The Nintendo means something more than boring write-ups about being the first
8-bit system and the system that launched
Mario as a household name. It is the system that has defined a
generation and brought brothers and sisters and best friends together in a way that no other form of
entertainment ever has.
Imagine a person of my generation (born in the late 70s/early 80s) during his first week at college. He walks down one of the hallways in his dorm and hears the Zelda theme. He walks through the open door and discovers that there is some guy with an old Nintendo and a stack of cartridges. He scans them, rattling off names like Gradius, Contra, Kid Icarus, and Metroid. And he realizes that even though he's from a different end of the country and lived in the mountains instead of the city, he realizes that they both shared moments with their brothers and friends, late at night, working together to defeat Bowser, reading Nintendo Power, and saving the world of Hyrule.