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Kirby and Super Smash Bros. creator Masahiro Sakurai and Square Enix are celebrating the 43rd anniversary of the release of Nintendo's first major home console, the Famicom.

As Super Mario Bros and The Legend of Zelda are fresh off celebrating their 40th anniversaries, and Donkey Kong celebrated its 45th last week, Nintendo's first proper home console – not counting the single-game Color TV-Game series, which had been released beforehand – the Famicom celebrates its 43rd today. While it would take another couple of years for the console to arrive as the NES in North America (and another couple on top for the UK), the Famicom dropped in Japan on July 15, 1983, with Donkey Kong, Donkey Kong Jr., and Popeye in tow.

Sakurai, whose sole NES credit is directing Kirby's Adventure, which was one of the final Nintendo-published releases on the system, posted on Twitter (via machine translation) wishing the console a happy 43rd anniversary. He added that the platform – despite consoles releasing before and after – had the biggest impact on him as a game creator.

Square Enix also posted a short video celebrating the release of the classic console, showing the original Final Fantasy booting up on the platform (with a Dragon Quest box sitting off to the side). The two most iconic and influential JRPG series of all time both started on the platform, making it a crucial place for the genre.

Back in 2023, Sakurai released a video about the Famicom on his 'Masahiro Sakurai on Creating Games' YouTube show, where he dubbed it "perfect". The director opened the video saying, "I can proudly say I've developed a game for the Famicom, aka the Family Computer. That makes me pretty lucky!"

Sakurai bought the console in 1983 – owning one of the earlier models which featured square buttons instead of the circular A and B buttons seen by the time the NES was released. As for one reason the console remains such an iconic part of his life, he points out the massive leaps in game development back then, using the gulf in scope between 1983's Mario Bros. and 1985's Super Mario Bros. as an example.

He points out that there are a number of game developers like Nier's Yoko Taro, Devil May Cry's Hideki Kamiya, Kingdom Hearts' Tetsuya Nomura, and Doom's John Carmack who are the same age as Sakurai, "but only a small handful of them ever actually developed a game for the Famicom."

Sakurai adds, "If the Famicom had never existed, the shape of the modern game market – really the entire video game industry – would be completely different." And that even though the games are easily available and may seem quaint now, Sakurai says, "what I really want to stress is that at the time, it truly was an absolute dream machine."

Super Smash Bros creator Masahiro Sakurai sometimes "sounds exactly like Goku," ex-Tekken boss says: "A Saiyan who genuinely believes he's just another ordinary human"

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The patient: A 14-year-old boy in the United Kingdom

The symptoms: The teen was brought to his family's general practitioner because he felt unusually tired. His doctor asked about the boy's eating habits and described him as a "fussy eater" in notes from the appointment. The doctor also indicated that the teen had no symptoms other than tiredness, according to a report of the case .

Tests revealed that the teen had mild anemia and low levels of vitamin B12 , which comes from a person's diet because the body does not produce it. The body needs vitamin B12 for maintaining the health of red blood cells and the nervous system. The teen's doctor provided dietary advice and prescribed supplementary B12 injections.

What happened next: Later, at age 15, the teen began developing problems with his sight. An eye exam detected no abnormalities, and the ophthalmologist was unable to determine the cause of the vision loss, which worsened over time. When the patient was 17 years old, his general practitioner referred him to a neuro-ophthalmologist for further testing. (Neuro-ophthalmologists can assess vision problems related to the nervous system.)

Additional vision tests showed that the patient's visual acuity — a measurement of a person's ability to accurately see details from certain distances — was 20/200 in both eyes. In other words, objects that would be visible to a person with normal (20/20) vision at a distance of 200 feet were not clearly visible to him beyond a distance of 20 feet. Vision of 20/200 or lower falls within the parameters of legal blindness, according to the American Foundation for the Blind .

When asked, the patient denied using drugs, alcohol or tobacco, and his eyes showed no signs of disease, nor were they scarred or injured. The results of a neurological exam were normal.

