/vr/ - Retro Games

>>5297695
Just emulate it unless you really want it as a display piece.

>What should I know as an American?
That you're a fucking weeb.

That thing was junk.

>proprietary disks (ie. fragile magnetic media) with no dust covers that are 30 years old
>proprietary drive belt that breaks if you sneeze on it
>connector won't fit in a toaster NES due to its L shape

Go buy an Everdrive instead, it emulates the FDS.

>>5297695
Jet fuel can't melt steel beams

When you consider that even NOA decided against bringing it to the US back in the day, that should tell you something.

>>5297713
>Go buy an Everdrive instead, it emulates the FDS.
With shitty sound.

>>5297695
You should know that there's no reason to buy a disk system. The EverDrive emulates it reasonably well, and the FDS-Stick with a RAM adapter is identical to the real deal. Actual FDSs will need belt repairs, and are unreliable even then. Not to mention the disks have a 50/50 chance of working at all, and a 50/50 chance of having been overwritten with Mahjong. That said, definitely buy a Famicom, they're cheap and fun.

>>5297695
Just get the RAM adapter and FDSStick. Don't bother with the drive itself unless you just want something to look nice on a shelf.

>>5297758
Anon is right

> FDS is shitty and prone to fail (belt + weak/rare media format)
> Everdrive as shitty sound

Get the better of both world getting a RAM adapter and a FDSStick. It's kind of weird looking compared to a satisfying FDS+Famicom tower but it's way more enjoyable in 2019

>>5297740
That's ok, the NES can't use the FDS sound chip anyway unless you build some contorted adapter to attach the cartridge pins to the bottom expansion connector (I've seen it done, it's not pretty).

>>5297713
The disks aren't really proprietary, they're a type of 3" floppy that was used by some 80s Japanese gadgets including Yamaha synthesizers, but the format the FDS uses doesn't work like an actual floppy disk with concentric tracks, it's a single spiral track and works more like a phonograph record--the drive reads it from start to finish in a linear fashion and random access isn't possible.

>>5297784
That's your fault for using an NES and not a Famicom.

>>5297802
Sorry, too busy enjoying my crystal-clear composite output.

>>5297784
Unfortunately that means on a lot of games like Doki Doki Panic and Akumajo Dracula, you'll lose sfx because they're generated with the FDS sound chip (most cartridge conversions of FDS games use sampled PCM sounds in place of them).

>>5297695
>Wants to buy actual Famicom
>Where there are Famiclones for pocket change still in production

>>5297825
Famiclones are like spinning a roulette wheel on how compatible they are, especially with games that use the more advanced mappers. You'll always be able to play Balloon Fight or something but I wouldn't bet on Castlevania 3 working properly.

>>5297827
And oftentimes games coded for a Famiclone (granted this is mostly Taiwanese stuff) will malfunction if run on a real NES.

In the early days of Famiclones they usually just made direct clones of the 2A01/PPU, but more recent ones consolidate everything into a single IC. Compatibility is less than perfect on most Famiclones and they often make additions/improvements to the hardware spec, also there's no one standard for Famiclones, every manufacturer does them slightly differently.

>>5297726
Size of veracity

>>5297695
>What should I know as an American?
That Japan is in China? But as a non-retard you'd know that it's pointless and you're going to overpay massively.

>>5297825
Because there are Famicoms for less than that? I have boxes of the things. They cost less than $5 here.

>>5297784
Or you could just solder a resistor to the motherboard.

>>5297702
Ok gayboi

>>5298596
>retrozoomers
>solderig

>>5297695
Like you, I'm an American.

>>5297695
Buy a RAM cart and the FDS USB Stick instead and the Famicom Top Loader

>>5299723
All Famicoms are top loaders, moron.

>>5299731
Only an autist such as yourself wouldn't know what I was referring to there. The top loader aka. the model that the new TOP LOADER was modeled after and it's the first thing that pops up when you type in Famicom Top Loader.

You really thought you got me there didn't ya?

Don't get the first Famicom. Fucking around with channel 96.7 is a pain in the ass. Get an av Famicom.
And get the fds stick ffs.

>>5299761
You mean the one that everyone who isn't a literal retard calls the AV Famicom?

Pols voice dislikes a certain kind of sound

I think it might not be a good idea anyway to plug a Famicom into a US wall outlet. The AC adapters are 100V and they'll overheat pretty fast being fed 120V.

>>5299871
The original power supplies are on their last legs at this point anyway. Get a high-quality (i.e. not cheap garbage from Amazon) switching power supply, it'll run cooler and more efficiently.

