Difference between Famicom and NES Dr Mario

[petik1]

Sorry, I find this idea pretty stupid. For the price to convert some games, you can buy yourself a famicom and not limit the amount of games left. Remember, video games can't breed. There are a certain number of them out there, and they will only get rarer and rarer. Please don't speed up their extinction.

[Jedi Master Baiter]

Fortunately for you I have an adapter guy and bought 15 of them in bulk for a fairly decent price and they are replicas of the real adapters so it will not dwindle your supply and inflate prices you whiners.

I couldn't care less - I already own the games that contain these converters - I was letting you know that you'd be paying lots of money if you went this route.

By the way, you wouldn't mind letting us know who your connection is, would you? I've been looking for someone who could make converters in bulk.

[Xious]

Jeepers... It's blindingly easy to make a FC--> NES adapter: It's the other way around that poses a problem due to connector availability with the correct pin pitch.

I have to say that with the large production count on many games, removing a dozen from circulation isn't really going to matter either way in a hundred-years' time. 'Stack-Up' is far less common than 'Gyromite', so I don't understand why it's a target for this; most of the original 1985 titles have a variation with a NES10-based adapter board, but you could recreate that card very easily.

The game cases on common (Rarity-1 and Rarity-2) games were made in the tens of millions. If Brian made his cases in grey rather than crazy colours, then I'd say there was no reason to sacrifice originals, but he doesn't: The only source for a proper grey cart is an original case, or to dye one of his repro-cases, which won't have the correct finish.

If the guy wants to make custom games with custom art for the sake of his own amusement, it's his prerogative. As long as he isn't tearing up Rairty-5+ games, I couldn't care less, and as he said, it only makes the rare titles more valuable over time. While I don't necessarily agree with the philosophy of destroying something to make it rarer, it's his money. Frankly, it's little different than when a kid took an FDS disk into a shoppe in Nippon and used it in a Disk Writer machine to buy a new game. In fact, people do this all the time for FamiCase type exibits with custom game labels and artwork, etc..

'Tisn't as if he's opening sealed games, tossing the packaging and circuitry to use the cases. Heck, I know a guy that buys sealed FDS titles to open and play. As a collector and historian, it makes me cringe, but he paid for them and can do as he pleases.

As to the original question, there is no difference. There is a Vs. version of the game as well though which may be different in some way and you could convert to run on NES/FC hardware.

P.S. I think that 'Combat' and 'E.T.' can in fact breed, or at least my constant discovery of more of them leads me to believe it true.

[Jedi Master Baiter]

Very well, Xious.

How much would you charge for your FC->NES converters?

[EazyBake]

Yes. if you do in fact make these adapters would you be willing to sell them and if so how much?   And Jedi Quest Maser, if you PM me or email me I will give you the email of the guy that I've gotten my adapters from before.  But hopefully Xious here can help us out.  We shall see what he charges.

And blindingly easy?  If it is that easy then why are they so gosh darn expensive? 

[Xious]

That depends which adapters you want. FC-->NES adapters are common, and usually not expensive at all, unless they are old-stock highly desirable collectible items of some bizarre nature. Making them requires three parts, a PCB, a 60-pin female edge connector, and a NES10 lockout chip or variant. (You can skip the chip for systems with lockout disabled.) Aside from designing he PCB--a matter of little time--and manufacturing a run of them, which is easily done, the other two parts are off-the-shelf, which makes manufacturing them 'blindingly easy'.

Assuming I was to waste time making them, as bare boards, probably $15-20 each...  It's the other way 'round that interests me, as there are so many 60F-->72M converters out there that making them for sale is almost pointless, and then people will whine about them not having a case around the PCB. I can't ask more, as I'm already competing with the adapters inside legit NOA carts, and all of the Honeybee-type adapters that have ever been made.

Of course, I can pre-wire them for the PowerPak and the like, but that isn't enough of a selling point to allow for an increased margin, and as soon as I start offering them, every T,D&H will copy the idea and do runs of them entirely in China at a fraction of the cost and cut me out of the picture, so I'd better make only enough to sell out before that happens.

Before I manufacture anything, I always evaluate the profit margin from the venture. Casing them is a secondary concern, as many people dislike buying or using bare PCBs.

I suppose I could cut-down NES repro-cases, but that'd add to the cost and thus add to the RP. To be honest, I simply don't see a demand for them, although if I do it right it could be useful to the few people who want to make NES carts out of original FC boards, such as the OP. He already had a source for them, probably using exactly the same method that I'd use and pretty much the same parts as well, with one small potential difference.

Anyhow, the adapters that aren't floating around on the market are NES(72F)-->FC(60M), which are the type I desire to manufacture. Maybe you were thinking about these when I said 'blindingly easy'. True, they are even easier in concept than the FC-->NES type adapters, but the parts availability is a sore problem, at least with the correct pitch on the 72F connector. As soon as I have the parts, I'll do a run of them.

As to price on those, that depends on the cost pf the parts, but given a market with zero competition, I can ask and get $30 a piece without complaint. Of course, this also would have build-in sound-trace connections for the PowerPak, correct wiring of all pins, and label-facing-front connections. (Something that no-one has ever made perfectly before.)

