I found this video showcasing an early Super Famicom and a redesigned Famicom.
I just thought it was interesting, so I decided to post it here.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UrUj7ao0pKk (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UrUj7ao0pKk)
That would have been a great PR move.
Looks nice, but I still don't understand the point of it really - it's a redesigned Famicom, with proprietary changes that don't really carry any justification it seems. Why change the controller ports? Why does it need to connect to the SFC?
Almost certain that this evolved into the AV Famicom, which came in '93 after the SFC's launch of '90 in Japan. This clipping is from '88 so they had a couple years. You can see some of the product design trends carry through for sure.
I love this original proto, but the AV Famicom is still my go to 8-bit machine thanks to it's compact format and composite quality - it's a great step up in picture quality and convenience from the original, even if I do miss the red and white.
I think they went with the right decision, especially given SEGA's failings with hardware that requires other hardware. That's a sure fire way to reduce your audience numbers very quickly... Technicians love that - buyers much less so..
I think the reason it's an adapter is probably because Nintendo scrapped the idea of built-in backwards-compatibility. Although the 65816 CPU core is already backwards-compatible with the Famicom one (a 6502 core), the two Super PPUs would also need to be made to have all the features of the Famicom PPU, and it was apparently to many problems to solve doing that. Then we have the APU. Having the Famicom hardware in a separate adapter probably made sense. But I don't see why it needs controller sockets, the SFC controllers protocol is identical to the Famicom's, maybe it doubles as a multitap (it looks like both the SFC and the FC adapter are using the same controller sockets).
Also the adapter has AV-ports making me think it works like a stand-alone console, but then you wonder why it can be connected at all?
The controllers are using 5 pins (same as the Famicom's internal connector for controller I) which means it's only used for standard controllers. Light guns and such won't work (the 15-pin expansion port is available though) and the microphone on controller II also needs to be connected somewhere else (or if they already scrapped it like on the NES and AV Famicom). The released SFC's controller ports has extra pins used by things like the Super Scope.
Button names are: A, B, C, D and shoulder buttons E and F. A and B are where B and Y are now respectively (although electrically A and B are still in the place as what is now called B and Y and they will act like A and B if connected to a Famicom). Other than that and design, it seems identical to the released SFC controller.
It would also seem odd that it had to be connected through the AV ports, of all things, which tells me that this prototype SFC could act as an AV passthrough, and also that could mean that the redesigned FC could be just a standalone console and the whole thing about it being an adapter was just so they could demonstrate the AV passthrough capabilities of the early SFC.
That is really cool, I don't know how that has been on YouTube for 8 years without me noticing it before!!!