Metroid, which we remember as not having the ability to save.īut the success of the Famicom Disk System was mostly because of the pirate business going on at the time. List of homepages made by people who have made Famicom Disk Fanclubs with slogans such as "WE LOVE DISK SYSTEM" :)Īnother reason why the Disk System became such a huge success was that just about every disk game had a save function, even games like Castlevania and If you search on some of the japanese internet searchengines, you will be able to find a long I've been talking to loved the system more than anything. Back in the days there were fan clubs, and serveral Japanese However, the Famicom Disk System, in short FDS, was not as bad as David Sheff claimed in his book. Of 4 million pieces of hardware at over $100 each can hardly be described as a failure. The system was not a resounding success, but the sale The best games were available on cartridge, so many disk systems fell into disuse. Super Mario Bros was supposed to have been a disk game, but it came both as disk The company backed off it's promise (threat) to release games only on disk. Semiconductor technology improved and prices dropped, so Nintendo disks actually had less storage capacity than cartridges.Īs if that wasn't enough, retailers complained that the Disk Writer took up too much space in their stores.īy 1990, 4.4 million Disk Systems had been sold, sofar less than Nintendo had projected, keep in mind that the fist two million units were sold already in 1986. Nintendo not only determined which games would be released on disk,īut also retained half ownership of the copyrights to all Disk System games.
Nintendo required the licensees to signĪ new contract if they wanted to make Disk System games, and it included new restrictions. NintendoĬharged them a rather large fee to convert their games to disk, and returns were much lower than on cartridge games. They had to determine wether to sell games in cartridge or disk form - or both. Half a million Disk Systems were sold in three months, almost 2 million in 1986 alone.īut there was dissatisfaction with the system. Would be 10000 Disk Writers in retail outlets in the first year. In an expensive advertisement campaign, Nintendo announced that some of the up-comming games only would be available for the Disk System. A disk would slip into the Disk Writer and the existing game Instead of a menu of songs, the Disk Writer had a list of the latest games. Like or ones they grew tired of, a special machine called the Disk Writer, which looked a bit like a jukebox, would be set up in toy and hobby shops If costumers who had bought a game they didn't The biggest advantage to the Disk System for consumers was that the disks could be used again and again. Dragon Quest 4 was sold for more than $80. That figure doubled by 1985 to 5000yen, almost $40. Famicom cartridges originallyĬost about 2500 yen.
TheyĬlaimed that games would be better, since disks had more memory than cartridges. Nintendo did everything they could to make it seductive though.
The Disk System was rather expensive though, 15000 yen - whic is more than $100). To lower not only manufacturing costs, but also retail prices. At the time ROM chips were quite expensive, so Nintendo invented the Disk System
Misumi quick disk software#
The Famicom could run software on floppy disks instead of cartridges. The new add-on was no less than a disk drive which ad to be attached through the cartridge port of the Famicom, using a special RAM cartridge. "new media of family computers" the company boasted. The new product was called Famicom Disk System, and would be the On February 21 - 1986, after two major delays, Nintendo was ready to launch a new product in Japan, an add-on piece of hardware for theirĮxtremely successful Family Computer, better known as Famicom. The folling information was taken from the book, Game Over - How Nintendo zapped an American industry, captured your dollars and enslaved your children,
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