Nintendo Famicom

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The Nintendo Famicom (full name Nintendo Family Computer) was a self-contained computer and video game console manufactured by Nintendo circa 1983. It was part of the third generation of consoles, but was supported by the company until the early 2000s.

Background

With the Family Computer, Nintendo had hoped to build off of its earlier successes with the Game & Watch portables and the plug-and-play TV games that defined its second generation, but the aftereffects of the video game crash of 1983 forced the company to take a slightly different path to success. The console was Nintendo's first to use interchangeable cartridges, and was designed to more closely resemble a set-top appliance than gaming hardware. The Famicom, as it became known, was an 8-bit system in a red and white enclosure with two tethered gamepads that could be stowed on top of the console. Nintendo set the console apart from earlier generations by requiring developers to adhere to a set of strict standards before they would earn the company's approval and matching QA seal. Developers would also be limited to five games per year under Nintendo's terms. Two years later, in 1985, the Famicom was exported to the United States and Canada as the Nintendo Entertainment System, following in the rest of the world within the next two years.

Unlike its export counterparts, the Famicom was extensible with add-on devices such as a dial-up modem and a floppy diskette reader attachment. The latter device, sold as the Famicom Disk System (FDS) added increased processing capability and used proprietary 300 kB, 3-inch diskettes to store games and save user data. Nintendo also used a network of special disk-writing vending kiosks for consumers to try and buy FDS games. These kiosks were closed around the turn of the century. Furthermore, FDS disks were reportedly very slow and somewhat fragile versus standard cartridges, which, among other issues, pushed companies such as Square to move away from the FDS and back to cartridge games, as was done with the original Final Fantasy.

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