However, blood tests showed that his red blood cells were enlarged , which can suggest vitamin deficiencies. His blood levels of copper and vitamin D were lower than normal. Furthermore, elevated concentrations of the amino acid homocysteine and methylmalonic acid — compounds that B12 helps to break down — further hinted that he was deficient in the vitamin, as at earlier examinations.

The diagnosis: The patient admitted that he was no longer taking the recommended B12 injections. (The case report did not indicate exactly when he had stopped.) His body mass index ( BMI ) was normal, and he was of average weight for his height. But because his B12 levels were low, the doctors questioned him about his diet.

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He replied that he could not tolerate certain food textures; as a result, since elementary school, he had avoided most foods. For years, his daily diet consisted of fast-food french fries, white bread, potato chips, sausages and processed ham.

This diet lacked vital nutrients, leading to a condition called nutritional optic neuropathy , a rare type of vision loss that is often caused by severe deficits in B12 and other B vitamins. It causes atrophy of the optic nerve, which relays information from the eye to the parts of the brain that process vision. Copper deficiencies have also been linked to this type of optic neuropathy and to enlarged red blood cells, according to the report's authors.

The treatment: The doctors prescribed the teen supplements to correct his nutritional deficiencies and referred him to mental health services to treat his food aversions, which the doctors identified as a type of eating disorder.

Following treatment, the patient's vision did not deteriorate further. However, there was no improvement in his sight. Nutritional optic neuropathy may be reversed when caught early, but if the optic nerve becomes atrophied, the vision loss is permanent, the physicians explained in the report.

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What makes the case unique: Nutritional optic neuropathy is rarely caused by dietary deficiencies alone. Historically, cases in the medical literature have generally been associated with malnutrition caused by war and famine . More recent cases have usually involved both nutritional deficits and smoking or abuse of alcohol or drugs .

In some instances, this type of neuropathy results from inflammatory bowel disease or bariatric surgery, which limit the body's absorption of certain nutrients. It can also stem from restrictive diets that are not adequately supplemented with missing vitamins and minerals.

The teen's case is also unusual because his normal BMI masked the vitamin deficiencies that caused his blindness. In other words, doctors may have overlooked his dietary deficits because his weight was within a normal range.

Moving forward, "nutritional optic neuropathy should be considered in any patient with unexplained vision symptoms and poor diet, regardless of BMI," the authors wrote in the report.

For more intriguing medical cases, check out our Diagnostic Dilemma archives .

This article is for informational purposes only and is not meant to offer medical advice.

Can you guess the diagnosis in these strange medical cases? Find out with our diagnostic dilemma quiz!

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New York State has temporarily banned new, large-scale data centers

One-year moratorium affects new 50MW+ campuses

NY wants to assess community, environmental and grid impacts

New York State has banned the construction of new hyperscaler data centers, marking the latest step as mounting local opposition against AI and cloud facilities builds, with communities citing concerns over rising electricity costs, water consumption and other environmental factors,

State Governor Kathy Hochul is responsible for introducing the first statewide moratorium on new campuses, which imposes a one-year pause while the state looks into the environment, energy supply and communities.

Projects that have already been permitted will still continue as expected, but new buildouts will face restrictions and delays until the moratorium is lifted.

Data centers banned in NY - for one year

The one-year ban buys the state time to evolve regulations to address some of the challenges presented by large hyperscaler data centers, including strained grid supplies, emissions and other environmental impacts, and stresses on local communities.

Under the new ban, campuses that require at least 50MW of electricity will be affected, which for an AI data center isn't all that much. Some of the largest measure power consumption in the hundreds of megawatts, or even gigawatts in the case of high-profile, flagship campuses like OpenAI's Stargate Project.

"[The moratorium] comes as the direct result of immense public pressure from people across the state demanding their elected leaders protect them from Big Tech's assault, which threatens the state's clean air and water and New Yorkers' financial security," New York State's Food & Water Watch Director Laura Shindell said.

"New York has always been at the forefront of innovation and change but we’ve also always guaranteed that New Yorkers benefit," Hochul noted.

Although New York represents the first statewide temporary ban, other regions have also been looking to pause buildouts as they assess the damages. Just last month, Seattle also voted to ban new projects for a year.