>>5300024
>The original power supplies are on their last legs at this point anyway. Get a high-quality (i.e. not cheap garbage from Amazon) switching power supply, it'll run cooler and more efficiently.

He was asking about a Famicom, not a C64 black brick of death.

What are some good exclusives for it? Alreayd have Mario 2, Miracle of Almana and Murasame Castle.

>>5300034
I know. I've had several OEM Nintendo power supplies die on me in the past few years. They don't last forever, and they're 30+ years old at this point.

>>5300052
The main thing that is bad for a PSU is heat. Don't let them overheat and they won't keel over on you.

>>5300054
Ok but that's like closing the gate after the horse has bolted. You could take good care of your PSUs and make sure they have proper ventilation, but you can't do anything about any prior owners of the console not doing likewise.

>>5300054
They still will die eventually. The ones that died on me were kept pretty well out in the open, so the airflow over them should have been decent. They were just old.

Obviously there's nothing wrong with using the original power supplies if they're still working for you. My point was that modern switching power supplies are a good alternative and you don't need to worry about slight voltage differences with them.

>>5300067
But see >>5300059

You can't assume the previous owner(s) of the console were as good about it as you.

https://assemblergames.com/threads/opening-repairing-a-famicom-ac-adapter.20182/

>plugging a NES PSU into a Famicom
Don't, ok?

Fucking hell, just go online and find a wall wart of the correct specs as the Famicom PSU. No need to fuck with 35 year old power bricks.

>>5297695
As a fellow American, you should recognize some Japanese commands in video games so that it's easier to load disks. Japanese Castlevania II (Dracula II Noroi no Fuuin) will frustrate you before you ever get the game to load if you don't know what to select; The Legend of Zelda II will test your patience as well as it needs two disks.

https://dfarq.homeip.net/nintendo-nes-ac-adapter/

According to this, unplugging your AC adapters when you're not using them is the best thing you can do to prolong their lifespan. Me, I never leave my NES or SNES plugged in when they're not in use.

>>5300356
Bet a lot of C64 power supplies would have also benefitted from this.

>>5300378
I'm sure a lot of CRTs would have also lasted longer if people hadn't run the brightness and contrast at 90% either, but whaddya want.

>>5300393
You'd think more people would be aware or care about burn-in, but like you said, whaddya want. Smart arcade operators turned the "picture" and brightness down. If the black of space in a game is grey, it's up too high.

>>5300401
Visible flyback lines might also be a sign you need to turn it down a bit.

Another problem is that a lot of TVs had factory default settings with 90% brightness/contrast to look better in store displays and many people never bothered adjusting them.

>>5300450
Heh. Forgot all about that. Nice brain you got there, anon.

Plus certain manufacturers who increased the voltage on their CRTs in the interest of a brighter picture, which halved the lifespan of the tube.

>>5300378
The European cheese wedge C64 PSU is worse with overheating than the US black brick which at least has vent holes.

>>5297695
I own several disk systems across a few different machines, sharp twin famicom and original disk system, the mechanism is the same in all of them. the belt can be changed with some difficulty but you will have to recalibrate the drive which can be a tricky process. once the drive is working good the media is pretty reliable, i own about 50 disk games and they all work reliably.

>>5299708
Yes! hahahaha
YES!

>>5297695
>What should I know as an American?
Japanese.

There is a rubberband inside the Disk system that you will need to replace. If it hasnt snapped yet, it's brittle and will snap in just a few uses.

>>5297713
This guy is wrong about dust covers/jewel cases. Jewel cases for Disksystem games were a thing, but fucking nobody kept them. Out of my 2 dozen games, I literally only have one single jewel case.

>>5300914
>There is a rubberband inside the Disk system that you will need to replace. If it hasnt snapped yet, it's brittle and will snap in just a few uses.
There's something quaint and endearing about a belt, like in a car or something breaking in a video game machine and need repairing. I want one now more than ever.

>>5297695
>What should I know as an American?
They are jail bar-ie as fuck. Get something else if you actually want to play games on it unless you are a solderererer.

>>5301089
the jailbars only affect pre gpm-02 famicoms, if your cart slot has a metal rf shield around it you're good to go, also the disk system has nothing to do with jailbars

>>5301089
The AV Famicom has easily the cleanest stock video output of any NES/Famicom model.

>>5297784
You literally solder a resistor to the motherboard, or you can use the enio which hides under the gray cover if you're an idiot who can't be bothered to learn to solder.

>>5297749
>disk system. The EverDrive emulates it reason
Also, an fds stick is $12 and loads teh romz into a famicom via the ram adapter.

>>5300914
You can't use just any rubber band, the belt is pretty specific and Nintendo ceased stocking replacements in the early 2000s.

