What got you into famicom?

[Bro3256]

When I was growing up in the late 2000s my dad gave me his childhood NES which got me into retro gaming as a whole, but it wouldn't be until recently that I got into Famicom and import gaming as a whole. I knew about the Famicom since the 2010s but I wouldn't get my first few games until 2016ish where I got King's Knight and Ninja Hattori-kun at a local game store. I didn't have an actual Famicom console at the time so I had to buy an adapter and play on an after market console to play these games. About a year later I bought a Famicom console on eBay for $20 but I wouldn't really go crazy on getting more games until 2020 when video game prices started going crazy and local game stores started upping their prices. I wanted to find a way to continue buying games for cheap, so I started using a proxy service to import various games and consoles from Japan, including a lot of Famicom games. Famicom collecting has pretty much made me obsessed with the system especially since documentation on the Famicom is sparse compared to the NES on the English side of the internet. Eventually I do want to collect every single Famicom cartridge one day but that'll probably never happen considering the rarity and prices for the harder to find games.

[Dipsy]

Mine is pretty strange one.

I just liked the design of it and the way the controllers sat at the side of the console.

[Lukān]

I had grown up with an NES, but I never even considered buying a Famicom or Famicom games until after getting a RetroN 5 in 2014. I worked in a mom 'n pop game store at the time and the owner had ordered a few to sell. As odd as it may sound, I decided I wanted to get a Famicom cartridge simply so that I'd have something that used every input available on the console. I wasn't really interested in anything I hadn't played before or that was text heavy since I couldn't read Japanese, so I went with the game series that hooked me into video games from the start: The Legend of Zelda.

At the time, I had no idea that the cartridge was just a "backport" of the NES release back into Japanese, and thought this was the "original" release format of the game. I played the game through once, noticed that the Pols Voices were no longer weak to arrows and that I needed the microphone to kill them faster, passed on playing the 2nd Quest like I usually did, and that was that. 

Skipping ahead to 2019, I had recently watched "Dad of Light" on Netflix; exposition aside, the first episode depicts a father and his young son walking by a store window in the 80's and seeing a Nintendo Family Computer on display, so they decide to buy one and the game they pick is Final Fantasy III. I had originally played FF3 when it was finally localized in English on the Nintendo DS and loved it, and somehow seeing them set that Famicom on the floor in front of their tv with the little cassette-sized game sticking out of it sparked an interest in me.   

That same year I attended what would be my last anime/video game convention before the pandemic hit, and in the vendor hall one stall was selling an assortment of Famicom games. As I looked through without any specific game in mind, I saw Final Fantasy III.    I immediately bought it, and now here I sit with an a/v modded original Famicom, a stack of cartridges, a Famicom disk system, a small selection of disks, and an incomplete but far larger grasp of Japanese (basically just being able to type Hiragana and Katakana into Google Translate and a few words here and there) than I had only 4 some odd years ago. 

It's also lead me into soldering, which I'll confess also lead down the dark road of destroying a few (mostly obscure) games to make English repro NES carts of Final Fantasy 2 and 3 among others.    I've since given the practice up, but it has also allowed me to make some fantastic mods and repairs I never thought possible before across both Nintendo and Sega hardware; I recently replaced the belt in my FDS and I'm currently working on modifying it to allow it to overwrite disks so I can repair two disks I purchased that turned out not to have the games they were supposed to on them (one disk was for a 2-sided game that had another game written over side A, making Side B useless, the other is Zelda 2 but with Zelda 1 written over it). It would also give me peace of mind if I get any corrupted disks in the future or if something goes wrong with one I already have if re-writing the disk is a tool in my kit! 

It's been a wild ride so far, and I don't see an end to it just yet!   

[8-bitman]

How I got into collecting famicom is a pretty short story actually.
I started when I found Famicom world 15 years ago and bought a famicom and 4 games.
I've been collecting every since. In that 15 year time I have build up a pretty good collection.  

That's pretty much it.   

