Hello everyone, I'm new here. I thought I'd give a bit of my history before my post. I live in Canada and I got my first video game system at the age of 4 in 1991, the Super NES. Since then, I've gotten an N64 and Gamecube, and will probably get a Wii in the summer. I love classic gaming and I am constantly adding additions to my SNES and N64 collections. Having gotten most of the good games for those systems, I've been looking to branch out, and I've always dug the simplicity of the NES/Famicom.
Sometimes I scour eBay for Famicom games and stuff because I really like the style of the system. The original system deck looks totally retro cool, and I love how the games are different colours rather than North America's dull grey. The labels are more interesting (better art) as well.
I haven't gotten a Famicom yet, but I plan to soon. It is great to find such a thorough and pro site on the hobby, and cool to see others share the past time.
My question is this then for all of you: For those who don't live in Japan, why Famicom? Why not NES, what is it about Famicom that does it for you? Also, what do the majority of you guys and girls prefer, the Family Computer or the AV Famicom?
Thanks for reading, and I look forward to more Famicom goodness in the years to come.
John
Original family computer, but i want an av too for collecting purposes. The hardwired controllers and the red and white are what do it, it looks cool. Also the famicom has alot better games, no blinkinng problems, and the famicom disk system.
In short, the nes is a piece of crap compared to the famicom imo
I don't like to say I collect, so I, in the shallow of that thought, I should stick with the NES and a converter, but I tend to think that the best gaming is done on the original system of the games, since that's what the games were programmed for. And why not just stick with NES games...that's easy, since there's so much released for the Famicom that wasn't made for the NES.
NES + Famicom games = almost excellent gaming; Famicom + Famicom games = excellent gaming.
And welcome, Bergasa, our 100th member. (No prize, sorry.) :)
I collect for both, as well as alot of other consoles. I like the Famicom, because of the whole import factor. It makes it more of a challenge to find games for it, especially CIB games, and it also makes it more difficult to find info on Famicom games, so it makes you feel more accomplished when you run across a pretty cool game, that not too many in the people in the US even know exist.
I'd get both an AV Famicom, and the original, and use the AV Famicom to play the games, and the original, just because it's the very first Nintendo console ever made, and looks alot better sitting ontop of the Disk System than the AV Fami does.
I also collect both. In fact, it wasn't until December of 2005 when my friend bought me a Super Mario Bros. 3 Famicom cart as a gag gift that I got interested. I soon later bought a Famicom, and the rest is history.
I like the Famicom because it has:
Great games that were never released in the U.S.
A better fanbase (No elite "OOOO LOOK WHAT IVE GOT LOL" guys.), and great people
It's more fun to collect, since less people are Famicom fans (Hopefully that'll soon change with the site. :D)
Two words: Gradius II - I've constantly wondered about this game ever since I've known that Gradius III was for the SNES: first, what system was it for? When I found out it was for Nintendo's 8-bit system, the next question was, what region? Now I ask, why wasn't it released in the U.S. ? I will hopefully get ideas & post them on the review.
After buying Gradius II & a converter (which seemed more common a couple years ago) I bought a loose Tetris, since I read a nice review of it on the Warp Zone. After that, I bought several CIB games inluding Tetris 2 + BomBliss & Tetris Flash & that's going to be my specialty: official CIB games.
Other than that, I have a few distinct Street Fighter pirates worth a writeup.
Honestly, I'm not a hardcore Famicom fan - I'm only interested in the games not released in the rest of the world. Someday I'll buy an AV Famicom.
I think the 100th member should get a prize: Since I bought a CIB Tetris, I have an extra loose copy as well. It's yours if you don't have a copy.
Quote from: Jedi QuestMaster on January 25, 2007, 11:06:58 pmI think the 100th member should get a prize: Since I bought a CIB Tetris, I have an extra loose copy as well. It's yours if you don't have a copy.
Damn... if I would have just waited a few more days before giving up my lurker status... I guess the LATE bird gets the worm in this case. :P
The Gradius II thing that you mentioned above is kind of like my situation with The Goonies. I played a Vs. The Goonies cabinet at a local Pizza Hut frequently when I was a kid, and always wanted the game, but all I could find was Goonies II. I later found out that for some weird reason they never released it here, yet one of my friends scored a 124 Games in 1 cart at a flea market one day, and it was on there... Then I found out it was released in Japan only. Why there would be more of a market for a game based on an American movie in Japan is beyond me, but not releasing it here at all was very strange on Konami's part. It's not like there were translation issues for either of these games, yet Americans still got shafted, even on a game based on our movie. There are alot of quality games on the famicom that require no translation to English whatsoever, yet these companys seemed to have felt they wouldn't do well in our market... yet we ended up with titles like Mag Max, Deadly Towers, Bad Street Brawler, and Wrestlmania.
