Sometimes, things just happen to work out in our favor. Not always mind you (more like never), but this time, we actually fell into some great deals, that all came together and formed like Voltron into one giant package of happiness! Hence our Famicom complete with disk system and 8 games! Now, if you don’t know, Famicom (short for Family Computer) was released in Japan in July of 1983 by Nintendo. Upon seeing the failure of Atari at the time, (think around the time they released the game E.T.), Nintendo tried to capitalize on the market (more specifically Atari’s shitty game titles) and released the Famicom. It soon became a HUGE success, and it was normal to have people waiting in line for over 5 hours on any given day to try and buy one. Fast forward two years later, and Nintendo brought the Famicom to American audiences under a new title, you guessed it, the Nintendo Entertainment System, or NES for short. The Famicom is essentially the same as the NES, with only a few, but pretty noticeable differences.
First off, as you can tell, it looks alot different. I know the NES looks good, but this shit is straight PIMP! Complete with slots to hold the controllers when you’re done playing, plus its got that nice red and white color scheme. The only problem I can see with it, is the controller cords are connected to the machine, and are waaay too short. But I did see somewhere on ebay someone selling wireless controllers for it, so that would help. “But where do the cartridges go?” you ask?
You lift up that red flap, and behold, you slap those cartridges right in there! It seems a little odd to have a cartridge sticking out of the top of it, but actually I think it looks pretty cool. Also, since this bitch is straight outta Japan, you get some cool Japanese slang instructions yelling shit at you like “What the fuck round eye, the power button is right here!” And speaking of cool shit, we were pretty surprised to find something on one of the controllers…..
A microphone?? Sounds pretty cool, and when we hooked this baby up to our tv, you could talk into this thing and it really worked! The volume slider was actually smooth, and didn’t even pop or hiss like we suspected it might. Now, we can only assume, but Nintendo must have either made, or had plans to make a game that would respond to your voice somehow. And way back in the day like that, that’s pretty innovative.
Now, cartridges aside, this thing has another part to it that lets you add another format of game bliss to your collection. Disks! That’s right, Nintendo made an add on called the “Disk System” that would allow you to hook it up to your Famicom, and play disks on it!
Consisting of two parts, the adaptor that plugs into your Famicom, and the Disk drive itself, this is one sexy beast! Games like The legend of Zelda or “The Hyrule Fantasy” as its known in Japan, actually started out only on the disk system. The key to collecting the disks, is that the disk’s were only available in Japan, and some were a little different when they were released in the states on a cartridge. We were pleased to find that this bitch fires right up and works without a flaw!
As you can see, the disks are nice looking too. The detail in the little Japanese booklets is amazing as well. They come complete with stickers, and a shit load of images and instructions. Too bad I can’t read a lick of Japanese.
God Damn son! Look at those titles! Zelda, Super mario 1 & 2, Metroid, some weird ass pink unicorn looking thing with green legs, now that’s a collection! Now disks aside, this thing is looking pretty cool already, but wait till you see this….
Oh snap! Its a Super Mario Bros. 2 Disk case! With a four disk capacity, nice yellow color, this thing was a steal when we got it! It was brand new too, no joke, still in shrink wrap packaging! Now we can carry our disks around in style! You might as well buy some condoms now, cause when you pop this out of your glove box when you have some chick in your car on a date and it says “Its a me…Mario” ….its a sure bet your getting laid later!
Now, last but not least, we ran into this deal and didn’t even know what we were getting. Diskun, is (or was) the mascot/logo for the Disk system. It turns out that Nintendo ran some contests in Japan where the winners would recieve a Diskun case and gold disk prize inside! Kind of makes me think of a Japanese Charlie and the Chocolate factory for some reason. From what I understand, the contest included various games, and the winner was the person with the highest score, fastest time, etc. Apparently only a small (10,000 I think?) number of these exist, and they are somewhat rare. Now we knew nothing of this when we picked this thing up for less than a number 1 value meal at McDonalds, or we would have been alot more excited! Only after doing some research on the net did we find out what we had recieved….
Its Diskun, with a gold Golf disk inside! For some reason we couldn’t get the gold disk to play. Oh well, it was Golf anyway.We are still happy about our deals and lets finish up by saying that the Famicom was already owned, but the disk system was aquired cheap off ebay, and games and Diskun from a flea market, and the Super Mario 2 case from ebay! All pretty damn cheap! We mainly collect records here, but shit, we love old school video games, and couldn’t pass these deals up! Also, after checking around on the net how to hook this thing up we found a prety cool site called Famicom World and the forums were really helpful. If you’re in the same boat (we had to get a voltage converter to run it in the states, etc.) check them out for useful tips and reviews, etc.
Well there you have it, we just had to share what we were excited about, and on a side note our next Hall of Records review is going to be about a certain video game character I’m sure you all know, so keep checking back!
-Chris