Yes, readers, you may well cower in fear. For I am about to unveil the most hideous freak of nature human eyes have ever been exposed to.
BEHOLD:
Just a dirty old Famicom console you say? Well then, let me show you a little something else:
Agggghh! Evil!! Spawned in the pit of ultimate darkness by the nefarious Sir Simon Milligan and his manservant Hecubus! A Famicom with both a square button and a round button controller!
[フレーム]
Well, OK. Not that evil. Just kind of.....interesting I guess.
I found this in the junk bin yesterday at Omocha Souko. I was quite psyched when I saw the two player controller and thought `Oh great, a square button Famicom! Those things are really hard to find and.....GASP!`
The glass of sherry I had been sipping while strolling the aisles slipped through my fingers at that moment and smashed into a thousand pieces on the floor below, splattering droplets of the fortified wine on my shoes and a partial boxed set of Full House DVDs (seasons 1, 2 and 4) that had the misfortune of being displayed nearby.
It was the other controller, which had round buttons, that startled me so.
It also made me curious - was this a round button Famicom that somebody had added a square button controller to or the other way around? As there was only one way to find out, I bought it.
There are a few clues on the outside that suggested it was a square button Famicom. It didn`t have the `FF` mark on the front nameplate. Then I had a look underneath:
Yup, a smooth bottom, just like a square button Famicom.
These weren`t really proof though as some of the early round button Famicoms also sported these features. I had to open it up to check out the revision number:
Somewhere on there it had the number 3 printed, which meant that this was in fact originally a square button Famicom that at some point had its 1 player controller replaced with a round one.
I`m curious about what the story is behind this. Did somebody break their 1 player controller, send it in to Nintendo and then get it back like this? I was always under the impression that Nintendo had recalled the square button Famicoms and replaced both controllers on them rather than just one.
Or, did somebody do this on their own - cannibalize an extra round button Famicom`s controller and use it to replace the broken one? This seems more likely.
Anyway, it is now another Famicom on my pile of Famicoms. I`ll have to clean it at some point as it really is filthy. And filthiness is after all the root of all.....evil.
[フレーム]
Showing posts with label Square button famicom. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Square button famicom. Show all posts
Wednesday, January 25, 2012
Wednesday, October 19, 2011
In Search of the Square Button Famicom Revisions
This post is about an interesting little bit of archeological research that is being conducted into the hidden history of the Famicom - the revisions.
Revisions are basically just that - revisions. Over the course of the Famicom`s lifetime Nintendo was constantly revising the insides to deal with technical issues as they cropped up. Each time they did a revision they would number the board with whatever revision it was. Due to the fact that these were numbered sequentially (ie starting from 1), it is possible to establish a timeline of these revisions in relation to the development of the outwardly visible changes in the console - most notably the switch over from square to round buttons.
My interest in this was sparked by jpx72 over at Famicom World, to whom I sold my old square button Famicom a few weeks ago. To me it was just a broken old Famicom that I had no use for which I was glad to get rid of. To him it was an important piece of history that was of immense interest. His enthusiasm piqued my interest and I began to learn more.
He directed me to this thread over on Famicom World where you`ll find a little debate going on. The posters there have been slowly trying to piece together the history of these revisions based on Famicom consoles they have found. Square button ones, being the earliest Famicoms issued, are of particular interest.
Their research so far has found that consoles from the 5th revision were the last to have the square buttons. From revision 6 they started having round buttons.
What made my broken old square button Famicom so interesting to jpx72 was that after he recieved it in the mail he discovered that it was from the 3rd revision. Until then the earliest square button Famicom that anyone on Famicom World had been able to find was from the 4th revision.
So my little old square button Famicom confirmed that the 3rd revision had in fact been sold to the public. As of now nobody seems to have a confirmed sighting of a 1st or 2nd revision Famicom.
Anyway, among the avalanche of recent bargains I`ve been finding at Omocha Souko has been another square button Famicom. This gives me two in total, including the one I got a few months ago which is in great condition.
After procrastinating for the longest time I decided that today was the day to actually open up these two square button Famicoms and see which revisions they were.
The new one I opened first. This is what the board looks like:
The revision number can be found in the lower left hand corner:
You can see that little 05 there, which means it is a 5th revision console, the very last before the round button ones came out.
