famicom
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Wii Music reflects on Nintendo's past with playable Famicom
Nintendo has been happy to think outside the box when selecting Wii Music's line-up of instruments, and over the weekend, the company revealed another unconventional choice: the Famicom. This isn't as weird as the dog suit -- there is, after all, a whole scene dedicated to making music from old game sounds (and even household names have dabbled) -- but is an interesting and fun addition nonetheless.The other recently unveiled instrument, the Timbales (there's a video after the break), is less interesting as a result, though Wikipedia (yes, we call this "journalism" -- Pulitzer, here we come) taught us that "Timbales" doubles up as a Spanish euphemism for, well, a rude word. Expect much childish giggling in Spanish-speaking households later this year, then.%Gallery-27713%
Show and Tell: Recipes for awesome
Good news -- we're expanding Show and Tell a little to include not only your personal creations (though these are, of course, our favorites), but all sorts of interesting fan-created things we find in the wide world of the internet. Each week, we'll show off a new set of Nintendo-inspired projects, and this week, we're starting with the basics: recipes and ingredients. Every creation has to begin somewhere, after all. Your journey can start right here.%Gallery-29463% Show and Tell is all about fan stuff, so long as it's Nintendo-related. We love to see your collections, your crafts, your frosted creations, your t-shirts and swag of all sorts.Just snap a few pictures, tell us what's up, and send it all to showmeit [at] dsfanboy [dot] com. We'll take care of the rest. Not a handy type, but found something neat? Send us a link instead.
Datel releasing Famicom-inspired Classic Controllers
With Super Famicom- and even PSP-inspired Classic Controllers hitting the market, we're not surprised to see someone exploit the sentiments of nostalgic gamers with a pad fashioned after the original Famicom controller.Available in Japan starting this September, Datel's line of retro Classic Controllers -- all four of which you can view in the gallery below -- will retail for ¥1,659 (approx $15.54). It's nowhere near an exact replica, as you'll notice several missing and inconsistent design elements, but the controller features Home and Turbo buttons. Also, you can relive those childhood memories of throwing an NES pad at the wall after crashing into the aircraft carrier for the 20th time in Top Gun.%Gallery-28150%[Via VC Reviews]
Famicom leaves college and settles in to a secure office job
Time to get nostalgic, proud, and teary-eyed all at the same time. On this fifteenth day of July in the year 2008, the legendary Famicom turns 25 years young. Some of us (though not all of us) weren't even born when the Famicom was released in Japan in 1983, and that day marked the beginning of Nintendo's plot of world domination. They didn't get around to the United States until 1985 with the NES, but it's the thought that counts.A few committed folks at 1up have gone to extreme lengths marking this occasion, reminiscing about the life and times and significant games that made the little white box of fun so legendary. Is the Famicom dead? Hellz to the no -- in fact, you might say the Famicom legacy is just taking shape with new games and new ideas, all with origins dating back a quarter of a century.As we begin today's E3 proceedings, spare a single thought for the console that changed the world for the better. Happy 25th birthday, Famicom!
Virtually Overlooked: Star Wars (Famicom)
Star Wars games aren't always great. In fact, sometimes they're Masters of Teras Kasi. Sometimes they're Super Bombad Racing. They suffer from the same fate as any other licensed game: the developers put the universe before the gameplay, and insert whichever popular genre of game they feel like into a Star Wars framework, knowing that enough units will sell regardless of quality.Namco's Famicom Star Wars game is the worst, and the best. It deviates from the source material not just to fit the genre (Super Bombad Racing required the existence of karts, for example, though in this case the game just shouldn't have been made), but seemingly at random. Somebody on the team may have heard of Star Wars, maybe. Even Soul Calibur IV, which actually isn't a Star Wars game at all, makes more sense as a Star Wars game than this.
Famicom Lite
Genius modder Kotomi is at it again. A couple of years ago, he redid a DS Phat in the old Famicom colors -- his favorite console, apparently -- but as he recently came into some free time, he realized it was time to live in the now. At least, as "now" as you can be when doing a modern system over in the colors of a retro console. With a black DS Lite as his base, the modder worked his magic, and the result is simply stunning (and shiny!). Kotomi says he's got some more projects in the pipeline at present, so we'll be keeping an eye on this master. Want more? We've got a few of his other, older projects in the gallery below. %Gallery-25220%
Promotional Consideration: Dragon Quest IV commercials were weird
With the Dragon Quest IV DS remake announced for the US and Europe this week, we thought it'd be good a time to dig up Enix's commercials for the original Famicom game's release in Japan. They're completely different from the retro ads used last November when the DS remake shipped.As with Squaresoft's chocobo commercials for Final Fantasy IV on the Super Famicom (launching a little over a year after Dragon Quest IV), these ads were just plain odd! They show hardly any in-game video, relying on logos and recognizable theme music instead. Gather your party and meet us in the fifth chapter, past the post break, for the commercials.
