I was wondering - are there any pictures of the Famicom launch? Or maybe from the distribution in shops in the period from 1983 until 1986, the launch of Famicom Tsuushin? The square-button Famicom is known as the rarest and very hard to come by in the wild, but for how long was it distributed in Japan? I'm aware that this is a tough question, but maybe at least the year is known. The era of very basic and sporadic Famicom releases had come to an end in the 2nd half of 1985 when about 60 games had been released for the system over the past two years. So I am just guessing that somewhere inbetween, Nintendo must have noticed the weaknesses of the square-button Famicom, but when? 1984? Also, what Famicom-related products were available at launch at the 15th of July 1983? I'm not aware of any accessory so the only piece of hardware would be the Famicom itself. This could be possible since it was basically only an advanced version of Nintendo's previous primitive TV-gaming devices that had no accessory separate from what came with it. The launch titles were: Donkey Kong Donkey Kong Jr Popeye all at the price of 4500Yen.
Man, I love your idea for a thread, and I wish I had info to offer in this case, but I'll sit quietly and wait for the experts to comment, as this is a subject I am greatly interested in. Let's hope someone has the info and pics.
The Famicom still had less games released in the first year then the average console has released on the first day of release and still managed to get about 80 to 90% of the console market in Japan mainly on the strength of Donkey Kong (which allegedly Nintendo wanted to licence the Colecovision as it was the only console at the time that had Donkey Kong, Nintendo wanted about 10% over the parts cost but Coleco wanted 10% under wholesale cost, so it colapsed (and then Bandai licenced it... suckers they were for trying to licence every system known to man....) and they accelerated the release of the Famicom. At the time it was the most advanced system of it's generation, where as Sega took the Z80 and bolt on a Texas Instruments graphics chip and weak sound chip and released the SG-1000 which was underwhelming compared to the Famicom... The reason I heard from a Japanese games researcher, why they went from square to circle was that the first revision of the famicom was plagued with hardware faults and problems with a lot of machiens failing to boot cartridges or freezing in the middle of a game. Nintendo did fix the problem quickly and decided a new revision of the board would be the best solution and to show easily that the machine did have the newest revision board they did the slight modication of changing the pads. Most of the older machines were replaced so there are less square button machines around, and there is no gaurantee that if you buy it, that it will be glitch free, although saying that anyone buying a square button machine is probably not going to play it anyway...
Ah, cool to know. I knew that the first Famicoms were sometimes bitchy and wouldn't boot cartridges, it's one of those "did you know that"-facts that magazines like to print every couple of years as part of a Nintendo knowledge-test. What I didn't know was that the failure was exclusive to the square-button Famicom. You can't tell the year Nintendo released the round-button Famicom, can you? :/ Some days after I opened this thread I got to realize that there may be no pictures at all taken at the FC's launch day. After all it was just another gaming device by a company similar to Sega or Bandai. Does anyone here own has seen the "Famicom Documentary" on the Famicom 20th Anniversary DVD? Maybe Nintendo captured some of it themselves, as part of a company history archive?
There's no exact info on the square buttons. The guy who wrote the page on FamicomWorld did a great job, but I've talked to him before and he said that he really didn't have enough samples to really say the question was answered. I thought it was odd that I had come across maybe 5 or 6 square button Famicoms with the HVC-CPU-06 boards, which are listed as "Round Button" on the FamicomWorld site. They weren't just console-only systems, they were complete with boxes, instructions, and smooth bottoms. In the beginning I was using that page and thinking that someone switched out the boards, but after getting so many of them I started to think that maybe the list isn't 100% accurate and that's when I contacted the guy who wrote the page. This website says (translated): Famicom (HVC-numbered square buttons are rubber substrate initial controller 001 HVC-CPU ~ HVC-CPU-05) Famicom (HVC-001 SOP-SRAM early adoption unit board number HVC-CPU-06) Famicom (HVC-number round plastic buttons of the controller board mid-001 HVC-CPU-07) It's my guess that they used the square buttons throughout 1983 and changed in 1984. Initial sales weren't that great and the problem with the square buttons was that they were wearing down and getting stuck....not really something you learn in the first 30 days or anything. In the end I'm not sure using the boards is a good indicator. Nintendo could have easily swapped boards to take care of the glitches but not changed the controllers, then later changed the controllers and kept the same boards, so a HVC-CPU-06 board might be for both square and round buttons.
