14 Facts About Famicom

Early Famicom games were written on a system that ran on an NEC PC-8001 computer and LEDs on a grid were used with a digitizer to design graphics as no software design tools for this purpose existed at that time.

Famicom was influenced by the ColecoVision, Coleco's competition against the Atari 2600 in the United States; the ColecoVision's top-seller was a port of Nintendo's Donkey Kong.

The Famicom was slow to gather success; a bad chip set caused the early revisions to crash.

Subsequent plans for the Nintendo Advanced Video System likewise never materialized: a North American repackaged Famicom console featuring a keyboard, cassette data recorder, wireless joystick controller, and a special BASIC cartridge.

The original Famicom's design is predominantly white plastic, with dark red trim; it featured a top-loading cartridge slot, grooves on both sides of the deck in which the hardwired game controllers could be placed when not in use, and a 15-pin expansion port located on the unit's front panel for accessories.

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Conversely, the redesigned Famicom offered such output while introducing detachable game controllers, though the microphone functionality was omitted as a result.

One variant was a television set with an integrated Famicom; originally released in 1983 as the My Computer TV in 14-inch and 19-inch models, it was later released in the United States in 1989 as a 19-inch model named the Video Game Television.

Famicom as released in Japan contains no lockout hardware, which led to unlicensed cartridges becoming extremely common throughout Japan and East Asia.

The earliest produced Famicom units have square A and B buttons; issues with them getting stuck when pressed down led Nintendo to change their shape to a circular design in subsequent units following the console's recall.

The original Famicom has a deepened DA-15 expansion port on the front of the unit to accommodate them.

Famicom Modem connected a Famicom to a now defunct proprietary network in Japan which provided content such as financial services.

Unlike NES games, official Famicom cartridges were produced in many colors of plastic.

Famicom attempted to reverse engineer the lockout chip to develop its own "Rabbit" chip.

The final licensed Famicom game released in Japan is Takahashi Meijin no Boken Jima IV, in North America is Wario's Woods, and in Europe is The Lion King in 1995.