I just wish that the Chinese firm that used to manufacture the black adapters had held onto the plastic moulds for them, as I could've had a cased product as well, but I'm not willing to pay $10,000 to $20,000 to have an injection mould custom-made for a product that will sell in the hundreds. If I can clone one of the existing cases with hand-moulding techniques, maybe it'll be a different story, but I haven't tried anything this complex yet, so I have no clue how it'd turn out, and it'd need a vacuum tank to be do-able at all. Nobody makes reproduction FC-case shells, after all.

[L___E___T]

I can see the idea of wanting to do this - but I think best bet is to go the repro route and pass them your artwork.

I'm actually doing something similar that I hope to show soon.  To me the art is most important - so I'd love to see some of your art / design work for this.
Please post, seriously  

Game repros offer game burning but have a few stipulations I believe:
http://www.gamereproductions.com/categories.php?category=Services-%252d-Burned-Chips%2C-etc

They will print your labels too - prices seem affordable to me:
http://www.gamereproductions.com/categories.php?category=Game-Labels

now show some designs please, lo-res if necessary

[Jedi Master Baiter]

I would at least do my own labels if I were you, EazyBake.

I've used both Leon & Gamereproductions & have been disappointed with the quality of their labels.

[Xious]

I find the quality and appearance of the labels from Gamereproductions to be about on par with original labels, but some of the artwork is low-res, so you'd want to supply that yourself, at no less than 600DPI. Low-res sources will look like much no mater what you use to print them... He did a fantastic job with some of the custom labels that I designed, and it's not so easy to reproduce laminate acrylic over printed-paper labels by hand.

[L___E___T]

Xious do you have clear, zoomed and focused hi-res photos to show of those examples?  I've never found a label maker I've been happy with to be honest.

[Xious]

I'll take some new photos for you. The last time I did, I wasn't really under good conditions, and they didn't turn out quite right.

Regarding adapters, I did a preliminary design for a FC(60F)-->NES(72M) adapter, just to knock it off my list. Here are the renderings:
Front Side Rendering (PNG)
Back Side Rendering (PNG)

Keep in mind that my CAD programme doesn't have a module for a right-angle female edge socket, so I used the closest thing with the correct pin arrangement, which makes no difference when fabbing the PCBs. (It just looks wrong--out of place--and I want to avoid confusion up front. I haven't finished it yet, as it still needs some minor stuff and , of course, a test-run, but it's sound as far as I can see. The little lines that poke out are a baseline, if you're wondering...

These are designed to use off-the-shelf parts in current production, so no vintage games will be harmed in the making of such an adapter.

The reverse, NES-->FC will be next: It's merely the reverse with modified components.  

[L___E___T]

hang on, is that an adaptor to be able to play ANYTHING in a FamicomBox/Station?  Exciting stuff if so!  Otherwise I'm confused and you're making your own adaptors :S

[Xious]

Sadly no, although that is on my 'want to do' list.Such a project isn't an adapter per se, but rather a way of circumventing the custom protection schema on the FamicomBox hardware, plus solving the name-detection system that it uses to ID carts in its BIOS menus.

Additionally, the FC Box uses a limited memory range, so exotic mapper games would never work, and many common mappers are excluded because they'd use memory ranges outside those that the FC Box can handle. The only way to play other titles on the FC Box at present is to do ROM swaps (with custom ROMs at that) on original FC Box games: If I ever find a way to bypass the security, I will let you know

As to those boards, they're just proof of concept on newly-made adapters for using FC games on a NES, which was requested earlier in this thread. I'm reviving the project, and making tweaks to it now, so maybe I'll offer them in the near future, for those who want an option other than destroying 'Gryomite' (and similar) carts.  

EDIT: This is the resurrected and updated converter (NES version). It's certainly not done, but it's pretty darn close to being ready for fabrication; it's ready for prototyping at any rate. Note that this uses either a double-ended 60-pin female coupler (like the popular Nintendo-brand type) or an edge-mounted 60-pin female socket, just like every other converter out there, rather than a right-angle socket as the original concept design.

It won't take much to adapt this design to its reverse either (NES on FC), or make more interesting additions. For one thing, it has the 'extra sound' mod built directly onto it... I need to verify that I have this in 'label facing front' orientation, but if not, I can reverse the connections. For the NES-type, I don't think many people care anyhow, as a label-facing-front adapter only makes a difference for the NES2.

Front Side Rendering (JPG)
Back Side Rendering (JPG)

[L___E___T]

Ah ok I get it - add me to the list for the NES converters
I need to make a few famicom games into NES games, though I still need the shells so will be butchering some shitty NES games anyway - and that's that.

I know there are only a certain number of NES games around, but to be fair if donor carts like Tennis ever became that rare - then people would just make repros with EPROMs, heck the Chinese have been doing it for years with glob tops and that's actually what's happeneing with gameboys now  - buy your own screens, buttons, cases, cartridges, flashcarts and all sorts of other shit at higher quality than the original to boot.

Ok it doesn't satisfy historical representation, but there literally are tons of these things about and if people care so much about that - I would suggest turning the attention towards wildlife preservation which is a much more important case than NES carts.

No offence to anyone, but I think some perspective is important.