I then cracked open my other one and discovered this:
It is a 3rd revision one! This means that it is tied with my old one that I sold to jpx72 as the oldest revision square button Famicom out there! I don`t know why but for some reason this fills me with an immense sense of satisfaction!
Anyway, this is just my little post about a very interesting bit of research being done into the history of the Famicom. Maybe someday a 1st or 2nd revision board will be found.
Revisions are basically just that - revisions. Over the course of the Famicom`s lifetime Nintendo was constantly revising the insides to deal with technical issues as they cropped up. Each time they did a revision they would number the board with whatever revision it was. Due to the fact that these were numbered sequentially (ie starting from 1), it is possible to establish a timeline of these revisions in relation to the development of the outwardly visible changes in the console - most notably the switch over from square to round buttons.
My interest in this was sparked by jpx72 over at Famicom World, to whom I sold my old square button Famicom a few weeks ago. To me it was just a broken old Famicom that I had no use for which I was glad to get rid of. To him it was an important piece of history that was of immense interest. His enthusiasm piqued my interest and I began to learn more.
He directed me to this thread over on Famicom World where you`ll find a little debate going on. The posters there have been slowly trying to piece together the history of these revisions based on Famicom consoles they have found. Square button ones, being the earliest Famicoms issued, are of particular interest.
Their research so far has found that consoles from the 5th revision were the last to have the square buttons. From revision 6 they started having round buttons.
What made my broken old square button Famicom so interesting to jpx72 was that after he recieved it in the mail he discovered that it was from the 3rd revision. Until then the earliest square button Famicom that anyone on Famicom World had been able to find was from the 4th revision.
So my little old square button Famicom confirmed that the 3rd revision had in fact been sold to the public. As of now nobody seems to have a confirmed sighting of a 1st or 2nd revision Famicom.
Anyway, among the avalanche of recent bargains I`ve been finding at Omocha Souko has been another square button Famicom. This gives me two in total, including the one I got a few months ago which is in great condition.
After procrastinating for the longest time I decided that today was the day to actually open up these two square button Famicoms and see which revisions they were.
The new one I opened first. This is what the board looks like:
The revision number can be found in the lower left hand corner:
You can see that little 05 there, which means it is a 5th revision console, the very last before the round button ones came out.
I then cracked open my other one and discovered this:
It is a 3rd revision one! This means that it is tied with my old one that I sold to jpx72 as the oldest revision square button Famicom out there! I don`t know why but for some reason this fills me with an immense sense of satisfaction!
Anyway, this is just my little post about a very interesting bit of research being done into the history of the Famicom. Maybe someday a 1st or 2nd revision board will be found.
Wednesday, January 19, 2011
Mega Bargain of the Day: Another Square Button Famicom
I was at Omocha Souko yesterday and they had a couple of new things in their junk section. Mostly stuff I already had, but in the pile of used consoles - mostly Saturns, Play Station ones and Super Famicoms - for 300 yen (3$) they had just put out this baby:
Yup, a Famicom. A Square Button Famicom! Whoo yeah!
This is my second square button Famicom. The first one I got last May at Hard Off for 525 yen. I did a post of it at the time which explains a bunch of the background behind the Square Button Famicom and has pictures of the thing's guts when compared to a regular Famicom. I won't repeat all that here, except to mention that they are pretty rare and it is insanely hard to find these things - especially for only 300 yen!
Anyway, I had never been satisfied with my old Square Button Famicom. It is completely useless and doesn't load games. More importantly from an aesthetic point of view though is the fact that it was missing one of its square buttons (see the older post, it was such a heartbreaker to discover).
Last week I was talking about how much I like stuff in "bad" condition, but that is only true to the extent that the wear and tear somehow enhances the look and feel of the item. Missing buttons - SQUARE buttons - and consoles that don't work definitely do not fall into that category. Plus despite my liking stuff in bad condition, I am still a sucker for something that looks really nice and clean. So a nice square button Famicom was still on my want list when I walked into Omocha Souko yesterday afternoon.
