What got you into famicom?

[Famicom Billy]

The games are really cheap (With some exceptions)

The regional differences for each game

The special giveway games like Punch Out!! or the quite expensive Famicom US Golf Prize Card , NWC 1990?? That's trash compared to this  or not...?

The cartridges are much more smaller than the NES ones

No more blinking light

Beautiful artwork

[TPR]

I bought an NES when it first came out in 1985. I was 15 years old.  Friend of mine got a hold of a Japanese video game magazine and we saw all these games we wanted to play that were not available in the States.  We cold called shops in Japan to find someone who spoke English and would ship them to us.  Long story short, we ended up getting lots of games, including a Disk System imported between 1985 - 1989.  in 1989 I got a job in the video games business and worked for small US subsidiaries of Japanese game companies and then later to some US based companies.  I worked on NES games like Wizardry, Faria, Gun-Nac, Might & Magic, Vice: Project Doom, The Jungle Book.  My full games list can be found here: http://www.mobygames.com/developer/sheet/view/developerId,1771/

I spent 21 years total in the video games business.  Loved the first ten years, hated the last ten years.  By the time I got out of it I wanted nothing to do with video games anymore.

That being said I always had a thing for retro gaming. I collected 80s arcade machines at one point, and always had a ColecoVision and a Vectrex sitting on my desk wherever I worked.  I got back into retrogaming a couple of years ago and wanted to go back to where I started in the games biz... Nintendo.  I have and always will be a Nintendo fanboy.  It's the only current gen system that I own.  I love to travel to Japan and get crazy amount of Streetpasses.  I even have already pre-ordered the Nintendo Switch.

Been loving getting back into Famicom games again.  I don't actually even have an American NES, just a AV Modded Famicom with a Disk System.

That's my story!  Looking forward to hanging out on these forums!

[P]

Wow that's quite a list! I have played many of those games you worked on.

[TPR]

Thanks.  There's a good amount of crap on that list too, so hopefully you avoided some of those!   

[mammal93]

I grew up with the NES, of course who didn't, but got into Famicom about a year ago. I had bought a PC Engine with a PCE CD and I love it, but didn't collect for it as I got an everdrive. Then I started seeing games like Takeshi no Chōsenjō and other weird, and cool, looking games. There was also just something atractive about the look of the games and the system. So I bought a cheap Famicom, a handful of games, and had fun. I just ordered a Disk System and a few games, but haven't gotten them in to sink in my teeth yet. But yeah basically I just love Japanese stuff and Nintendo, so that's how I got into Famicom. 

[skyway1985]

What got me into Famicom was Nesticle and playing imports and it all snowballed from there. been tuning drives and writing disks since 2000. lets say my drives read anything and write anything. and are always consistent if my disk doesn't work in your drive, it isn't tuned right. but the little white FC got me into twins, AV famicom and tons of disk drives. i just got 12 more standalones in. WHATS WRONG WITH ME!?!

[GoodNoodle]

Uh... My story might me a little different. I'm 14 right now and in 2013 I found an old Gameboy with batman on eBay. It was cheap and I liked batman. It came pretty broken and didn't work, but it was very cheap and it even said: "may not work". But I still wanted to play that game, so I searched for another affordable Gameboy and found one on Konsolenkost.de I quickly realized, that those old games, were a lot of fun and that the challenge was harder than in most newer games. Then I found this retro gaming store and I've seen an NES from outside, but when I saw, that Gamecube with Gameboy player, I had to buy it. I could finally play sml2 on a big screen. Then I got a lot into gaming history and informed myself a lot. One day I walked past that retro gaming store and went in, to ask how much they want for the NES. And they said, 30 euros. I bought it, and took it home,  when I tried to hook it up I got the flashing light of death, so I returned it and bought a clear blue N64 instead, but just a day later I found an advert, for a cheap NES on eBay, so I bought it, but it was broken as well, but instead of returning it, I tried to repair it and it worked. And from that point on I started collecting. Pong consoles, telegames, computers and consoles. And the last console, I bought was the Family Computer in 2014. I heard about the"Japanese NES" for a while and that it was cheaper. I found a cheap but great AV mod on eBay and obviously got it. I loved playing SMB3 on it and it quickly became my favorite Mario game.  Then I got depressed and suffered from anxiety and tucked all of my consoles away. One year later I got another hobby. It was practical Chemistry. I stopped doing it because I was concerned for my health. And because I can't be without a hobby, I got into terraristics and aquatics ergo insect-and fishkeeping. It is a very great, but exhausting hobby. But a few months ago, I found my Gameboy and started playing so step by step I got every console upstairs again and played again in my free time. I gave my Famicom more attention and want to get more games for it. I now restore my old consoles in my free time.

