NES Goes Under The Knife

Thanks to Nintendojo for their continuing Family Computer (NES) 20th anniversary special, which is still adding new game reviews and content, but now has 'under the knife' dissection pages for both the original Japanese Famicom and the classic American NES, showing the consoles disassembled and analyzed. The rest of the site has mini-reviews of some classic NES titles, and info on oddities like I Am A Teacher: Super Mario Sweater: "Japanese appliance and sewing machine maker Royal Industries Co., Ltd. saw an opportunity to cash in with the Nintendo Famicom Disk System. Selling pixel art sweater design software for a mere 2900 yen (about $24), the company could make a fortune taking orders for custom sweaters! It sounds crazy, but it must've seemed like a good idea at the time."

Comments

expansion slot

[slothman32]

I was hoping they'd tell us what the slot did. I haven't seen anything that could use it.

Re:expansion slot

[WiKKeSH]

The Minnesota state lottery had a cartridge and modem. More info can be found here:
http://www.megspace.com/entertainment/neski ngdom/s pecial/lottery/

Re:expansion slot

[trompete]

Hmmm...I'm starting to like our state's cutbacks with crazy investments like this.
Now, if I could get mail order brides over this modem....although...with 16 KB of RAM, I wouldn't get to see much of her before she arrived.

Re:expansion slot

[edwdig]

In Japan, there was a floppy disk drive for the Famicom. You could go to a store, and they'd have a machine you put a disk into and you could pick what game you wanted on it. I don't know exactly how it worked, but I'd assume there was a charge of a few dollars or so each time you changed the game on it.

The port probably exists in case Nintendo decided to do the same thing in other countries.

Re:expansion slot

[Anonymous Coward]

You are right, except for the part about Japanese Famicom Disk Exchange machines accepting dollars.

Re:expansion slot

[shamino0]

I was hoping they'd tell us what the slot did. I haven't seen anything that could use it.

That slot was intended for use with a floppy disk drive. The drive shipped in Japan, but was never released in the US.

The only vestige of it in the US release are certain software titles (like Excitebike) that have "Save/Load" options on the menu that do nothing. (It's my understanding that the Japanese Famicom releases of these titles are identical and those menu options access the floppy drive.)

now I wouldn't mind one of those sweaters....

[BFedRec]

I would LIKE to have a mario pixel-art sweater... that's some stylish fashion man! Think of how popular those Atari logo shirts are... these will be hot ticket items in a couple years you can be sure.

CharlesP

Re:now I wouldn't mind one of those sweaters....

[trompete]

It comes with a free "I'm with stupid" T-Shirt, but only in sizes XXL, XXXL, and XXXXL. They've found that making other sizes of those kind of shirts is unnecessary.

Y0SHi

[dimator]

Anyone remember the original NES Doc by Jeremy Chadwick (Y0SHi)? This dude layed the groundwork for most of the NES emulation scene with his detailed account of NES internals... link

I think he dropped out of the emu scene on bad terms... not sure.

Re:Y0SHi

[Anonymous Coward]

He is now known as "koitsu" and he "maintains" parodius.com.

Anyone tried to portable-ise a NES yet?

[Flying-Cow-Man]

Every time I pull apart an old system (which I do fairly regularly), I'm amazed at how, by today's standards, simple these things are. I know www.classicgaming.com/vcsp/ is run buy a guy with a penchant for doing incredible things with portable Atari 2600's (he did a PS1 as well), but what about more mainstream systems? Surely it would be fairly cheap to wrap a GBA case around a SNES, and you've got an instant 1000's of games to choose from. Hell, I was pretty tempted to have a go at an N64 not too long ago.

Assuming we had schematics, circuit layouts, etc and didn't have to pull apart old systems for parts, it would be trivial to fit all the silicon you would need in one chip. Then its a matter of minimalising the analogue components, which is basically all your I/O (screen / AV out, controls). If I had the full schematics and access to a fab I could do it myself....

Some big company with lots of money should license this idea from me. I want my Mario All-Stars on a handheld!

Re:Anyone tried to portable-ise a NES yet?

[Kurin]

Some big company with lots of money should license this idea from me. I want my Mario All-Stars on a handheld!

Albeit illegal, because ROMs are always illegal no matter what, regardless of what some stupid site said about having the original copy and 24 hours (but that doesn't mean I don't have any because they stopped selling the games...), it is possible to put SNES games on your Game Boy Advance with the aid of a special flash cartridge that uses ROMs from your computer. It can also hold, of course, GBA games (up to 8, I believe, at a time, on the larger carts) and NES games.

The problem with SNES games on GBA is the lack of X and Y buttons. I'd probably have a GBA and one of those carts just for SNES games, if there were X and Y buttons.