And this one is the exact opposite of my other square button Famicom. It is in unusually good condition. It works perfectly, has all its buttons and is incredibly clean. The only problem with it (apart from some very minor wear and tear) was that it was missing the expansion port cover (most used Famicoms are missing these). The control pads are exquisite:
Here is an interesting mystery for all you hardcore Famicom collectors out there. All of my other Famicom consoles, including my old square button Famicom, have black wires for the controllers. In fact, every Famicom console I have ever seen has black wires for the controllers.
But not my new one. It has gray wires. Note the contrast in the below picture. The top one is a regular Famicom with black wires. The bottom one is my new square button Famicom with gray wires:
I realize that wire color isn't exactly an issue of earth shattering importance, but still, I found this difference kind of interesting. Anybody know why they are different?
Anyway - this is my fifth post in January. I am a posting machine this month. Well, speaking as someone who doesn' t update his blog very often I am a posting machine anyway.
Yup, a Famicom. A Square Button Famicom! Whoo yeah!
This is my second square button Famicom. The first one I got last May at Hard Off for 525 yen. I did a post of it at the time which explains a bunch of the background behind the Square Button Famicom and has pictures of the thing's guts when compared to a regular Famicom. I won't repeat all that here, except to mention that they are pretty rare and it is insanely hard to find these things - especially for only 300 yen!
Anyway, I had never been satisfied with my old Square Button Famicom. It is completely useless and doesn't load games. More importantly from an aesthetic point of view though is the fact that it was missing one of its square buttons (see the older post, it was such a heartbreaker to discover).
Last week I was talking about how much I like stuff in "bad" condition, but that is only true to the extent that the wear and tear somehow enhances the look and feel of the item. Missing buttons - SQUARE buttons - and consoles that don't work definitely do not fall into that category. Plus despite my liking stuff in bad condition, I am still a sucker for something that looks really nice and clean. So a nice square button Famicom was still on my want list when I walked into Omocha Souko yesterday afternoon.
And this one is the exact opposite of my other square button Famicom. It is in unusually good condition. It works perfectly, has all its buttons and is incredibly clean. The only problem with it (apart from some very minor wear and tear) was that it was missing the expansion port cover (most used Famicoms are missing these). The control pads are exquisite:
Here is an interesting mystery for all you hardcore Famicom collectors out there. All of my other Famicom consoles, including my old square button Famicom, have black wires for the controllers. In fact, every Famicom console I have ever seen has black wires for the controllers.
But not my new one. It has gray wires. Note the contrast in the below picture. The top one is a regular Famicom with black wires. The bottom one is my new square button Famicom with gray wires:
I realize that wire color isn't exactly an issue of earth shattering importance, but still, I found this difference kind of interesting. Anybody know why they are different?
Anyway - this is my fifth post in January. I am a posting machine this month. Well, speaking as someone who doesn' t update his blog very often I am a posting machine anyway.
Friday, May 14, 2010
Square Button Famicom: My new paperweight
I took a little ride out to "Hard Off" today. Hard Off is a nationwide chain of used goods stores that sell books, clothes, electronics and of course old video games.
In my experience there are two types of shops that sell used Famicom games. There is one type of shop where they know exactly what everything is worth and they charge exactly that much, no exceptions. You can go through a massive rack of games and you will not find a single discrepancy. If they have 20 copies of "Super Mario Brothers" and one of them is priced at 1,000 yen, you can be absolutely certain that the other 19 will also be priced at 1,000 yen.
In the other type of shop, the people running the shop exercise very little control or supervision over what prices get put on things. There is no apparent system to it and the prices seem to be decided by whichever member of their staff happened to be on duty when the stuff came in. So if they've got 20 copies of Super Mario Brothers and you find one copy for 1,000 yen you know that if you just keep looking through their racks you'll probably find one priced for 500.
Far and away I like the second kind of shop better and Hard Off is one such shop. To be sure, some of their stuff is ridiculously overpriced, but at the same time you can sometimes find insane bargains simply because the right person had the price sticker gun when the game you wanted came in. So I like to go there once a month or so to see what they have.
On looking through their pile of Famicom games today, I knew that "employee number 3" (I number them) must have handled their latest pricing activity because all the new games they had gotten in since my last visit were way overpriced. "Oh, Employee Number 3, who on earth do you think would be willing to pay 525 yen for F1-Race?" I though to myself as I walked away somewhat bemused.
