Written by John Scalzo  on October 02, 2006

Special: To steal another 80s turn of phrase: I have the power!

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As a whole, the gaming industry has always been focused with "What's Next". Magazine covers scream about how they have the latest "world exclusive, hands-on preview" and then we do it all while virtually ignoring anything that was released more than three weeks. And then we do it all again next month. But with over 35 years of history behind it, there are a huge number of important games and dates. Take October 18 for example.

On October 18, 1985 the Nintendo Entertainment System was released in America. It's been 21 years (that's right, the NES is legal) since the Super Mario Bros., R.O.B., the Duck Hunt dog and the Ice Climbers first graced American soil. So all throughout the month of October, Gaming Target will be feeding your NES addiction with all of the good, the bad and the ugly that went into Nintendo's little gray box.

The Nintendo Entertainment System that debuted in America was a bit different from its Japanese forebear and any other game machine that came before it. For starters, it had a language all its own. It was always referred to as a system, or a control deck or a console; never as a "video game machine". Cartridges became "game paks", but even Nintendo dropped that one after a while. And then there was the Trojan horse, the thing that made the NES more than a mere video game: R.O.B., the Robotic Operating Buddy. R.O.B. convinced retailers that the NES could be more than a passing fad. They believed it was a bona fide piece of electronics. And Nintendo did everything they could to push that belief along.

For example, the NES was redesigned to be frontloading, so as to resemble a VCR. The original Famicom (Japanese NES) was red and white with hardwired controllers, making it look very much like a toy. But the NES was redesigned in a two-tone gray color scheme as a simple box (with removable controllers), so it looked like a piece of consumer electronics. The only remaining bits of red were featured on the now iconic Nintendo logo.

But the most lasting image of the NES wasn't the case design or even a game. The most lasting image was the rain dance people had to perform to get their favorite game working. Dance Dance Revolution's got nothing on some of the gestures needed to appease the game gods in the NES days. All done in an effort to avoid the dreaded green screen:

Blowing into the game pak with varying levels of force.

Shaking the game pak with all your might.

Dropping it on the ground from a certain height.

Waving it back and forth like a sacred object.

Pushing the game all the way to the left (and then the right) of the system.

But in 21 years, the NES has never fully gone away. An active collector's scene, the (slightly illegal) emulation scene and new ports for the GBA have kept the NES library in the spotlight all this time. Clothes bearing classic images from the NES days have spread like wildfire in high schools and colleges across the country. And next month the system will be reborn in its most visible way yet when the Wii Virtual Console will bring the NES essentials to everyone.

So before you start lining up for your next-generation system of choice, think back to a time when the whole world was playing with power. And then think about how some of us still are. I hope you'll join us.