Collection of strange and obscure Famicom peripherals, controllers
It's astounding that, despite all the eBay auctions we've followed and Nintendo oddities we've researched, there are still so many Famicom accessories out there that we've never seen, much less heard of. Thankfully, an obsessive Japanese collector has put up a page documenting these rare controllers and peripherals, like Hori RF adapters and Disk System cleaning sprays. Check out the Hyper Shot Zapper-clone pictured above -- can you believe that Bandai made a submachine gun for the Famicom? Jump past the post break for more Famicom odds and ends.
NES coffee table is so much more
Kyle Downes' NES coffee table isn't just an awesome coffee table, oh no. Read up on the making of this beautiful piece of furniture on Kyle's blog, the appropriately named Ultra Awesome, and it's obvious that Downes' work is far more than a mere coffee table -- make the jump to see what else it can do.
Man chats about his $15k NES game
James Baker collects games, but probably not in the same way that any of us collect games. Baker recently coughed up $15,000 for one of the 26 gold-colored NES carts that were originally manufactured for the Nintendo World Championships in 1990 (only twelve are still accounted for) -- in fact, we're fairly certain that his is the cart we posted about recently.Speaking to Edge about his latest acquisition, Baker confesses that spending so much on a single videogame is "pretty crazy," but also says that he "doesn't really see it purely as a videogame."Not only is the guy richer than us, he's also a lot braver -- when he received the cart, he popped it into his NES to give it a go! "I didn't even need to blow on the end of it to get it to work," he said, nonchalantly. You better believe that playing such a game would be the last thing on our minds. Instead, we'd be handling it very delicately, and then only after washing our hands several times over.(Fun fact: $15,000 would cover the cost of 1.5m Wii Points, which in turn could be used to purchase the whole of the current U.S. Virtual Console line-up -- more than ten times over.)
Clean up with a cheap Famicom-style towel
NCSX is selling their remaining stock of these lovely red-and-gold Famicom towels for just $13.90 each. These are big beach towels with the "Family Computer" logo and some controller outlines emblazoned on them, and they were originally produced by Banpresto in 2005. We're guessing that, for some reason, the segment of NCSX's customer base that regularly visits the beach is smaller than they expected. If we needed a beach towel, we would totally buy this one, but we have no use for a beach towel, much like most shut-in game nerds. Well, except for when we run out of regular towels and we have to awkwardly dry off after our shower with one of these giant things. But we're not buying a beach towel just for that.
Virtually Overlooked: Kart Fighter
What if a bunch of Nintendo's world-famous franchise characters stopped adventuring and just got in a big fight? No doubt that would be an awesome game. You can just imagine the dollar (or appropriate currency) signs in the eyes of the person who came up with a surefire idea like that. That was the idea behind Kart Fighter, created ... some time after Super Mario Kart was released, by an unknown Hong Kong developer. It's a 2D fighting game starring Mario and friends, in familiar settings based on the Mario games.Nintendo totally ripped these guys off. Have they no respect for intellectual property?%Gallery-19761%
Working NES squeezed into ... an NES cartridge
All right, we'll admit that headline is a little inaccurate. The heavily modified Super Mario Bros. cart shown above actually plays Japanese Famicom carts (like the not-at-all-bootleg Super Bros. 5), not the slightly larger American NES carts. Semantics aside, we're sure you'll share our sense of awe at the accomplishment of fitting an entire video game system into what, at one point, was used to hold the data for a single game. All the pieces are there, believe it or not, including A/V outputs, a svelte power switch, and two controller ports sticking out at the bottom of the cartridge. The machine seems like a one-of-a-kind hack, and doesn't look like it's going to be sold any time soon. It's a shame, too ... we' d love to get our hands on one of these, if only so we could plug in our Flash Memory PowerPak via an adapter to create the ultimate NES-cartridge-shaped hacking monstrosity. [Via Engadget]
Famicom clone closes the circle with an NES cart for a case
Just when you thought it couldn't get any more meta than a full NES clone hacked into an NES controller, somebody goes and mods up an NES cart to play Famicom cartridges. The all-in-one unit includes a pair of controller plugs, video out and that all-important reset switch in a pretty slick package. That's great and all, but when our grandkids start building PS3 clones out of discarded Blu-ray cases, we're seriously going to start freaking out. [Via technabob]
This is what a coin-operated NES looks like
While it's not unusual to be loved by anyone for hotels to include video game services, Japan used to do it arcade-style with coin-operated consoles (like the one shown above). 100 JPY (approximately $1 USD) would net you 10-15 minutes with a Famicom (NES), which means you'd have to lay down about $2 or $3 to for a satisfactory amount of this blogger's hotel staple, Punch-Out!!. The Super Famicom (SNES), though, was a bit more coin-hungry, and the $1 equivalent would only last five minutes -- yikes. Still, we're sure that if we visited Japan during the magical time that these boxes were hooked-up to hotel TVs, we would have let go of a few coins for some quick bouts of Mario and such.[Via Kotaku]
New Nintendo DS coming at this year's E3?
