the dust, spider webs and general debris that might be nestling in there.
Traversing the sparse, green first level of Super Mario Bros, one gamer remarks that she “feels like she’s in Rekjavik”, while another comments on the console’s snazzy, beige colour scheme.
“Reaction videos” have been hugely popular on YouTube for a while. The Fine Brothers’ React YouTube channel also includes teenagers bemused by the internet in the ‘90s, and playing Mike Tyson’s Punch-Up! (on NES). From the other end of the telescope the channel also shows older people taking on Oculus Rift. The verdict? “It looks like something you wear for the Ebola crisis.”
What are your memories of the NES? Let us know in the thread below.
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