I decided to check out their game hardware section too as I had gotten some good deals there on the past, including my Vaus Controller. They had a big pile of Famicom consoles on sale for 525 yen each, which is a pretty good deal. I didn't need another Famicom (I have 3 already) but this one - horrendously dirty and yellow - caught my eye:
I believe this Famicom had spent the majority of the past 27 years on the surface of Mars.
Anyway, it wasn't the dirt and yellow that caught my eye. "My god, could it be?" I thought to myself, "Yes, a square button Famicom in the middle of a junk pile!! Employee Number 3, I take it all back, you are cool in my books!"
Yes, I had found a square button Famicom - the rarest Famicom out there and every collector's dream. For those of you who don't know, the very fist Famicom released had square buttons. The square ones, which were very prone to wearing out quickly, proved problematic and so when Nintendo recalled the Famicom to fix something else they replaced them and subsequent versions all had the standard round buttons.
So I was pretty excited when I saw that for a mere 525 yen I could score a square button Famicom. My excitement was quickly dashed however when I got a closer look at the player 1 controller:
Yup, a missing "A" button. Guess that is why they recalled them.
That, combined with the general filthy condition of the unit made me have second thoughts, but then I decided "screw it, I'll regret it if I don't get it" and bought the thing.
I plugged the thing in right away and, not surprisingly, it didn't work at all. Undeterred, I cracked it open and about 12 pounds worth of dust fell out - which may have been part of the problem:
I also took apart the controllers and switched this tragedy from the player 1 to the player 2 controller:
Just breaks my heart.
Anyway, after about an hour of cleaning I had the whole thing looking pretty good, except for the really yellow upper half of the outer casing. I had a non-functioning round button Famicom that had a really nice white casing so I decided to switch them (Edit - the new one isn't quite the same as the Square button Famicom doesn't have the "FF" Famicom Family logo on it. Thanks to DSX in the comments for bringing this to my attention). It gave me the chance to compare the guts of the square and round button Famicoms, they are actually quite a bit different:
The Square one is on the left, it is much less logically wired than the round button one on the right and a real pain in the ass to take apart and put together for that reason. I guess these are among the other things they changed after the recall. (Edit - This isn't quite correct. The one on the right is actually a post 1989 revision. Pre-1989 Famicoms, including round button ones, had similar wiring to the original square button Famicom. Thanks again to DSX in the comments for pointing this out).
Anyway, after getting them put back together my new square button Famicom looked pretty good:
Ah, look at 'em buttons:
I then plugged 'er in to enjoy some good old "Spartan X" and was greeted with a solid green screen. Curse. I won't bore you with the details but about half an hour of cursing and doing everything humanly imaginable to try to get the damned thing to show something other than green screen produced no results so I gave up. As things currently stand, my square button is nothing but a paperweight.
I did get a glitter of hope though. After putting the ugly yellow case onto my broken old round-button Famicom I decided to plug that one in too just for the hell of it. I had bought that one about a year ago and spent a huge amount of time trying to get it to work, but every time the image on the screen was too distorted to play. When I flipped the switch this time though, it worked perfectly!
So the lesson is: if you ever get a Famicom that doesn't work, instead of trying to fix it just try to make it worse by stripping it of parts for another system. That, apparently, works like a charm!
And oh yeah, if anyone has any spare square Famicom controller buttons laying around let me know!
Postscript - October 7, 2011
I sold the old square button Famicom in this post last month to jpx72 in Slovakia, where it now resides. You can see pics of it in its new home here.
Related Posts:
- Mega Bargain of the Day: Another Square Button Famicom
- Famicom Console Wars
In my experience there are two types of shops that sell used Famicom games. There is one type of shop where they know exactly what everything is worth and they charge exactly that much, no exceptions. You can go through a massive rack of games and you will not find a single discrepancy. If they have 20 copies of "Super Mario Brothers" and one of them is priced at 1,000 yen, you can be absolutely certain that the other 19 will also be priced at 1,000 yen.
In the other type of shop, the people running the shop exercise very little control or supervision over what prices get put on things. There is no apparent system to it and the prices seem to be decided by whichever member of their staff happened to be on duty when the stuff came in. So if they've got 20 copies of Super Mario Brothers and you find one copy for 1,000 yen you know that if you just keep looking through their racks you'll probably find one priced for 500.
