• Hey Guest. Check out your NeoGAF Wrapped 2025 results here!

NES or N-E-S?

Always said NES like Ness, heard a few time N-E-S from some video and thought it was weird.
I'm from France and it always was Nes and Snes here, too.
 
N-E-S.

Though 30 years ago I'm pretty sure we all just called it "Nintendo." You asked your friend if he wanted to play Nintendo. Asked what Nintendo game he got. Never once said Ness or N-E-S.

It's like the whole AT-AT Walker vs A-T-A-T Walker debate. 30 years ago everyone said AT-AT. Now it's all "A-T-A-T" everywhere. Where does this even come from??
They called the walkers at-at?
Like at the door?



And it is N-E-S.

How stupid sounds nes?(pronounced like Fez with a n)
And snes as one single word is even worse.
 
Do any people say G I F? I'd say its just based on what feels nice and easy to pronounce and that will vary based on local dialects.

No, but I don't think people know GIF is even an acronym. In any case I provided a counter-example with GUI a couple posts above.

Edit: Though maybe we should start saying G-I-F to avoid those incorrect heathens that say it as 'Jiff'.
 
Canada, and actually lived through that generation at an age where I would remember it. Everyone called it Nintendo or N-E-S. Never once heard someone say NEZ.

Did some of you call the PSP a pisspe?
 
Of course it's 'NES' and not 'N-E-S'. How do you heathens say UNESCO? Or FEMA? Or NASA?
 
For me it's always been:

'N-E-S' or 'Nintendo'

'S-N-E-S' / 'Super Nintendo'

I had never heard them pronounced any other way until just a few years ago when I watched a European video about retro games on YouTube and a presenter called them 'Ness' and 'Sness'.

Fries = Chips, Elevators = Lifts, Bullfrogs = Chazzwozzers - seems like it's just a regional thing! :)
 
U.S. here..

Mostly just said Nintendo or Super Nintendo. But outside of that, it was N-E-S or Super N-E-S. Same amount of syllables either way.. but never said "ness". I never once heard the term "ness" in all of my childhood from anyone.
 
I guess maybe people just stick to saying it as an initialism when it's only 3 characters, and a word when it's 4 or more. Can you think of any another 3 character acronyms said as a word? CIA, FBI, HIV, NSA, AKA, AFK, CRT, VGA, DVI, CPU. GPU ... all said by their individual letter. Meanwhile NATO, NASA, LASER, SCUBA, AIDS, ROFL, LMAO, WYSIWYG, ... are said more as a singular word before the individual characters.

Also I had trouble remembering 4+ character acronyms, so yes some of those examples are silly.

World of Warcraft is "wow".
 
PES is Pez.

Canada, and actually lived threw that generation at an age where I would remember it. Everyone called it Nintendo or N-E-S. Never once heard someone say NEZ.

Did some of you call the PSP a pisspe?

My dad actually called it a "pisspuh," once and I almost fell out of my chair laughing.
 
So we've got WoW, LOL, GIF, GUI and NES being pronounced as words. And they all have a vowel as the middle letter. Is that what's making us do it?
 
No one I have ever met says "nez" or "ness" and I wouldn't trust them if they did.

It's "en-ee-ess", no two ways about it.
 
So we've got WoW, LOL, GIF, GUI and NES being pronounced as words. And they all have a vowel as the middle letter. Is that what's making us do it?

Yes, that's how acronyms happen.

Nobody is going to even try to pronounce FBI or VGA as a word, but NES and GAF are both easily parse-able into regular speech.
 
Dutch here

I like N-E-S, but I always pronounce it as NES though. Mostly because it's quicker to say.

Also with my family and friends we just called it a 'Nintendo' and later, to distinguish it from the SNES, we called it a 'regular Nintendo'.
As such last month my aunt found some old regular Nintendo games that I could have.


As for other names, I pronounce Sega as Say-ga, because it just feels better that way.
Then again I also call Tetris 'Tay-tris', which has people looking at me funny.
 
Northeast US here. I say NES (like Ness from Earthbound). Y'know what? While we're at it, I also say SNES (like the sn in "snort"). To be fair though, I've gotten a lot of shit for it.
 
Jeff Gerstmann of Giant Bomb said on an UpF, that it's "N.E.S. but SNES". He didn't name an official source or so, but he said it in a way that at least doesn't allow the NES pronunciation under professionals without other people finding it weird.
 
So we've got WoW, LOL, GIF, GUI and NES being pronounced as words. And they all have a vowel as the middle letter. Is that what's making us do it?

Maybe. Doesn't happen with CIA, DOD, CEO, CIO, DOA, DID, HIV and MIT though.

There doesn't seem to be any real consistency.
 
I've always said the letters "N. E. S." and frown on and even feel a bit strange about anyone who pronounces it "Ness".
 
noticed all of the people my age said it as the N.E.S. acronym as kids. younger generations i've interacted with tend to say it like the earthbound character. i wonder if this has to due with a lot of the popular youtube guys pronouncing it that way...
 
I've lived in Illinois, Indiana, South Carolina, Florida, and Colorado in my 33 years on this Earth, and I've never personally known anyone to refer to it by anything other than N-E-S when not using the full name. Same with the S-N-E-S.
 
If anything it would be "Ness" like how Earthbound did it. (keep in mind in Mother 1 the main character is Ninten)

I've always said N-E-S because it's a short acronym

"Nez" is just dumb. Also to address the other elephant in the OP, it wouldn't be "Sea-ga" with the Sega start-up splash screen screaming out SAY-GA (not to mention its commercials)
 
N-E-S
SUPER N-E-S

Nevada, USA


Though when talking about the system we call it Nintendo and Super Nintendo.
 
Proud American who spells it out. EN-EE-SS, ESS-EN-EE-ESS

UK people saying "snez" are weird.
 
No one on the Nes/z side has said those who say NES dumb, but those on the NES side have said all manner of unpleasant things about the Nes/z pronouncers. Based on that, I think it's fair to say the Nes/z pronouncers are in the right.
 
N - E - S now that I have to break it down instead of simply saying "Nintendo".

S - N - E - S, "Super Nintendo" or simply saying "Super".

Saying "ness" and "sness" always sounds wrong to me.
 
Top Bottom