Super Famicom Box

Similar to the Famicom Box (which is the original Japanese version of the famed Nintendo M82 system), the Super Famicom Box was a device manufactured by Nintendo of Japan in the early nineties for use in hotels. The device originally had a coin mechanism that could be attached to the right-hand side. The machine was created as a pay-to-play system that offered 5 minutes of play for a preset amount of Yen.

Like the Famicom Box before it, and unlike the Nintendo M82, the Super Famicom Box uses specially designed carts. Where-as the original Famicom Box used carts nearly identical to North American NES carts which contained one game per cart, the Super Famicom Box used large carts that held several games. By large I mean very large. The Super Famicom Box carts are nearly 4 times this size of regular Super Famicom games. They resemble a cross between the Japanese Super Game Boys carts, but are closer in size to Neo Geo AVS carts.

The SF Box can hold two carts at one time; as evidenced above, they are quite a bit larger than a regular SFC carts. Picture courtesy of SNES Central.

The Super Famicom Box has the ability to have 2 carts inserted into it at one time. All SF Boxes had a cart that contained Super Mario Collection (All Stars to us), Star Fox, and Super Mario Kart. This cart contained the systems BIOS and was required to power the system on and display the menu.

The main menu seen when the unit powers on.

There are at least two other known variants available for the second cartridge slot. The first is Waialae No Kiseki (Waialae Golf) & Super Mahjong 2 and the other is Super Donkey Kong (DK Country) and Tetris 2 (Super Tetris). The most interesting of these title is the Golf game, as it was never released for the Super Famicom or Super Nintendo, and as such is only playable on the Super Famicom Box. There is an unconfirmed third variation that supposedly contained Super Donkey Kong and Bomberman 2 (Super Bomberman), however none are known to exist.

The machine uses two small barrel keys to lock the front panel. Opening this panel grants you access to the cartridges. The machine also uses a key to turn the system on and off. When locked into the “on” position, power can only be turned off and on by plugging in/unplugging the unit.

The machine connects to a standard TV via either RF or composite (using a standard red/white/yellow RCA cable). There is a selector switch on the back of the unit to toggle between Japanese channels 1 and 2 when using RF.

The Super Famicom Box comes with two hardwired Super Famicom controllers that are stored in a cubby-hole in the front of the unit when not in use. A definite plus when compared to the original Super Famicom console is that the controller cords are extremely long.

The menu screen for Super Mario Kart with the four available options.

Upon powering on the SF Box you are greeted with a menu screen from which you select your game. After you have selected your game, you are brought to a menu sub-screen for each game. This menu provides 4 options. Option 1 starts the game, option 2 provides you with details of the game’s controls, option 3 is kind like a preview mode that lets you watch the game’s  intro/title screen. Pushing any button while in this preview mode exits you back to the game’s sub menu. This option was most likely included so you could see what a game was like before actually putting any yen into the machine. The 4th and final option sends you back to the main game select screen.

The preview screen for Super Mario Collection, as noted by the white text overlaid at the top and bottom of the screen.

An added feature specific to the Super Famicom Box is the ability to soft reset anyone of the games while you are playing them. This is accomplished by pressing the L, R, Start, and Select buttons simultaneously. This only sends you back to the games title screen. In order to reset the machine back to the game select menu you must push the “Reset” button on the front of the unit itself.

The screen explaining the soft-reset option. It appears before you start each game.

The Super Famicom Box is among the rarest SFC variations in existence. Although there is no variation between the games available for the system and their commercially released counterparts, the Super Famicom remains a unique curiosity that is popular among hardcore collectors.

That does it for the 12 Days of Famicom! Judging by the site views for December it seems that this experience was astoundingly successful. I would like to thank everyone who followed along and passed the links around, especially Bryan from The Gay Gamer and everyone at the Racket Boy, Famicom World and Retroware TV forums. Make sure you check back next week for my annual ‘year in review’ post! See you then!

Note: The picture of the unit with the carts on top are originally from SNES Central. They have been used here with permission. Special thanks goes to Eric and Matt for the image, as my unit did not come with the keys required to open the front panel.

Zelda: A Link to the Past Famicom

Zelda: A Link to the Past Famicom is one of the most interesting Famicom pirates I have ever come across. It is certainly the most faithful to the game from which it borrows (ie: rips-off). You wouldn’t know to look at the anime-flavored artwork, but this is indeed a complete 8-bit remake of the famed SNES Zelda title the Legend of Zelda: A Link to the Past.

