BurgerTime

BurgerTime is an arcade title released by Data East in 1982 and licensed by Bally Midway for North America. It’s a fixed-screen platformer in which the player assembles giant hamburgers while avoiding enemies represented by anthropomorphic foods. BurgerTime was ported to a number of home systems, beginning with the Intellivision in 1983. The NES got one of the later ports in 1987; this version benefited from improved graphics and crisp gameplay enabled by the newer hardware.

NES Top Loader

After years of responding to service requests due to the failing “toaster” mechanism, Nintendo redesigned the NES in 1993. The new design borrowed from the new Super NES. The result was the Model 101, commonly known as the “Top Loader”.

The Model 101 was a cost-reduced version of the NES. It had a smaller form factor, omitted the composite video output port, and eliminated the lockout chip which was designed to prevent the use of unlicensed cartridges. This model also shipped with a redesigned controller, known as the "Dog Bone", with rounded ends resembling the SNES controllers.

But, of course, the most obvious change was the cartidge slot. To resolve the poor reliability of the Toaster's zero-insertion-force mechanism, the Model 101 uses a top-loading slot with a simple card-edge connector. The card-edge connector was a tried-and-true technology dating back to the earliest computers. It had been used on almost all previous game consoles, and Nintendo would use it on all of their future cartridge based consoles.