Was Wrestlemania the one with the constipated Andre The Giant?
Quote from: Jedi QuestMaster on January 25, 2007, 11:06:58 pm
I think the 100th member should get a prize: Since I bought a CIB Tetris, I have an extra loose copy as well. It's yours if you don't have a copy.
Really? Man, you guys are really great. Seems like such a nice community! I would love to start my collection with a free game :D
Quote from: DevIancE on January 26, 2007, 02:06:07 am
Quote from: Jedi QuestMaster on January 25, 2007, 11:06:58 pmI think the 100th member should get a prize: Since I bought a CIB Tetris, I have an extra loose copy as well. It's yours if you don't have a copy.
Damn... if I would have just waited a few more days before giving up my lurker status... I guess the LATE bird gets the worm in this case. :P
It's just Tetris. :P By the way, LJN, a division of Acclaim was made solely for Acclaim to make more games than they were alotted. This was Nintendo's solution from releasing a bunch of crappy games: put a limit on each company's games. That worked out well, didn't it? :D ;D
Oh, & Bergasa, I'll need your address.
I'll have a much greater prize for the 500th Member
when we get there. ;)
I used to use my famicom console but then found out about the power difference thing so I changed back to nes with converter. THe problem is that the games are harder to make work in the nes than in the famicom. It's amazing how in the famicom doesnt matter if it's dirty the game will still work and in the nes I seem to have to clean them every so often. Anyways, if anyone knows this does the converter to play famicom games on the nes damages the nes in any way?
I'd imagine a converter wouldn't do much harm. Some converters are made with very tight pins on the Famicom game side, so it's likely to scratch up and damage the Famicom game's pins. And one reason playing Famicom games on the NES is a bitch is because a lot of time the pins on the Famicom game and the converter don't match up -- due to crappy converters and especially true of poorly made pirates.
Quote from: FamicomJL on January 26, 2007, 05:21:25 am
Was Wrestlemania the one with the constipated Andre The Giant?
Indeed. I feel sorry for the people that forked out $49.99 for that PoS.
Quote from: Jedi QuestMaster on January 26, 2007, 07:13:06 am
It's just Tetris. :P By the way, LJN, a division of Acclaim was made solely for Acclaim to make more games than they were alotted. This was Nintendo's solution from releasing a bunch of crappy games: put a limit on each company's games. That worked out well, didn't it? :D ;D
Yeah, but I love free stuff!! ...and Konami done the same thing with Ultra, yet we still didn't get Goonies, Gradius II, Falsion, or countless others. ... though with all of the games Konami was releasing at that time, they would have needed to make about three more bogus companys in order to get Nintendo's "Seal of Quality"... Capcom didn't seem to have any problem putting out titles in the US though.
Quote from: DevIancE on January 26, 2007, 12:28:44 pm
Quote from: FamicomJL on January 26, 2007, 05:21:25 am
Was Wrestlemania the one with the constipated Andre The Giant?
Indeed. I feel sorry for the people that forked out $49.99 for that PoS.
Like me. :(
I was such a huge wrestling fan then it's ridiculous. Wrestling sucks now.
lol, I don't have much of a Famicom collection. I paid 2 bucks for my WWF Wrestlemania... thank God.
I'm surprised no one has mentioned the artwork yet.
Originally I got into the Famicom after moving to Japan. I had heard about Mario 2 J so I tried to find that, then discovering that you needed a whole additional system to play it with. So I bought a Fami and a Disk System to play that. It was all new and exciting, yet familiar and comfortable. After checking out more stores I realized how many strange and wonderful treasures there were for the Famicom. I definitely got addicted to the thrill of the hunt and finding some crazy accessory or game I had never heard of that was amazing.