Referred to often as “Chinese originals” because of their country of origin, there are many pirates similar to this floating around. I myself also own a Chinese original Famicom remake (demake?) of the Game Bot Advance game The Legend of Zelda: The Minish Cap, although the game play is much more dissimilar to it’s source content than this game. The Minish Cap is actually a pretty terrible game, but this; this is solid gold.

Zelda: A Link to the Past Famicom was of course created by none-other-than the famed Chinese pirate company Waixing Science and Technology, who are also renowned for their 8-bit rendition of Final Fantasy 7, among many others. This is certainly an interesting pirate, and it actually plays pretty well. I haven’t been all the way through the game myself, but from what I understand the game ends where the dark world begins on the SNES title; which is understandable, considering that this is only a Famicom cart here.

From what I have played the game is pretty close to the SNES game, understandable limitations not with standing. I ked up on Ebay for around $60 about a year ago. The seller had multiple copies for BIN’s within the auction, but it was shut down by Ebay shorty after I payed for my copy. Since then, I have several copies crop up now and again on the Racket Boy sale forum and especially Famicom World. This is certainly a pirate that is actually worth the hype it gets. Highly recommended for Zelda fans of all ages.

Famicom Carts

Look at all those Famicom games! My collection of Famicom games has blossomed to this beautiful array of radness from my initial 10 cart lot I bought around 3 years ago.

Amongst this ocean of 60-pin carts are some of my most cherished components of my collection. Soem of my highlights include The Hyrule Fantasy: The Legend of Zelda, Gold Punch Out, Mighty Final Fight, Splatterhouse: Wanpaku Graffiti, Akumajō Special: Boku Dracula-kun, and of course my Chinese originals.

Only two days of Famicom left. They will be posted tomorrow and Christmas day, so make sure to take some time out of your Christmas festivities to check them out. They are both articles on disgustingly cool Japanese gaming shwag, and you won’t be disappointed!

Family BASIC

Co-developed by Nintendo, Hudson Soft and Sharp Corporation, and released by Nintendo in June of 1984, Family BASIC was an early attempt by Nintendo to sway computer users over to their newly released console.

Famicom BASIC was a programming platform for a version of the BASIC programming language branded HuBASIC which was created specifically for use on the Famicom. The peripheral consisted of a proprietary keyboard unit which, when connected to a Famicom, communicated through the peripheral port of the Famicom with a Family BASIC cartridge that contained the programing language and compiling program.

The Family BASIC cartridge itself was had several different versions; v 1.0 was never released to the public and is presumably the prototype originally created by the development group. v 2.0 was initially sold with the set, and v 2.1 was sold with later versions, also within the set. v 3.0 was a released in early 1985 and was available seperatly as an add-on. Unlike previous version of the cart, v 3.0 was labeled as such and came in a red cartridge. This last version of the software had expanded memory and came pre-loaded with games that were created in the Famicom BASIC language. All versions of the cart required two AA batteries and had a back-up enabling on/off switch.

One of the main draws of the Famicom BASIC set was the ability to program you own games using many of the tiles and sprites from early Nintendo games such as Donkey Kong and Mario Bros. You would think that Famicom BASIC would be the perfect fit for the Nintendo Disk System, with the prospect of connecting the Disk System up and writing saved games and programs to Disks. However, the Disk System was still 2 years in the future, and the very fact that the Famicom BASIC cart blocked the cart slot required for the Disk System’s RAM adapter made compatibility impossible.

Instead, Nintendo released the Famicom Data Recorder. The Data recorder was a essentially a tape deck that connected to the Family BASIC keyboard via two 1/8″ connectors. The only way to record saved games and programs created in Family BASIC was by the use of this peripheral. Today, the Famicom Data Recorder is pretty hard to come by with auction BINs as high as $400 for a boxed unit.

Unfortunately, even though the Family BASIC keyboard and programming language is primarily English based, nearly all of the related documentation (including the text-heavy programmers guide that came with the set) is entirely in Japanese.

A complete and boxed Family BASIC set sells for around $100-$150 at auction, and are highly regarded as an interesting, if some-what useless, collection piece by Famicom collectors (myself included).

Akira

Released for the Famicom on Christmas Eve 1988, five months after the Japanese release of the groundbreaking movie on which it’s based, Akira has garnered a distinct reputation in the ensuing years. That reputation, which suits no other game quite as well, is that it’s a really awesome game that you can’t play.

I suppose you could play it if you knew Japanese, but I, like so many Famicom fanatics, cannot read a word. Thus Akira, which is advertised as a “Psychic Adventure Game” on the cover art, remains a complete and total mystery… a tease, really.

