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[[File:Nes.png|thumb|250px|The Nintendo Entertainment System (NES)]]The '''[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nintendo_Entertainment_System Nintendo Entertainment System]''' (NES) is an 8-bit, third-generation console released in 1983 in Japan, where it was known as the '''Family Computer''' or '''Famicom'''.
The earliest games released on the Famicom suffered from significant hardware constraints caused by the way the Famicom was designed: limitations for memory addressing (which meant games had a low maximal ROM size), how the graphics are loaded onscreen, just the native sound processing is available, no saving... To solve this problem, Nintendo came up with two solutions: * The '''Family Computer Disk System ''' (FDS) is , a Japan-only add-on which played games from a special Nintendo-only magnetic disk format strongly reminiscent of floppy disks of the time.It offered a slightly higher data storage, and slightly enhanced sound processing. It also had a microphone never found anywhere else. There were plans to release it in the US, however since the NES itself had its launch delayed to late 1985, and the mapper solution obsoleted it, the add-on was never exported and some of its exclusives were ported as regular cartridge releases.* '''Memory Management Controllers''' (MMC), also known colloquially as '''mappers'''. They solved every single problem above with bankswitching for much more data, onboard FM audio chips, and much more. Most games released after 1986 that really pushed the system to its limits used mappers. A similar solution was used for the Game Boy.
Emulation for the NES is robust, with several high quality emulators for various systems.
==Emulation Issues==
===Mappers===
A key difference between many emulators nowadays is how many mappers they support.
* '''No Mapper:''' Supported on every emulator even official Nintendo emulators.
* '''Official Mappers''' (UNROM, AOROM, MMC1-6): Most emulators, as well as Nintendo's Virtual Console (but not their GBA emulators) will cover these.
* '''Third Party Mappers:''' Since they were not allowed outside Japan, many games redid their soundtracks that took advantage of FM sound offered by these. A lot of fan emulators worth their salt will cover these. With those you cover the entire officially licensed library.
* '''Unlicensed Mappers:''' Mostly used by pirate cartridges, often long past the console's official commercial lifespan. Only the more accurate emulators (Mesen, FCEUX) will even bother covering them in a whack-a-mole quest for every new one discovered to this very day. If you're not interested in '''unlicensed''' Chinese or Russian bootlegs or newer unofficial NES demakes, it isn't a problem.
The NES ROM information isn't sufficient to describe the cartridge and emulate it, so emulators have to include the layout and behavior of these mappers in their code, while the ROM header tells the emulator which mapper to choose. So unlike with other consoles, no matter how a NES emulator is accurate, it still can't run newly discovered ROM dumps from cartridges that used an original mapper, hence claims some emulators are "inaccurate" because their unlicensed NES rom support is inevitably complete and still a constant WIP.
===Overscan===