According to reports (translated, possibly misunderstood, clearly speculative reports), come this year's E3, Nintendo could be rolling out a brand-spanking-new DS -- most likely very unlike the one pictured above. If you follow the text in a Bloomberg Japan article, Famicom magazine publisher Hirokazu Hamamura says that the timing of E3 would fall right in line with the two-year stagger the Big N has applied to other handheld releases. Of course, Nintendo is saying "no comment," though we find that's usually the last thing they say before introducing the Wii, Game Boy, N64, Harry Potter Wand, or Ultimate Doomsday Device.[Via Joystiq; Image courtesy Kris/Rakka]
Ask Joystiq: On region-free downloading, Xbox streaming and Karnov
This week on Ask Joystiq, we look at downloading foreign content to a foreign system, streaming content to an Xbox 360, and identifying one --or possibly two? -- obscure Argentinian NES games.If you have any burning questions, unsolved gaming mysteries, or just a desire for musings from our knowledgeable cadre of writers, drop us a line at ask AAT joystiq DAWT com (and yes, we write it that way for a reason).Q: I might be going to Japan towards the end of the summer and might pick up some games or a system. If I get a system, how would that work when I bring it back to the states and log on-line for a Wii, PS3 or 360?? Would a Japanese Wii let me log in to only US servers or would I be able to download Japanese games from the marketplace. Same question applied to the other systems...-- iwantmymtvA: For the Wii, the region of the console corresponds to the region of the Wii Shop Channel -- Japanese systems will access the Japanese store, no matter where you plug them into the intertubes. You have to buy Wii Points that correspond to the system's region too, which means using a Japanese credit card or getting some Japanese Wii Points cards imported. [source]Any PS3 will play downloads from any region, but each PSN account is locked to a specific region when you create it. Luckily, it's relatively easy to set up "dummy accounts" for each region you want to buy content, as long as you have a credit card from that country. Be warned, though: there is a significant language barrier for navigating the Japanese store.Xbox Live users can also create dummy accounts to get around regional restrictions, but there are reports that Microsoft has been blocking downloads from accounts where this practice is detected. As always, let the international buyer beware.-Kyle Orland
39 sealed Power Gloves, a great gift for nearly 5 octopi
All right, here's the situation: You're staging an NES-themed musical (off-Broadway) and the big finale requires a shiny, new Power Glove for all 40 members of the chorus line. You already have access to one unopened Glove that your grandmother gave you as a present in 1995 (way after it was a hot-ticket item), but you need the other 39 before the end of the month or the opening night of your show will be ruined!This is the only situation that we could think of to justify anyone bidding on the lot of 39 sealed, Japanese Power Gloves that recently showed up as a bulk lot on eBay. Apparently we're not imaginative enough, though, because the Australia-based auction already has four bids with a high offer of AU$90.88 (not including the hundreds of dollars in shipping costs). Maybe we're just not "bad" enough to realize the economic and cultural potential of owning what is most likely the world's largest collection of sealed Power Gloves in one place. So we leave it as an open question to our commenters: What would you do with 39 Power Gloves?[Via GameSniped]
Final Fantasy VII ported to the Famicom. Finally!
Remember back in the late '90s, when Square was so frustrated trying to fit their opus Final Fantasy VII onto the cartridge-based Nintendo 64 that they made their famous defection to Sony? Well, just a short decade later, China's Shenzhen Nanjing Technology Co, Ltd has apparently done what Square couldn't, squeezing the PlayStation epic onto a cartridge. And not just any cartridge .. a Famicom cartridge. How's it feel to be shown up, Square?Of course, the conversion isn't perfect. According to a write-up from intrepid blogger CinnamonPirate (who unearthed the 2MB ROM from a Chinese blog) the polygonal graphics and cut scenes are gone, replaced with an impressively wide array of sprites, many stolen from other Final Fantasy games. The story remains surprisingly authentic, though, encompassing the entire three-disc epic while only leaving out a few optional side stories (bye bye, Yuffie and Vincent). The wide array of weapons, magic and materia from the original is a bit restricted in the port, but frankly, we're impressed that features like materia-leveling made it on to the 20+ year old hardware in any form.The company behind the cart is apparently now primarily makes MP3 players, so our hopes for a Colecovision version of Final Fantasy XII will probably remain unfulfilled.
"Paper" Mario comes to life in art project
Dude. Remember that time we went to Tim's house and got like TOTALLY baked off his special stash and we busted out the NES and we thought the controller was, like, making the TV move around the room? Do you? Man, that thing was REAL. I like totally saw it on the internet man!Man, I'm telling you I'm SO not high right now. This thing was REAL. It was, like, on this motorized track or something, so when you pushed the buttons on the d-pad the whole TV, like, slid down this track. But there was this Mario level in the background, so it was like the paper Mario cutout on the TV was REALLY moving through the level. Like REALLY. Dude, you could even make Mario jump and hit motorized boxes with mushrooms and stuff. By the way, Tim scored some awesome mushrooms this weekend. You got to try them, man.Man, don't even try to tell me I'm imagining this thing. I've got the video right here below the break. You watch it while I go scrounge up some Cheetos, man. I've got some serious munchies.[Via Engadget]