Now I've dedicated a lot of time to gaining knowledge about this system and collecting items but I feel once I leave Japan I won't keep up with it as much. Deep in my heart I'm a nostalgic gamer and nothing can compare to playing games I enjoyed as a kid. So I think once I get back to US I'll go back to primarily collecting NES items, however the one reason why I think the Famicom is superior is the artwork. The NES has great games that weren't released for the Famicom and vice versa but the Famicom artwork can't be beat. I never realized it before but now when I look at NES game boxes and posters I just can't help to feel disappointed in how tacky most of the artwork looks. There is never a bad looking box in Japan!
So NES gets my vote for being home (plus I like to read the story and the manuals), but Famicom gets my aesthetic vote. It's great to collect things that look good as well!
Quote from: featherplucknfilms on January 29, 2007, 07:50:52 pm
I'm surprised no one has mentioned the artwork yet.
Originally I got into the Famicom after moving to Japan. I had heard about Mario 2 J so I tried to find that, then discovering that you needed a whole additional system to play it with. So I bought a Fami and a Disk System to play that. It was all new and exciting, yet familiar and comfortable. After checking out more stores I realized how many strange and wonderful treasures there were for the Famicom. I definitely got addicted to the thrill of the hunt and finding some crazy accessory or game I had never heard of that was amazing.
Now I've dedicated a lot of time to gaining knowledge about this system and collecting items but I feel once I leave Japan I won't keep up with it as much. Deep in my heart I'm a nostalgic gamer and nothing can compare to playing games I enjoyed as a kid. So I think once I get back to US I'll go back to primarily collecting NES items, however the one reason why I think the Famicom is superior is the artwork. The NES has great games that weren't released for the Famicom and vice versa but the Famicom artwork can't be beat. I never realized it before but now when I look at NES game boxes and posters I just can't help to feel disappointed in how tacky most of the artwork looks. There is never a bad looking box in Japan!
So NES gets my vote for being home (plus I like to read the story and the manuals), but Famicom gets my aesthetic vote. It's great to collect things that look good as well!
That is a nice way to look at famicom. I agree with you, the artwork is so awesome hmm I still don't know why the rockman games artwork were so disgusting (megaman 1) comparing to the famicom ones....Famicom gets my vote too I lived with it when I lived in Peru since we had a president that had a japanese family we were overwhelmed with japanese products not to mention the anime and kids show all straight from japan. Of course tons of pirated stuff were brought over as well and that was pretty much all you could find in the markets but famicom was known even more than the NES. I can say I lived with both systems during my childhood and I gotta admit they both have their ups and downs.
I never understood how Japan had this compact (for it's day) console, and we ended up with this VCRish big gray box which is mostly made up of wasted space, which in turn, made our cartridges about two times larger than Famicom carts, and they were made up mostly of plastic and air as well... I still love the NES though. :-*
... and yes, some of the art we had on our carts was horrendous (excluding most Konami games). Some of the Japanese box art / cartridge label art is so good, that I wish there was a collection of the originals available on the web somewhere. From what I've heard about alot of the original Akumajou Dracula art, alot of it was destroyed in some earthquake a while back, but I don't know if it was only Konami's art that was impacted, or all of the art for the Famicom Carts. It would be nice to have though, because alot of it would make some kick ass screen savers.
I like how our MegaMan's were gradually getting better in box art & (in my opinion) eventually better than the Famicom counterparts.
I finally sent the cart out to you, Bergasa. I was going to do it earlier, but had the wrong bubble envelope - it was a bit too big.
I collect both... and apart from that much other stuff.
Why the Famicom?
It's already been said above.
1)The box art and cartridges' different colors make it interesting. Here in Europe (an d in the USA), the cart and box sizes were standardized. Almost all boxes are the same in size and most carts are grey. In Japan Famicom games come in different sized boxes, even the carts have different sizes and colors. It's so much more fun to collect those. ;D Some of the game boxes and carts look like "indie" releases (i.e. look like made by amateurs) and that's also what makes them interesting. It's fun to look at the boxart alone. Even if the game is crap, a good box makes me want to buy it. ;)
2) Everybody seems now to be collecting NES. Only few people around here are into the Famicom. It's more "special" than the good old NES.
3) There are many more games to collect and play. How much were out in the US? Not even 700, right? In Japan there are over 1200. = More fun to collect.
4) I like the design of the Famicom more than that of the NES.
5) I like Japanese stuff by default. (I have Japanese Famicom, Japanese DS, Japanese computer, Japanese wife... :-*) ;D