[Jedi Master Baiter]

terraristics

Have you played Abadox yet?

[P]

It's a great story. I'm happy to hear people are interested in gaming history. And yeah newer games are often easy, that's my main problem with newer games too.

[GoodNoodle]

terraristics

Have you played Abadox yet?

Nope ,dude but I've seen some screenshots. Is it like Metroid? Buuuuut whatdoes abadox have to do with terraristics??

Post Merge: May 01, 2017, 03:22:43 am

It's a great story. I'm happy to hear people are interested in gaming history. And yeah newer games are often easy, that's my main problem with newer games too.

Thanks for your appreciation.
I think, what really got me into gaming history was when I heard of the Satellaview.
The challenge in games can be a curse as well. When some friends come over, no one wants to play SNES or NES but rather WIIU or PS3, because they find it too hard. Aaaaaaaaaaand I'm also terrible at many games, but they are still fun to me although I nearly broke my Famicom controller when I played Rockman4

[P]

They where hard back in the day too, only you had nothing else to play so you happily kept playing the same game over and over even though you couldn't get past the first stage at first. Eventually you got good at it. Of course these games relies on being hard, you would get tired of them if you beat them too fast.

[Jedi Master Baiter]

Buuuuut whatdoes abadox have to do with terraristics??

Doesn't terraristics deal with feeding reptiles, invertebrates, and giant, human-eating frog aliens? Come to think of it, I don't think that Parisitis was related to a frog at all.

[Merknera]

Sadly, the biggest one is price. I can get famicom mario 1-3 for the price of nes 3.

But there are also many other good reasons to own one. I like the design of both the original famicom and twins. The carts are pretty cute and spiffy. The disk system disks are cool with the Nintendo logo on them.  I can play all kinds of games that never came to the US. and the cartridge slots are less temperamental.

[Temppeli]

Hello! Decided to register here as this site has been helpful recently! 
To be honest, I bought Famicon on a whim. Recently I've bought NTSC SNES so I can access some great titles that we didn't get here in Europe. Probably because of that, eBay granted me £20 coupon for over £40 purchase (I'm not from the UK, but we don't have eBay here in Northern Europe, at least not anymore). I made my decision and bought Famicom. It was not in a perfect condition but it worked and included two games. And it was only about 31 euros after the discount, including shipping.
It didn't include an AC adapter however so I bought a stock AC adapter and carefully followed the instructions over here to make sure my Famicom gets some proper juice. I plugged the console to TV with my NES RF Switch. After some tuning I managed to get somewhat clear picture (as good as RF can provide you) but audio was horrible buzzing sound. Just like the seller described. I tried most of the tricks I managed to find here. Controller II wasn't the issue as problem continued even after unplugging the controller. There was only one thing to try and if that doesn't work, the only option was to AV mod my Famicom. I opened the console and tuned the screws in a RF modulator with a screwdiver. After listening some soothing radio channels I almost lost hope until I finally managed to get clear audio without any interference. Now I can finally enjoy Famicom games without AV modding. Though I may get into it some time in the future. The picture quality sucks but it's still manageable as I don't have a huge TV and it's pretty far away from myself (and RF Switch cord is damn long).
What started as a result of impulse purchase proceeded to realization of how cheap Famicom games are! And how many excellent Famicom exclusive games there are! And of course Famicom looks damn cool!
Too bad language barrier prevents me to enjoy JRPG:s as those are my favorite. 

[Kamen_Rider_85]

Two years ago I acquired a Famicom A/V system in really nice shape.     I knew that several games I wanted to try out included ones that had no official NES release.  In particular I wanted to try out Splatterhouse: Wanpaku Graffiti (スプラッターハウス わんぱくグラフィティ), Ninja JaJaMaru-kun (忍者じゃじゃ丸くん), and Yōkai Club (妖怪倶楽部).  I really enjoyed those games, so I decided to pick up a few titles that also made it to the NES.  These included Super Mario Bros, Wrecking Crew, and Ghosts'n Goblins (Makaimura). 

After playing these games, and looking up current game prices, I realized that in a lot of instances buying the Famicom version of a game seems to be a lot cheaper than their NES counterparts.  In some instances Famicom game content is even better; sound, graphic, or censorship wise.  The NES will always have a special place in my heart as my childhood game console, but right now I don't own one.

I really love my Famicom A/V.  It is my go to classic Nintendo system now.  I prefer to play the Famicom version of games, and if I encounter a NES only release I have a decent converter that I can utilize to plug it into my Famicom A/V.  I seem to have one of the good consoles, because the sound and video quality is significantly better than what I have experienced with the NES.     I also enjoy the discovery factor with Famicom related material and releases that aren't from my NES memories, but are still imbued with past innovations.