Talk:Nintendo Entertainment System

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• Nearly all of the 'Pulse Line' Famicom games.jpg

Participate in the deletion discussion at the nomination page. —Community Tech bot (talk) 18:54, 29 September 2025 (UTC)

Incorrect attribution to invention of cross-shaped D-pad?

Quote from the Controllers section of this article:

"... the controllers use the cross-shaped D-pad, designed by Nintendo employee Gunpei Yokoi for Nintendo Game & Watch systems..."

There seem to be multiple issues with this. First, the page linked for the D-pad cites a Nintendo employee named Ichiro Shirai. It's source is the US Patent granted to Nintendo for this design, with Shirai listed as the inventor. The source used for the NES article's claim, 2001's The Ultimate History of Video Games: The Story Behind the Craze that Touched our Lives and Changed the World by Steven L. Kent, page 279, simply says the following:

"For the Famicom, Nintendo designed a new kind of controller that was derived from the +-shaped direction pad that its lead engineer, Gumpei Yokoi, developed in the late 1970s for the Game & Watch LCD games. Somewhat similar in concept to the disk on the Intellivision controller, the Famicom controller allowed players to maneuver characters by pressing on the + pad with their left thumb."

There is no source cited for this within the book, and the first usage of the +-shaped D-pad wasn't until the 1982 port of Donkey Kong, not the 1970's. Because of these issues, I do not believe it's is an accurate source on this matter. It's possible I'm incorrect and missing proper proof of Yokoi inventing this D-pad, but everything I've seen points to Shirai. I believe Yokoi's name should be replaced with Shirai's, and the source for this statement replaced with the Patent. Zelleryz (talk) 05:22, 9 October 2025 (UTC)

Kent is pretty reliable, but nobody is perfect. The patent is probably not good to trust implicitly, either, because it is possible that the person who worked for Nintendo that filed the patent was the lawyer, not the engineer. More importantly it is a WP:PRIMARY source. So maybe we should do a bit more research. Also, it is definitely possible that something designed in the late 70s didn't see the market until the early 80s. The D-pad article cites a different patent that William F. Palisek from Tiger Electronics was actually the inventor. Until we have something better, Kent is generally not bad. He shouldn't have to cite a source in his book. He was known to have done a lot of interviews and research if I'm not mistaken. Andre🚐 05:53, 9 October 2025 (UTC)

Fair response, thanks for the reply. I'll keep looking into it! Zelleryz (talk) 06:07, 9 October 2025 (UTC)

Pronounced ness

This usable? It appears to be a primary source. Kailash29792 (talk) 14:51, 28 October 2025 (UTC)

It's an acceptable source, they are reporting on what Nintendo has documented as to the pronunciation, and EG is a reliable source. Masem (t) 15:04, 28 October 2025 (UTC)

Also I’m recalling a Nintendo direct where they pronounced it as “en-ee-ess” when announcing Nintendo World Championships: NES Edition for the Switch. So we should probably include both pronunciations since they both have official backing. —pythoncoder (talk | contribs) 23:34, 18 November 2025 (UTC)

40th anniversary convention panel

Found this forum post discussing what I believe is this video. Further down the thread there are the obligatory cheapshots at Wikipedia, but there are a number of corrections to the traditional narratives that appear to be in order. Once I watch the primary source for myself, I’ll take a look to see if there are any corrections that should be made due to previously missing or incorrect info. —pythoncoder (talk | contribs) 23:40, 18 November 2025 (UTC)