The earlier PPU revisions lacked a certain sprite position register and this will cause Micro Machines to fuck up on these machines (mostly units made prior to mid-1986). MM is the only game definitively known to malfunction from this.

>>5297695
>What should I know as an American

I'd like to help you out anon but that's going to take a lot more than 2000 words

The very first Famicoms had controllers with square rubber buttons that tended to break off easily. Satoru Iwata claimed that "We really overestimated the durability of the controllers. We did a test where the buttons were punched one million times and still worked, so we assumed we had nothing to worry about. Yet not long after the [Famicom] began shipping, we learned that people were having problems with the buttons falling off. It seems many people were far more aggressive with them than we'd anticipated, certainly they were more aggressive than with the Game & Watch."

Following the December 1983 recall of the Famicom, the controller buttons were replaced with round plastic units. Nintendo offered replacements of controllers on first revision machines and continued to do so until support was finally discontinued in 2001.

>>5300726
>once the drive is working good the media is pretty reliable, i own about 50 disk games and they all work reliably.

If you can keep them clean and dust free. The disks are pretty simple and work more like a cassette than a true floppy disk.

http://famicomblog.blogspot.com/2010/05/square-button-famicom-my-new.html

>I then plugged 'er in to enjoy some good old "Spartan X" and was greeted with a solid green screen. Curse. I won't bore you with the details but about half an hour of cursing and doing everything humanly imaginable to try to get the damned thing to show something other than green screen produced no results so I gave up. As things currently stand, my square button is nothing but a paperweight.

Yeah those weren't terribly reliable. A green screen means at least the PPU is working (else you'd just get a black screen). Maybe a CPU issue?

>>5297695

Not very good build quality and you need to mod av out or deal with the rf signal.

Unless you want one as a collection piece I would get a twin famicon instead, it's the two things inside one box and with av out from the factory. Is not going to get a lot pricier than importing the fami and the fds

>>5301783
The first Famicoms apparently suffered from overheating issues. I saw a picture of a board which had the PPU heat sinked (Iwata mentioned the initial ones tended to overheat which would manifest itself in graphics glitches). Famicoms were never equipped with heat sinks from the factory so this appears to have been an aftermarket modification, possibly to correct said thermal problem.

>the Famicom was Japan's first microprocessor-based game console with removable ROM cartridges
>seven years after the Fairchild Channel F
Why did it take them so long?

>>5301645
Micro Machines was a Codemasters game and they were a British dev which means they were probably big on demo culture and showing off that they were l33t hax0rs.

>>5297695
Ram adapter + FDSStick is a lot better

>>5297695
>I'm thinking about importing one of these. What should I know as an American?
Japanese

>>5299785
Sometimes the picture will also be black and white and the sound is on a different channel.

>>5301807
>citation needed

>>5302024
No NES had a heat sinked PPU and it doesn't seem most Famicoms did either.

>>5302030
As mentioned earlier, they did have thermal issues on the first units as Iwata mentioned that would cause graphics glitches. As later revision PPUs came out, it seems these problems were resolved and the heat sinks were no longer considered necessary.

You will recall that a lot of earlier SNESes suffer CPU failure because of similar production issues that took a while to resolve. Any time you have the first production units of an electronic device, there's typically going to be some problems.

The square button Famicoms also didn't implement the looped noise feature, this is what produces the metallic sounding music in the Fire Man stage of MM1. If you play MM1 on those first Famicoms the music just sounds like white noise. Some other games will produce graphical glitches or other odd behavior due to missing or buggy features on the Rev A chipset.

>>5301932
I'm surprised this wasn't the first post.

>>5302048
The earliest NESes had a Rev E PPU, this was the last one that didn't have the sprite detection register used in Micro Machines.

It's pretty rare to find Rev A Famicoms, since they were recalled, most were probably scrapped and the PCBs swapped with newer board revisions.

>>5302091
Depends. A lot of them also had the controllers replaced so it's easily possible to find a Rev A unit with the newer controllers.

>>5297695
just get a NES, longer cords and you get composite output / games in english

>>5302105
If you want to play Japan-only stuff especially RPGs you'll need an Everdrive+translated ROMs. Maybe not even then if the game in question uses a more exotic mapper type (the Everdrive doesn't emulate MMC5 or third party Konami/Namco/Sunsoft whatever mappers).

>>5302115
They don't?

>>5302119
I'm positive the Everdrive only does MMC1+MMC3+AOROM/CNROM/UNROM whatever. The more advanced mappers are quite complex devices to try and emulate and for third party ones they're likely not very well documented. So you'll just need a real cartridge for those.

https://wiki.nesdev.com/w/index.php/Everdrive_N8

The newest revision emulates most mapper types with a few caveats.

