One of the most successful consoles of all time.

Nintendo released the Nintendo Entertainment System 25 years ago today in the US. Here’s a scan of that famous console itself.

I first played a NES in 1986 or 1987, likely with Super Mario Bros. as my first game (as described here). What an amazing experience it was. To say that the NES defined video gaming for my generation is almost an understatement. From 1986-1990, the term “video game” was synonymous with “Nintendo” for kids in the US. From their perspective, there was no other.

Unlike many kids my age, I was aware of what had come before (Atari), and that made the NES all the more amazing. Happy 25th birthday, NES. My generation worships you.

Discussion Topic of the Week: How did you feel when you played a NES game for the first time? Tell us when/where it happened and describe the episode.

In October 1985, Nintendo released the Nintendo Entertainment System (NES) in the United States. 25 years later, I took one apart for the wood-grained glory that is my “workbench series” of tech autopsies (this is my 11th entry). It’s up now on PC World.com.

Back in 2008, I dismantled the NES’s Japanese counterpart, the Nintendo Famicom (the NES’s Japanese counterpart), if you’re curious to see that. There’s a full list of my workbench teardowns below.

I hope you enjoy it. When you’re done, feel free to share your fondest NES memories in the comments below.

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Here are my previous workbench teardowns: Atari 1040STf, Atari 800, Commodore Amiga 1000, Commodore 64, Nintendo Game Boy, Nintendo Famicom, Apple IIc, IBM Model M Keyboard, TRS-80 Model 100, and Macintosh Portable.

10 years ago today, Apple released the Mac OS X Public Beta. It was the general public’s first chance to experience the new OS and the commercial debut of the software (a previous release, confusingly named “OS X Server,” was based on a pre-OS X prototype called Rhapsody).

The Public Beta sold for $29.95, and Apple offered that amount off the purchase of OS X 10.0 for those who bought the Beta.

I’ve always been a fan of OS X, and this anniversary got me wondering how development on this very innovative OS started. After some digging, I wrote a brief history on the origins of OS X for Macworld. I was fortunate to have the help of Avie Tevanian, former VP of Software Engineering at Apple (1997-2006), as a reference to help me get some points straight.

While I was at it, I also wrote a shorter piece about some of the differences between the Public Beta and Snow Leopard (the most recent version of OS X).

What are your thoughts on OS X? Do you use it? Did you use it? Let us know in the comments.

Super Mario Bros. turned 25 years old today.

I first played this NES masterpiece when I was about six years old — around late 1986 or early 1987. I remember visiting the house of my brother’s friend, venturing upstairs and seeing a futuristic grey box attached to his TV set. There, on the screen, unfolded an astoundingly magical, enchanting, mysterious, and captivating world of mushrooms, flying turtles, and flowers that imbued your character with the power of fire.

What enchanted me the most (aside from the fantastically whimsical setting) was the fact that Nintendo had packed the game with secrets like invisible blocks, hidden extra men, and — my god — warp zones. Us kids had even heard rumors of the Minus World, which prompted joyful quests to uncover every mystery of the game.

Before the NES, video games to me meant Atari 800 and 2600, which I had seen my older brother playing throughout my early youth. I loved them, sure, but Super Mario Bros. simply blew my mind. It was nothing, and I mean nothing, like that which had come before. SMB elevated video games to an entirely new plane of existence in terms of its worldview and philosophy of play. For the first time, I truly felt like I was visiting another land — and living out an alternate life — in a video game.

For folks born after 1990 or so, what I’ve written above may seem like a load of hyper-inflated flowery language. But it’s very hard to exaggerate the impact that Super Mario Bros. — a game that sold 40 million copies — had on the video game industry, on the cultural world at large, and on the lives of an entire generation. It was that important.

You Tell Me

So now I turn to you. What are your memories of Super Mario Bros.? When did you first play the game and how did you feel about it?

25 years ago today, Nintendo released Super Mario Bros. for the Famicom in Japan. In honor of this anniversary, I decided to dive into the depths of Super Mario lore and legend.