There is a translation patch of the game available… but don’t get your hopes up. The patch only translates the intro of the game and nothing else. Every couple of months I get my hopes up and do a google search only to find out that there is no patch recently released, or even in the works.

Akira was developed and published by Taito, and aside from having a really cool game intro, it also has really cool packaging. Akira was released in a plastic clam-shell case. Namco(t) also released many of their Famicom titles in plastic clam-shell cases (notably Star Wars and Splatterhouse: Wanpaku Graffiti), but it Taito’s case is of a different design, and was a pretty novel idea all the same.

The game follows the same story as the film (and not the manga) and begins just after the street fight with the Clown gang when Tetsuo sees the Esper and crashes. From there I am pretty lost, because you confronted with a text driven point-and-click interface that is completely in Japanese.

I am a huge fan of the movie and manga, and an even bigger fan of point-and-click adventure games, so the fact that I can’t play this is an extreme bummer. But hey, at least the intro movie is pretty awesome, right?

Game Doctor!

When PCs become a popular gaming platforms in the mid 1980s, piracy was not far behind it. Copying a PC game in those early days was as easy as copying the contents off the disk onto another disk, whether that be the your hard drive,  a 5.25″ floppy, or a 3.5″ diskette. Software publishers, desperately needing a way to curb piracy, implemented an interesting style of copy protection; often the a PC game (The Secret of Monkey Island’s Dial-A-Pirate being a notable example) came with a code wheel. At some point in the game, the player would be prompted with a set of references. Matching these references on the code wheel gave you a code word or phrase. No further progression would be allowed in the game until that code word was entered. This insured that in order to play the full game, you would have needed to have purchased the game, thus possessing the code wheel. Other PC titles simple told you the position and page number of a word in the game’s manual. Similarly, the only way to progress would be to enter the correct word.

By the mid-to-late 1980s floppy disks had become a cheap, reliable and efficient method of copying and transferring data. It is not surprising to find out that this gusto was redirected toward console game copying. Enter the Game Doctor. A Game Doctor, while also a brand name, is a generic term used to describe a device that is used to copy the ROM data of a console video game so that it can be played without the original cartridge. Nearly all of the early (second and third generation) Game Doctors contained 3.5″ floppy drives that games could be copied to, and than played back on the same machine.

The Game Doctors themselves where almost always devices that connected to the cartridge slot of a video game system, rather than an entire stand-alone machine.

The first Game Doctors were created specifically for Nintendo’s Famicom console, and specifically for the purpose of playing specially made pirated disks. These disks can only be read when you have the Game Doctor attachement connected to you Famicom/Disk System. You can also use these Game Doctors to copy disk games when used in conjunction with a utility such as CopyMaster.

These early devices (such as the Turbo GD 6+) had no on-screen menu, save for disk swapping prompts that would appear at the appropriate time. The Turbo GD 6+ is among the most sought of the Famicom Game Doctors, as is supports more mappers than previous versions and contains 6M of memory.

Common also on Game Doctors is the on-board ability to back-up save files, although the Famicom versions of the device require a special add-on that attaches to connector on the back of the unit.

These devices are not particularly useful today, as tracking down all the components (disks, cables, utilities, the unit itself) can be difficult and expensive, and Famicom Disk games are not terribly expensive in the secondary market in comparison. These devices are, however, an interesting collection piece, and can be useful in playing Game Doctor disks if you have any.

Famicom Posters!

Just after I started of Video Games Are Rad nearly 3 years ago, I posted scans of some of the  promo posters that were included with my CIB Famicom Disk System. Those original Rapidshare files are long gone by now, but I still get requests from time to time from people wanting the downloads reinstated.

After a recent serge in requests, I have decided to put all 8 of these posters up again, but this time on my own servers so they will never expire or mysteriously vanish (unless I will it, that is). These are print quality PDF files, whose dimensions are 8.23″ x 11.68″. Unlike some other sites, I am putting these up with no watermarks (*cough* gamescanner.org) and in print-perfect high resolution (*cough* www.disk-kun.com) for everyone to enjoy.

Right-click, and Save-as the link below to get the ZIP file. The posters are all contained within 1 PDF. The total file size is just over 16 MB. Merry Christmas!

Download the PDFs!

Gold Punch Out

Released in 1987 and given away exclusively for Nintendo’s US Golf Tournament, this golden, beautiful version of Punch Out is a truly special game. US Golf was a Disk System game developed and published by Nintendo, and for a tournament competition involving the game 10,000 of these carts were produced. The carts were distributed to the tournament winners and also through various raffles. This original console version of Punch Out, also referred to as Punch Out Special, was the first home version of Nintendo’s arcade classic.