[dingsbums]

I'm from Germany. I got a NES at christmas in 1990. The games I remember I had in the 2 year span that I had the NES were: Probotector 1 & 2 (Contra & Super C), Life Force, Super Mario Bros. 1 & 3, Castlevania 1 & 3, Track & Field 2, Marble Madness, Mega Man 2, 3 & 4, Turtles 2 - The Arcade Game and Tetris.
Then the day came in 1992 = I wanted the Super Nintendo But that meant I had to sell my NES console & games because my parents / grandparents allowed me just one console.
So I sold my NES & games in 1992
In 1996 when I started working and earning money I went to the fleamarket every weekend and bought stacks of NES games up until 2001/2002 = I had about 200 loose NES games (+ I collected for 40 other consoles as well ) at this point but due to money shortcomings I had to sell my entire console / game collection in 2002
Fast forward to 2007 when I discovered Yahoo Auctions Japan = I rememberred my NES games and started looking for those titles on Yahoo = the first 2 CIB Famicom games I won at auction were Super C and Bucky O Hare for 3000 Yen each = this was the test buys because I had never used Yahoo Auctions before = so I waited 3 weeks and the 2 games arrived in perfect condition. I was blown away because you could the games so cheap back then and the Famicom carts just looked way nicer than the NES games. Thats what started the Famicom collection. I'm up to 709 CIB Famicom games now plus multiple OG Famicoms, AV Famicoms and Twin Famicoms and at least one of each model is RGB modded.

[Jedi Master Baiter]

the first 2 CIB Famicom games I won at auction were Super C and Bucky O Hare for 3000 Yen each

Bucky O'Hare was one of those NES games I filed under PROBABLY WILL NEVER OWN because it's so expensive, but I didn't think much of tracking down the FC version. Looking at it now, they both seem to be in about the same price range: $120-$180. Maybe inflation makes this seem cheaper now? I'm adding this to my list now.

I was blown away because you could the games so cheap back then

Some time ago I was trying to buy NES Wario's Woods CIB sealed, because I've always wanted to experience opening a brand new NES game. Wario's Woods was still going for around $40-60 at that time, but I either kept getting outbid or people would snatch these up before I could.

Famicom carts just looked way nicer than the NES games.

They also take up less space.

[Rohan1979]

Playing the American NES and learning about the NES' Japanese counterpart, the Famicom was what got me into the Famicom, itself.  Whenever I vacationed in India, there was a shop which housed a Famiclone in an arcade cabinet.

[TurtleKirby1234]

I am a Japanese person who has lived in Japan for a while before moving to the US, so I naturally played Japanese consoles. One day, I found HUNDREDS of Famicom games in my grandparents' house, but I couldn't play it because connecting a Famicom just seemed impossible. Recently, I purchased a bootleg Famiclone (technically legal because the Famicom's patent is dead), which let me play all the Famicom games. Eventually, I started purchasing Famicom and other retro video games (GBC,GBA,SFC,N64 and more).



edit: got a Twin Famicom

[BigHead2615]

I don't remember how I found out about it, but sometime between 2006 and 2008, I found out about the japanese line of "Classic NES" game ports for the Gameboy Advance, known as the "Famicom Mini" series.
Prior to this, I grew up on SNES in the 90s, and obviously I had played Super Mario All-Stars, so, the idea of being able to play the original version of Super Mario Bros.: The Lost Levels, was interesting and exciting to me. I ordered the GBA port from a seller on eBay, and that was about it, for a while.

I'm sure there were some other influences, like watching some Youtube videos / AVGN or something like that. It took me a while to finally get around to buying some original hardware, mainly because I was preoccupied with WoW from 2008 until around 2021 or so.

[SilverFox51024]

Downloading an NES emulator with a bunch of games a long time ago introduced me to the Famicom.  Long story short I played Crisis Force and loved it. I did some online searches to try to find it which I did but was shocked when a small white and red console showed up in an image. A few decades later, and after lots of research, I own the system, disk drive, and over 40 games.