>>5302161
About 60% of these are mappers used by pirate multicarts.

>>5302048
Likely problems with doping of the silicon like how a lot of Commodore ICs would overheat.

Rev B board. Still heat sinked, note the surface-mounted chips.

>>5302119
it supports mmc5 only for castlezeldia, iirc

How many working readable FDS floppies can there really BE left on Earth at this point? Like, is it even in the triple digits?

>>5305206
Most of them.

>>5297695
Having grown up with a Famicom I can tell you from experience that the controllers are the most comfortable you will ever have held 2nd only to the Neogeo CD controllers.

The Famicom Disc System on the other hand is a pain in the ass to take care of, there's a rubber belt inside it that rots away over time and you have to replace every 15 years or so give or take, if you must get one make sure to get a used one that has the belt already replaced by the previous owner, trust me when I say you do not want to have to replace that shit yourself, there's several parts you have to remove just to put the new belt in and you have to memorize where each part went otherwise your just left with a paperweight.

>>5299871
i think it's pretty accepted using JPN psu in NA are fine. most of the older PSUs have old DC filter caps that allow a ton of noise as well and it does not seem to hurt anything either.

>>5305206
I have a few dozen so I'm sure it's far more than you can imagine. Not sure if you're aware that "FDS floppies" were made by more than one company and that you can use them for storing any data like other floppies. I still have working disk cards with PCE games on them. Tested them just a few months ago when some other kid was going on about how they all turned to rust or whatever.

>>5299057
>spoiled kid
>weeb
>anime poster

Still pottery

>>5299708
>>5300854
Holy fuckin based

The FDS disks are 3" floppies similar to what the Amstrad CPC used. No computer sold in North America used these, only some word processors and synthesizers. However, I don't know what you'd use to write an FDS disk with because they have a spiral track and not concentric tracks.

>>5306016
You could always use an FDS

>>5306016
Nintendo had these special vending machines they used to write the disks with. Maybe there's one gathering dust in a warehouse or at a garbage dump in Japan somewhere.

>>5306016
The in game save menu?

>>5306146
Some FDS games had save features but I don't think you could actually write a game to a blank disk unless you had one of Nintendo's vending machines (likely all junked many years ago).

>>5305823
why do you talk exclusively in memes

The FDS was basically designed to solve a particular problem in the mid-80s (ie. ROM chips maxing out at 64k) that was very quickly overcome so it soon became unnecessary. Nintendo also charged third party developers expensive licensing fees to develop for the FDS and so they found few takers outside Konami and Taito.

So not only were larger ROMs available by 1987, games also started to exceed the FDS's 128k capacity and advanced mappers like the Konami VR series and MMC3 became available. Nintendo of America looked at the FDS and rejected the idea of bringing it over here.

>>5306223
>So not only were larger ROMs available by 1987, games also started to exceed the FDS's 128k capacity and advanced mappers like the Konami VR series and MMC3 became available. Nintendo of America looked at the FDS and rejected the idea of bringing it over here.
They would have needed a different cartridge adapter to fit the toaster NES and probably also delete the sound chip which the NES couldn't use.

They never used the Konami VRC mappers in US cartridges for as I understand cost reasons.

>>5306291
Konami may have not had the production capacity to supply enough VRC chips for the US market. The only third party mappers I'm positive were used outside Japan were Sunsoft ones (Batman for example has a Sunsoft mapper in it).

I thought it was because Nintendo of America did not allow third party devs to produce their own cartridges. By the time Batman came out (1991) they had relaxed this policy somewhat and thus Sunsoft could use their FME-7 for US cartridges.

>>5304097
MMC5 was horribly expensive which is why few games used it outside CV3 and Koei strategy titles.

What's the best expansion chip, and why is it the N163?

>>5306337
As I understand, the MMC5 was mostly a direct clone of the VRC6 and the only thing that had to be changed for it was the interrupt handing which was somewhat different between the two chips.

Also Konami really loved their custom chips; some of their arcade boards even used custom CPUs.

>>5301192
>not soldering a pot instead
Enjoy your uneven sound.

ENIO is great you want to use Famicom accessories with your NES. The expansion audio is more or less a side effect.

>>5302115
This isn't true. Everdrive supports most MMC5, VRC6, and since version 20, FDS audio is fabetter but still not perfect.

The only time MMC5 is an issue is if a game utilizes EXRAM. Koei strategy games and the simcity proto come up garbled.

Get OS 20.

>>5305206
Every single one i have encountered. Theyre easily rewritable with the right equipment.

>>5306165
I know I could. I have.