Some info on accessories.... Light Gun: Released on February 18, 1984 (same date as Wild Gunman) Family Basic: Released June 21, 1984 Famicom Robot: Released July 26, 1985 Robot Block Set: Released July 26, 1985 Gyro: Released August 13, 1985
Hey JG, do you know if the squ.b Famicom came with the instruction manga, or did any of the boxed units you sold come with one? What's required to have a complete unit, is there anything that wasn't bundled with later Famicoms (like the RF inst. sheet)? Oh, and while I'm at it - are you aware how many box variations there are of the Famicom (not motherboard revisions)? I'm only aware of three: 1x square button 1x no FF logo 1x FF logo Are there more?
Funny thing, they already used dual flat-pack package SMD ICs in the older 1983 square buttoned FC, and went back to conventional DIP in the round button revision.
The primary force behind the recall were problems in the peripheral logic of the first-revision CPU (like broken audio, unintended sprite flicker from DMA issues). I'm pretty sure all games should still be playable though.
Was it a problem with Ricoh? Or Nintendo's fault somehow? And by broken audio can you elaborate at all?
I just had a look at my Famicom (with FF logo) and the picture with the cartridges includes games from 1984 such as F1 Race and Lode Runner, Nuts'n Milk and 4-Player Mahjongg. The Hudson games were released in summer 1984, Mahjongg and F1 on the same day on November 2nd, 1984 (they are standing right on front in the left row as if being advertised as new). (sorry for the crap photo, I just cut it out from an ebay auction) I did some research on the exact release dates of the games on the photograph. I'm only listing the right row here since the left row consists of only the very earliest releases anyway. Games shown on the box: (release - name, top to bottom) Duck Hunt, Hogan's Alley and Wild Gunman (released Feb-June 1984) 14th Jan. 1984: Tennis 31st July 1984: Lode Runner (Hudson) 22nd July 1984: Nuts'n Milk (Hudson) 4th July 1984: Donkey Kong 3 5th Oct. 1984: Devil World 2nd Nov. 1984: 4-Player Mahjongg 2nd Nov. 1984: F1 Race Games NOT shown on the box (release - name) 14th Nov 1984: Urban Champion 22nd Nov 1984: CluClu land 28th Nov 1984: Excitebike 22nd Jan 1985: Balloon Fight 30th Jan 1985: Ice Climber ... See what I did here? Chances are that Nintendo launched the round-button FC along with the revised packaging at some point between November 2nd 1984 and November 14th 1984 when F1 Race and 4p Mahjongg were already being on the market, but not Urban Champion and Excitebike or any later Nintendo game. That's a timeframe of less than two weeks - considering we're dealing with dates that lay behind almost 27 years, I think this is as close as we can get for now. Tell me what you think.
You should remembr though that the games are produced ahead of time and so would the box art for the console. So it's likely offset earlier than that.
Sure, but we cannot be certain about this. My point was that they probably advertised games that had already been released when the new FC was about to go on sale (like F1 Race). The fact that Christmas blockbusters like Excitebike and CluClu Land are not on the box makes me think that the FC must have been on sale either before the designs for said games were final or before people knew about them through advertising.
Probably with a time machine since I have doubts any of them would even remember at this point. Or they might be too ashamed to admit what the problems were. I guess it'll forever be a mystery.
Most probably have already read this but they talk about some of the early problems that came up during the early days of the Famicom in this issue of Iwata Asks: http://us.wii.com/iwata_asks/mario25th/vol2_page1.jsp They mention the flaw of the square-button design but no specific dates on when it was changed. Good read either way.
if you understand french, I recommend this read: http://www.editionspixnlove.com/Tous-nos-ouvrages/L-Histoire-de-Nintendo-Vol.3/flypage.tpl.html
Just an update on my research: I recently bought the (GREAT) Famicom Anniversary DVD and on it are lots of really early (1984) Famicom TV spots in amazing quality. I might rip them and put them up on Youtube someday. Anyway, lots of these spots feature people playing on the square-button Famicom. Spots for these games were filmed with a sb-Famicom: 14th Nov 1984: Urban Champion 22nd Nov 1984: CluClu land 28th Nov 1984: Excitebike 22nd Jan 1985: Balloon Fight 30th Jan 1985: Ice Climber These spots were shot with a round-button FC: 18th June 1985: Wrecking Crew 26th July 1985: Famicom Robot & Software The only 2 Nintendo game ads that I couldn't check were for Family Basic V3 and Soccer which were released between Ice Climber and Wrecking Crew. FB V3 is on YouTube but in awful resolution. Anyway, this reinforces my theory: They probably shot those commercials for the January games a bit earlier, maybe in November when they were still using the old Famicoms?