The title proved to be so popular that the right’s to Mike Tyson’s name and likeness were secured and the game was next released in North America as Mike Tyson’s Punch Out, and under the same name and with the same license in 1990 in Japan

Think of this first, golden edition of Punch Out to be kind of a prototype. It’s essentially the same game, with several color differences. The game also has alternative music when the phrase “TITLE BOUT!” flashes on the screen.

The gold version also ends after Super Macho Man, exactly the same as the arcade title Super Punch Out.

Gold Punch Out is also the only known Famicom game that uses NES chips on it’s board. Although the game looks similar to a NES cart in appearance, it is in reality much smaller.

My copy of the gold Famicom Punch Out is among my most beloved items in my collection; mainly because I have been such a life-long fan of Mike Tyson’s Punch Out. Also, it is the closest thing to a prototype that I would even consider owning and carries with it such a rich and important history.

PKA CHU

Let me preface this article by declaring that I am in no way, shape or form a Pokemon fan. I missed that train by a couple years.

I tell you this for two reasons; first, I am of the opinion that Pokemon is childish and boorishly repetitive in terms of game-play and content. Having said that, I believe it understates my gushing over PKA CHU and highlights it is not due to some fond memories of the Pokemon series, it is in fact purely based on howamazing and extensive this Super Mario Bros. hack is.

I hope my stated disdain for the Pokemon franchise will also excuse any potential in-game characters or items which I don’t recognize. I have played through this entire game and I can honestly say I only recognized Pika Chu himself (itself?), and even then only after you get a mushroom (or this games equivalent of, it’s like a cupcake or something) and turn into Pika Chu. In small form you appear to be a hamburger with feet.

Nestled on a pirate cartridge under the name PIKA, the game was a pleasant surprise. Considering the load of total crap that populates most multi-carts, finding a gem amongst the slime is always a bonus.

This game actually is quite an impressive hack of Super Mario Bros.. The enemies have all been replaced, even the King Koopa’s at the end of each level have new, some-what more sinister sprites. All the power-ups are new (save for the stars) and all seem to resemble pastries with faces. Most of the background tiles have been swapped out and many of the colors are altered.

The levels remain the same as you remember them (cosmetic changes not with-standing) and the game plays almost the same. I say ‘almost’ because the game is over clocked to the max. The speed at which the game plays and the music’s tempo is at least doubled. This gives the game a panicky edge that makes it all the more fun.

Not the most groundbreaking game, or even hack but interesting none-the-less.

Rockman 6 in 1 cart

Released in Japan between 1987 and 1993, the original six Rockman games are among the most fondly remembered and treasured classic games not only on the Famicom, but in all of retro gaming. The original six Rockman game still fetch upwards of $100 each complete in box today, and near that for their NES Megaman counterparts.

Part of the lasting legacy of the original Rockman games goes back to the games themselves; their re-playability, perfect difficulty balance, varied and fresh game mechanics, and some of the best level design this side of Miyamoto’s notebook. Add it all up and you get a brilliant series of near perfect games.

The original 6 Rockman games were re-released for the PS1 starting in 1999 in Japan. Believe it or not, each game was sold separately, and the titles boasted no graphical upgrades to the games themselves.

You can also find all six games on the Megaman Collection discs for Gamecube, PS2, and Xbox… if you can stand to grind them out on any one of the three woefully inadequate controllers.

There is a better solution, and once again we have crafty game pirates to thank. The Rockman 6 in 1 pirate is exactly that: all six original Rockman games on one pirate Famicom cart. It is a must have for any fan of the series (guilty), pirates (guilty), or amazing Famicom games (guilty once again).

The cart has several variations, but the variations are slight. Some have varied artwork on the carts, and others have slightly different text colors on the menu screen. The menu screen is the same either way; regular san-serif text of each of the titles, I through VI. You move up or down to select the game. Pretty simple.

The games themselves are completely unaltered. No hack sprites or title screens; the games are exactly as you remember them (in Rockman form, that is). There are two notable changes to part 3 and 4, however. In Rockman 3 you start off with 30 lives. This is automatic, and no code is required. In Rockman 4, you start off with infinite lives. This is represented in games by a variety of letter combinations which changes each time you plummet into a hole or explode into floating blue orbs of glory.

Not surprisingly, the Rockman 6 in 1 pirate is not all that common, and highly sought after. It does pop-up on Ebay every now and again, and when it does it goes for in the neighborhood of $50 to $75. Not exactly chump change, but it is six completely awesome games on one cart, and the novelty of the cart alone is worth the price tag.