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One of my proudest accomplishments was working on this two-day pop-up museum exhibit that we ran in October. The video game museum in my head has rotating exhibits like this: a visually striking display that tells a specific story that makes you think about games in a new way.
Specifically, what I wanted to express here was that the "Nintendo Entertainment System," if you knew where to look, literally never went away. There have been new commercial games written for the hardware every year since its debut 35 years ago. No other system can claim this.
Official support stopped around 1995 as the major markets moved on to new systems like the PlayStation. But in some countries you couldn't officially buy these new systems. Enter the "Famiclone" - a knock-off NES that was really, really cheap to manufacture.
Popular "Famiclone" software was, of course, pirated versions of actual commercial NES games, but new software was made to keep up with the times. Can't buy a PlayStation and Resident Evil? No problem, the "PolyStation" has you covered. 
New software keeps getting written, primarily for the Russian and Chinese markets, through the early 2000s. Then, in 2003, the hardware patents for the Famicom expire, meaning that "Famiclones" can legally be sold in the U.S. - along with brand new games.
This spawns the very popular "plug and play" market: self-contained systems that plug right into your TV and play games. Card and casino games, with official branding like Golden Nugget and Hoyle, flood toy aisles. All of these have brand new NES games on them, on NES hardware.
This crash-bangs right into the beginning of the video game nostalgia market, where 30-somethings want to revisit the games of their youth. When Atari, Intellivision and Coleco want to get back on video game shelves, they use "Famiclone" tech, because it's cheap and mature!
So we now have this incredibly odd situation where the rightsholders to classic games are paying developers in China to make brand new ports for the NES - hardware that is itself now "classic" - because the "Famiclone" has become the de facto cheap plug & play tech.
I want to pause here and repeat myself: around 2004-2006 or so, notable video game companies were making brand new NES games. This part of NES history is mostly hidden - even in my weird social circles, most people don't know that the first Atari Flashback is literally an NES.
Even Konami got in on the act! These early 2000s plug & plays include some classic Konami NES software - and also brand new games. Konami released Frogger for the NES about a decade after the system died! But we don't acknowledge that because its form-factor isn't a cartridge.
Some companies cashing in on video game nostalgia didn't even bother licensing actual old games - they made new, old games! Here's one of many examples of plug & plays crammed full of new, incredibly basic arcade-style games, running on stock (or slightly modified) NES hardware.
Meanwhile, as the plug & play market is happening, the fan-led homebrew community has been evolving and maturing. Around 2007 or so we start seeing brand new NES games - sold on actual NES cartridges!
And from here it never stops. New plug & play software is kind of rare now, but new homebrew cartridges are coming out faster than ever. And then it kind of came full circle - the original licensed games started coming back officially on reissued cartridges!
But when I say it never stops I mean it never. Stops. Just within the past few months, Retro-bit released its "Go Retro!" portable Famiclone, with a brand new, officially licensed game - a new NES version of Tetris! Released in *2018*!
This isn't some weird knockoff product. The Tetris Company commissioned a brand new NES game this year. The Famiclone "NES-on-a-chip" is still a viable product for toy companies. There are still NES systems being sold on shelves. You can go buy an NES at Bed Bath & Beyond!
I took this picture at OfficeMax in September. Those top two shelves? NES systems. All of them. That's the same brand-new Frogger port from 2005, still being sold.
Anyway if you enjoy video game history, why not throw a few bucks to the non-profit that I run? Every dollar goes toward making sure that historians have what they need to bring video game history to life. We're opening a library this year! gamehistory.org/donate
Most of these ROMs are *not* digitally preserved. My not-so-secret reason for tweeting about these things lately is to drum up interest from people who have the skills and patience to extract the data. It's a fascinating part of history.
If you're interested in trying some of these out, there is an ongoing project to organize and archive versions of this software called "Project PLUG 'N PLAY." These games sometimes appear (usually modified) on cartridges, which are way easier to dump. bootleg.games/BGC_Forum/inde…
