About the unit: The most popular game system ever! The NES came out in Japan in 1983(4), (around the same time that the Colecovision, Atari 5200,and Vectrex came out.) but the NES did not come to the USA until 1986. It used The NES raster (sprite) based graphics, like most other systems, except the Vectrex that used vector based graphics. The NES also had a higher output resolution abolishing the blocky graphics of systems like the Atari 2600. It had a (now modest) 32 color palatte, (4 per sprite at a time). This game system was the first system to bring arcade games to the masses. Its popularity (unlike that of the Apple II's) lasted over 10 years! This spured development of a redesigned version of the NES with a newer NES. It had a sleek design with an SNESish look and included a more comfortable controller, thanks to it's a rounded edges. The NES's popularity pretty much died in the mid 1990's, thanks to the arrival of 32-bit game systems, like the Sega Saturn, but its imprint on the gaming community will not vanish anytime soon.