NES game

NES games are furniture items in the first-generation Animal Crossing games that can be interacted with to play an emulated Nintendo Entertainment System or Famicom game. In and, the items appear as either Famicom consoles with the cartridge of its game inserted, or a Famicom with a Disk System attached; in  and , the items appear as an NES console with the box of its game set on top of it. The games available differ between games, as do the methods to obtain them.

In addition to the playable NES games, in all first-generation Animal Crossing games there is an empty (Disk System in  and ) item available from Crazy Redd's that, when interacted with, brings up a dialog that says, "I want to play my NES, but I don't have any software." Additionally, in and, on April Fool's Day, Tortimer gives the player , an item that looks like an NES game, but when interacted with, brings up a dialog that says, "Heh heh hehhh hoorf!! April Fool! Super Tortimer isn't an NES game!".

Controls
Below is a table of how the NES controller's buttons are mapped to the Nintendo 64 and GameCube controllers:

An NES game can be exited by pressing the L, R, and Z buttons simultaneously.

Save data
In, , and , after the player stops playing an NES game, the game saves the high score (or saved game progress in the case of ) to the Nintendo GameCube Memory Card, taking up one Block in a separate save file from the town data.

NES data cannot be saved if the Memory Card containing the town's data is not inserted into the GameCube.

Advance Play
In and, the player can choose the "Advance Play" option when interacting with an NES game to download the game to a Game Boy Advance that is connected to the Nintendo GameCube. The game can then be played on the GBA until it is turned off, even if it is disconnected from the GameCube. The GBA can be reconnected to the GameCube to save the NES data. When playing on the GBA, the graphics are compressed to fit within the GBA's much lower vertical resolution compared to the NES. Multiplayer modes are not available during Advance Play, and, Legend of Zelda, , and cannot be played via Advance Play as they are too large to be stored in the Game Boy Advance's RAM.

Unused functionality of the NES item
In 2018 it was discovered that when the empty item is interacted with, the game scans the Memory Card (Controller Pak in ) for NES ROM data. NES ROMs, including those not already in the game, can be patched and placed on a Memory Card, where they can be loaded and played by interacting with the item. Interacting with the item with multiple NES ROMs on the Memory Card displays unique text that is normally unused: "Should I play my NES software?", followed by a list of games.

In only, if the Controller Pak has NES ROM data on it, selecting the "てがみをほぜんしたい" ("Save a letter") option at the post office brings up a normally unused menu titled "コントローラパックのきろくをけします" ("Erase Controller Pack Records"), where the NES game data can be viewed and deleted. In the iQue Player version, the Chinese title text for the menu is corrupted and the original Japanese text is left untranslated for all other text in the menu.

In
A total of seven Famicom games appear in :

All of the items have the same name, ファミコン (Famicom), and can only be distinguished by their cartridges. All of the games' cartridge colors correspond to the actual cartridge colors from their respective games' original releases. Additionally, all seven games feature the pulse line labels included on the first fourteen first-party Famicom titles, even though Clu Clu Land and Balloon Fight were released after the design had been retired.

Clu Clu Land, Pinball, and Golf can be obtained from Crazy Redd's Furniture Emporium, and Balloon Fight, Donkey Kong, DK Jr MATH, and Tennis can be obtained from the raffle. Additionally, Donkey Kong can also be obtained from the villager who appears outside the player's house on their birthday, and Balloon Fight can be obtained in a letter from Jingle on December 25 if the player received at least one gift from him the previous night before midnight and played when the clock hit midnight.

In
A total of 19 Famicom games appear in :

All seven games from return, alongside 12 new games. All of the items now have unique names, and the labels on the cartridges of Clu Clu Land and Pinball are changed. Clu Clu Land's label is changed from the pulse line to a graphic to represent the original Clu Clu Land cartridge more accurately. Pinball's label is changed from a white pulse line on a yellow background to a yellow pulse line on a gray background, despite the former being more accurate to the actual Pinball cartridge.

The seven Famicom games from now all have different methods to obtain them. Clu Clu Land, Pinball, and Golf are available via secret codes that could be generated on the game's official website, while Balloon Fight, Donkey Kong, DK Jr MATH, and Tennis are available via Animal Island. Donkey Kong and Clu Clu Land can still be obtained from a villager on the player's birthday and Jingle on December 25, respectively.

For the new items, Punchout, Clu Clu Land D, and Donkey Kong Jr are available from Crazy Redd's Furniture Emporium; Baseball, Donkey Kong 3, and Gomoku Narabe are available via the raffle; Mahjong is available via a secret code that could be generated on the game's official website; Wario's Wood is available via Animal Island; Ice Climber was available via the Data Moving Service; and Super Mario Bros was available via a Famitsu sweepstakes. Legend of Zelda and Mario Bros are unobtainable.

In
A total of 19 NES games appear in :

All games from return, with the exceptions of  and, which are replaced with Excitebike and Soccer, due to the former two games only releasing in Japan. Additionally, all the items are now modeled after NES consoles rather than Famicoms.

The methods to obtain the NES games are changed again in. Clu Clu Land, Golf, and Pinball are available from Crazy Redd's Furniture Emporium; Balloon Fight, DK Jr MATH, Donkey Kong, Excitebike, and Tennis are available from the raffle; Baseball and Wario's Woods are available via Animal Island; Clu Clu Land D, Donkey Kong 3, Donkey Kong Jr, Punchout, and Soccer are available via secret codes that could be generated on the game's official website; Ice Climber and Mario Bros are available via scanning their respective Animal Crossing-e cards. Legend of Zelda and Super Mario Bros are unobtainable.

In
A total of 15 NES games appear in :

All games return from, with the exception of , , , and. The items retain their North American designs.

The methods to obtain the NES games in are identical to.

Within the data of version 1.01 of are references to NES games that do not appear in the game: Famicom Grand Prix: F-1 Race, Wrecking Crew, VS. Excitebike, Kaettekita Mario Bros., Dr. Mario, and Zelda II: The Adventure of Link.

Forbidden Four
The Forbidden Four is the colloquial name given to the, , , and items in  and  due to the nature of their availability. All of these games do not appear in the catalog, are specifically excluded from the secret code system in, and are completely removed in. Of the Forbidden Four, only Legend of Zelda is truly unobtainable in either version through official means. All of the others are or were obtainable in some official form:

Item list
The following are lists of all NES games, alongside the NES item and Super Tortimer, in each of the first-generation games.