Famicom Disk System

The Family Computer(Famicom) disk System was a first-party disk attachment for the Famicom. It was never realeased for the Nintendo Entertainment System(North America Famicom for Japenese readers). The Disk System was Realeased on February 21, 1986 in Japan only. It used propiatary Disk Cards witch made the cheaper than normal cartridge games. It had a save option, witch started series like Legend of Zelda and Kid Icarus, Metroid which had save states. While in North America we got Legend of Zelda with battery save but we got Metroid and Kid Icarus with passwords instead of batterys. At onw time it was going to be the future of the Famicom and it could store up to 128kb on one disk, but cartridges became more capibale and they could store 128kbs too making the disk system obsolete. Nintendo to my knowledge has never created another disk add-on for any game consoles, besides the Sony/Nintendo Play Station which was never realeased, but that is a story for another day. It had many games that were not realesed in America like Super Mario Bros. 2(The Lost Levels) and many more. The Famicom Disk System was created to make cheaper games, but it was also better for developers, Kid Icarus was created a few days before launch. Don'nt forget about the Disk Writer Kiosk which was another plus side of the disk cards you could go to the kiosk and write a game to your card, but that is also a downside if you pickup a game it may say it is Metroid but when you boot it up it is Kid Icarus, but that is not much of a problem. Now you may think this paragrah is all I have to talk about this was just the intoduction lets get into the history of the Famicom Disk System. The Famicome disk system was realeased in1986 for the Famicom and only in Japan. The idea started off when Hudson Soft showed Nintendo there Bee card which were rewritable cartridges, Nintendo liked the idea but they were not a fan of the fact they had to pay liscensing fees. So they went to another company and they made it based on a popular tecchnology called a floppy disk and so came the disk card. The Bee Cards or which would be changed to the HuCards would be used on the PC engine or Turbographichs video game console. The disk had an anti-piracy measure with the Nintendo logo at the bottom. It had special indents on it which if it did not match the one on the inside it would not boot the disk card. But like every console the piracy would be cracked and the pirated disk would be used and sold in stores. The disks were considered the future of the Famicom but as previously stated cartridges got more advanced and the disk cards were scraped. The disk system sold well and so many games came out on the disk system, with the abilaty to svae your game it would become even better with games like the Legend of Zelda, Metroid, and Kid Icarus, with save features. A problem though was the load times like most discs there was a load time, which ment you would have to wait to play your game. Many disk system games were ported to cartridges when the cartridges got better, how did they you may ask? Nintendo created a new Chip called MMC chips, which would allow more game data for a game. Today Nintendo still uses cartridges on their Nintendo Switch, and in the past DS/3DS Console and many more handhelds and consoles up to the Nintendo 64 for homeconsoles*. While Nintendo used DVDs for about 14 years.

Acording to MobyGames there are about 135 games for the Famicom Disk system and I have not seen how many of those games have been ported to the NES, and how many of these have also had cartridge ports on the Famicom itself. I also want to bring up the Famicom 3D System which was mostly made up of Famicom Computer Disk System games. There is also a Bee Card to Famicom adapter(I could not find a source for that I just saw a picture of it online while doing something else).

I have not brought it up yet but the Famicom disk system had an extra sound voice for better music and more. Take for example the Legend of Zelda the music on the Famicom Disk system is just TERRIFIC, oh and the American music is okay but just not as great as the Japenese Family Computer Disk System Music.

That is it for know thanks for reading my article!

Matthew Schreiner

Copyright 2021 NintdoERDS/Nintendo Nerds

References

Bee card. (2006, October 12). Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia. Retrieved February 15, 2021, from https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bee_Card

[Photo]. (n.d.). Blog Spot. http://retroraiderjapan.blogspot.com/2014/03/the-famicom-disk-system-and-how-to-fix.html

Caruso, N. (2016, July 14). Famicom Disk System | Gaming Historian [Video]. YouTube. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=r9PuSrn_H1c

Famicom disk super Mario Bros 1 no instruction nintendo DK 4902370500134. (n.d.). eBay. https://www.ebay.com/itm/Famicom-Disk-SUPER-MARIO-BROS-1-No-Instruction-Nintendo-dk/363141908714

Famicom disk system. (2003, January 1). Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia. Retrieved February 15, 2021, from https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Famicom_Disk_System

Media type : Famicom disk system. (n.d.). MobyGames. https://www.mobygames.com/attribute/sheet/attributeId,2001/

Miscellaneous attributes : Famicom 3D system. (n.d.). MobyGames. https://www.mobygames.com/attribute/sheet/attributeId,1066/

Murray, D. (2015, October 5). How Oldschool Sound/Music worked. YouTube. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=q_3d1x2VPxk&t=29s