I surfaced clutching 13 examples of Mario-related weirdness, which I conveniently packaged in a slideshow format for Technologizer. The result is Super Mario Oddities, a gallery in the same vein as my Game Boy Oddities piece from last year. I hope you enjoy it.

The Internet’s first search engine, Archie, launched 20 years ago today. To celebrate this occasion, I decided to look back at the early days of many search engines (mostly web) of the past 20 years. The resulting slideshow is up on PC World.com for all to see. I hope you enjoy it.

Ten years ago this month, Apple shipped the Power Mac G4 Cube, a unique computer that fared poorly in the marketplace but captured the imaginations of many computer enthusiasts. Naturally, I warmed up my dexterous typing fingers and wrote something about this anniversary. Well, two somethings, in fact, and they’re both up on Macworld.com today.

The first, “The Cube at 10: Why Apple’s Eye-Catching Desktop Flopped,” is an exploration of reasons why the Cube fared so poorly sales-wise.

The second, “Apple’s Cube Was Ahead of Its Time,” compares and contrasts the G4 Cube and the Mac Mini, exploring in particular why the Mini was successful when the Cube was not.

I’d like to thank my editor at Macworld, Philip Michaels, who always does an excellent job of distilling my work into crystal clear prose.

I Wanted One

On a personal note, when Apple announced the G4 Cube in 2000, I thought it was amazing and I immediately wanted one. Although I’d traditionally been a PC-clone user, I had been following Apple news closely since the return of Steve Jobs in 1996.

Of course, I couldn’t afford a Cube, so I simply pined away and read about others’ Cube experiences online. I remember the “cracks” issue being a fiasco in the news after the Cube’s release (one my articles discusses that issue), which seemed embarrassing for Apple.

Overall, I’m glad I didn’t buy one, because they were very expensive. I’m lucky I only had a credit card with a $200 limit (Amazingly low, isn’t it? That was just before banks started throwing high-APR credit at everyone and their brother. Now I can’t get them to stop raising my limit.) I still don’t own a Cube, so if anyone wants to donate one to the cause, I’d be willing to listen.

Anyway, I hope you enjoy the articles. Feel free to share your G4 Cube memories below.

Many computer operating systems throughout history have shipped with at least one free game — Solitaire and Minesweeper are some of the most famous examples. Knowing this, I thought I’d take a stroll through history and examine other OS pack-in games.

I ended up with an amusing collection of over twenty games from 1971 to the present. The resulting gallery is up now on Technologizer. I hope you enjoy it.

Commodore first shipped the legendary Amiga 1000 in July of 1985 — twenty-five years ago. In honor of the Amiga’s birthday, I did what comes natural to Benjs of all sorts: I took one apart. And I did it for PC World, making this the tenth entry in my “workbench series” of tech autopsies.

Giving the Amiga 1000 its place in the limelight is only fair because I took apart its arch-nemesis, the Atari 1040STf, back in March (the ST series also turned 25 this year).

I hope you enjoy it. When you’re done, I encourage you — no, urge you — to share your fondest Amiga memories in the comments below.

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Here are my previous workbench teardowns, if you’re interested: Atari 1040STf, Atari 800, Commodore 64, Nintendo Game Boy, Nintendo Famicom, Apple IIc, IBM Model M Keyboard, TRS-80 Model 100, and Macintosh Portable.

In honor of Pac-Man’s 30th anniversary, Google has created its most amazing Google Doodle yet: a playable browser-based version of Pac-Man in the usual Google logo space. They did an excellent job, complete with authentic graphics, sounds, and scoring.

When you first go to Google, you’ll see a static image. Wait a few seconds and the page will reload with a hybrid JavaScript/Flash application (it uses Flash for sound) that brings the Google logo to life. Excellent work, Google!

P.S. If anyone figures out how to save a playable version of the game, let me know. I haven’t had to time to dig into it yet.