Today – June 15th – is Famicom‘s 20th anniversary, as it was made obvious by Nintendo and the release of the new GBA SP weird-famicom-color edition. Famicom – short for Family Computer – was the first “third generation” game console. It was later released on the western world as the NES – Nintendo Entertainment System – and the rest, like they say, is history.

I remember back in the day when all my neighbours had this weird, toy-looking game console – they were all of Japanese heritage and had relatives in Japan, from where they could send the latest electronic gadgets years before it hit the western market – while I was the only one around with a local clone of the american NES console. We had such a mixed console market that we needed all kinds of 60-72 pins adapters to be able to exchange games with each other. Those were the days.

Update: here’s a really special link about this date, via rednuht.org.