Family Computer. One was a bit more successful than the other. Sega’s system survived in

its original incarnation for two years and saw the release of about 80 games. The Famicom,

on the other hand, boasted 1,055 titles over the space of 11 years, from Donkey Kong to

Adventure Island IV. That’s a damn healthy lineup for this unassuming lump of plastic.

Seriously. This thing’s barely larger than a single NES cart, slightly wider, a couple

inches longer, and maybe the height of two or three games stacked on top of each other.

We’re here to celebrate the winner of that day’s console war... even if it did take

me 2 hours to get it connected and running on an American TV. Apparently, you have to

use the RF switch from an NES, set that to Channel 3, set the Famicom itself to Channel

1, and then it shows up on Channel 95 for whatever reason. I’m even further confused,

because Felicity in the UK sent this to us, which means she also had PAL issues to figure

out. I salute her diligence.

The Famicom and the NES, despite being effectively the same hardware, are very, very different

systems. As you can see, the Famicom carts are tiny compared to NES carts, though the

size of the circuit board in each is about the same. NES carts also have a 72-pin connection

as opposed to the Famicom’s 60-pins, owing to the presence of the 10 NES lockout chip

that seemed like a good idea for a few seconds in 1985 but ended up just being a pain in

the butt. Also, while the form factor of the controllers are almost identical, the Famicom’s

controller has the wire running out the side rather than the top, and is completely hardwired

into the body of the system itself. The good news is, the controller can’t get lost.

The bad news is, the cord is only about two feet long, so you’ve gotta be hovering right

over the system in order to play it. Weirder still, the second controller lacks Select

and Start buttons of its own, instead boasting a MICROPHONE. Because when’s the last time

you remember using Select or Start in a two-player NES game? At least the microphone served a

purpose in a handful of games, like shouting to kill Pol’s Voice enemies in the Legend

of Zelda and haggling with shopkeepers in Kid Icarus. With hardwired controllers, the

only way to connect another input device - like the infamous Hudson Joycard - is through this

serial port at the front of the machine, which also allows for strange devices like the Hori

Game Repeater. Look it up. It’s nuts. But it speaks to one of the most important aspects

of the Famicom: its expandability. There were dozens of peripherals released, including

- as befitting a system called the “Family Computer” - a keyboard and cassette-based

data recorder, for word processing and BASIC programming (as well as saving Excitebike

tracks). And then there was the Famicom Disk System, which did away with the more expensive

cartridge-based media in favor of rewritable floppy disks. But we’ll save that magic

for tomorrow.