Nintendo Famicom

Description

The Nintendo Famicom was a third-generation, 8-bit video game console made by Nintendo and launched for the Japanese market in 1983.

The Famicom was slow to gather momentum initially, but became the best-selling game console in Japan by the end of 1984, encouraging Nintendo to enter the North American market with a redesigned console named the Nintendo Entertainment System (NES) in 1985 (launched in Europe in 1986)

It was the first game console made by Nintendo to use cartridges, and these were originally intended to be the size of a cassette tape, ultimately ending up being twice as big.

Famicom cartridges are shaped differently and are much smaller than NES cartridges – while the NES used a 72-pin interface, the Famicom system used a 60-pin design. Unlike NES games which were almost always gray, official Famicom cartridges were produced in many colours. With an adaptor, Famicom cartridges will work on the NES.