I read somewhere that there's a machine that looks JUST like GBA but with a bigger screen, and it can emulate about 10 systems, including of course, GBA.

Re:Anyone tried to portable-ise a NES yet?

[Anonymous Coward]

I hope ROMs aren't illegal or a lot of old BIOS makers are in trouble. Seriously, though, the question isn't whether ROMs are legal or illegal any more than it's a question of whether or not mp3s are illegal or not. ROMs and mp3s are just a medium. Whether you have redistribution rights (the right to copy and then distribute again) is an issue for which copyright infringement might be occuring.

As for SNES games, you wouldn't be able to run SNES games on a GBA advance at full speed inside any nature of emulator. Now, a converter might be made, though I doubt that'd be likely given how different the snes and gba are (ie, you could write some stub code to fill the voids, but I doubt it in software could ever run in an adequately fast time to allow for real time action), but your mention of the lack of buttons is a pretty good deal breaker as far as the possibility of playing snes games directly.

And finally, you're probably thinking of the GP32 (gamepark 32), which already supports running various emulators includes snes9x. As far as I've heard, though, no gba emulator has been ported to the gp32 yet, but that's more a point of it not happening yet, I think.

Re:Anyone tried to portable-ise a NES yet?

[chill182]

Someone already made the NES portable, its called the GameAxe. It plays Famicom games, but a converter will allow it to play NES. Although I can't really see how portable the system would be when you are playing aircraft carrier sized cartridges.

Re:Anyone tried to portable-ise a NES yet?

[Quietust]

You mean aside from the Game Axe (mass produced), or Portendo (someone's personal project), or anything else I probably missed?

Re:Anyone tried to portable-ise a NES yet?

[tooler]

http://www.classicgaming.com/nestable/

Re:Anyone tried to portable-ise a NES yet?

[Anonymous Coward]

You're talking about the GP32, a Korean system that is overrated in every aspect except its emulation capabilities.

Contrary to what you may read, it does not have serviceable SNES or GBA emulation. Like the Dreamcast and PSX, it is not powerful enough to do perfect emulation of either system (although the Dreamcast SNES emu is STILL not very highly optimised).

Even then, you need to shift the ROMs..

[Flying-Cow-Man]

..which is a big showstopper for end users. I want to be able to plug the same carts into the top of my portable N64/SNES as I do in my big grey box below the TV - just like that guy did with the Atari 2600s on the site I mentioned above. Sure, that'll stretch the size of the machine, but any sort ROM-copying needs to be easy and seemless, so that any shmuck could use it on the go. I'd hate the hassle of having to shift ROM images around every time I wanted to play a different set of games.

Imagine a portable PSOne that could fit into a discman carry case, with your 20 favourite games in the side pockets. I know I'd rather carry that on the bus with me every morning. And I can go and buy second hand discs/carts/whatever and just plug them straight into my portable.

There was an adaptor out a while ago that let you play any Sega Master System game on the ill-fated Game Gear. I could never figure out why that didn't take off, it increased your potential library ten-fold. The only drawback was having to carry bigger carts around, but they were no bigger than an audio tape. Hmmm, I'm just getting pictures of a portable C64 with a tape drive.....

Re:Even then, you need to shift the ROMs..

[DaBj]

There was an adaptor out a while ago that let you play any Sega Master System game on the ill-fated Game Gear. I could never figure out why that didn't take off, it increased your potential library ten-fold. The only drawback was having to carry bigger carts around, but they were no bigger than an audio tape.

I have one, and if you did too you would know why it didn't take off.

The whole point of the Game Gear is that it's "portable" (as in easy to carry around).
The problem with the Game Gear though is that it isn't that portable to start with. Add to that the
Master Gear and a Master System cart...
Well, I think you can see where I am going...

"The only drawback" is a rather big one, unfortunately.

MURDERER!

[Rethcir]

Oh my god, they killed that NES! You Bastards!

Arrogance.

[Eevee]

Selling pixel art sweater design software for a mere 2900 yen (about $24), the company could make a fortune taking orders for custom sweaters! It sounds crazy, but it must've seemed like a good idea at the time.

Why do people insist on making predictions about things beyond their experience? (I mean, aside from being a slashdot reader.) Knitters can be quite high-tech. You have knitting machines that use punchcards and machines that use electronics. Even hand-knitters trade what are essentially pixel patterns for sweaters.

And we'll throw in the sewing machine crowd as well with a slightly more modern gaming machine--in matching color! (If you'll forgive the dupe.)

---------

(If you've never heard of knitting machines/knitting frames before, count yourself lucky. My wife's got three of them hidden away in the basement.)

Wow....

[Anonymous Coward]

I barely remember the NES looked like that. Mine spent most of its life with the hood open and a golf tee jammed in the slot next to the game cartridge to get the pins aligned just so.

Ah, those were the days...