Far and away I like the second kind of shop better and Hard Off is one such shop. To be sure, some of their stuff is ridiculously overpriced, but at the same time you can sometimes find insane bargains simply because the right person had the price sticker gun when the game you wanted came in. So I like to go there once a month or so to see what they have.
On looking through their pile of Famicom games today, I knew that "employee number 3" (I number them) must have handled their latest pricing activity because all the new games they had gotten in since my last visit were way overpriced. "Oh, Employee Number 3, who on earth do you think would be willing to pay 525 yen for F1-Race?" I though to myself as I walked away somewhat bemused.
I decided to check out their game hardware section too as I had gotten some good deals there on the past, including my Vaus Controller. They had a big pile of Famicom consoles on sale for 525 yen each, which is a pretty good deal. I didn't need another Famicom (I have 3 already) but this one - horrendously dirty and yellow - caught my eye:
I believe this Famicom had spent the majority of the past 27 years on the surface of Mars.
Anyway, it wasn't the dirt and yellow that caught my eye. "My god, could it be?" I thought to myself, "Yes, a square button Famicom in the middle of a junk pile!! Employee Number 3, I take it all back, you are cool in my books!"
Yes, I had found a square button Famicom - the rarest Famicom out there and every collector's dream. For those of you who don't know, the very fist Famicom released had square buttons. The square ones, which were very prone to wearing out quickly, proved problematic and so when Nintendo recalled the Famicom to fix something else they replaced them and subsequent versions all had the standard round buttons.
So I was pretty excited when I saw that for a mere 525 yen I could score a square button Famicom. My excitement was quickly dashed however when I got a closer look at the player 1 controller:
Yup, a missing "A" button. Guess that is why they recalled them.
That, combined with the general filthy condition of the unit made me have second thoughts, but then I decided "screw it, I'll regret it if I don't get it" and bought the thing.
I plugged the thing in right away and, not surprisingly, it didn't work at all. Undeterred, I cracked it open and about 12 pounds worth of dust fell out - which may have been part of the problem:
I also took apart the controllers and switched this tragedy from the player 1 to the player 2 controller:
Just breaks my heart.
Anyway, after about an hour of cleaning I had the whole thing looking pretty good, except for the really yellow upper half of the outer casing. I had a non-functioning round button Famicom that had a really nice white casing so I decided to switch them (Edit - the new one isn't quite the same as the Square button Famicom doesn't have the "FF" Famicom Family logo on it. Thanks to DSX in the comments for bringing this to my attention). It gave me the chance to compare the guts of the square and round button Famicoms, they are actually quite a bit different:
The Square one is on the left, it is much less logically wired than the round button one on the right and a real pain in the ass to take apart and put together for that reason. I guess these are among the other things they changed after the recall. (Edit - This isn't quite correct. The one on the right is actually a post 1989 revision. Pre-1989 Famicoms, including round button ones, had similar wiring to the original square button Famicom. Thanks again to DSX in the comments for pointing this out).
Anyway, after getting them put back together my new square button Famicom looked pretty good:
Ah, look at 'em buttons:
I then plugged 'er in to enjoy some good old "Spartan X" and was greeted with a solid green screen. Curse. I won't bore you with the details but about half an hour of cursing and doing everything humanly imaginable to try to get the damned thing to show something other than green screen produced no results so I gave up. As things currently stand, my square button is nothing but a paperweight.
I did get a glitter of hope though. After putting the ugly yellow case onto my broken old round-button Famicom I decided to plug that one in too just for the hell of it. I had bought that one about a year ago and spent a huge amount of time trying to get it to work, but every time the image on the screen was too distorted to play. When I flipped the switch this time though, it worked perfectly!
So the lesson is: if you ever get a Famicom that doesn't work, instead of trying to fix it just try to make it worse by stripping it of parts for another system. That, apparently, works like a charm!
And oh yeah, if anyone has any spare square Famicom controller buttons laying around let me know!
Postscript - October 7, 2011
I sold the old square button Famicom in this post last month to jpx72 in Slovakia, where it now resides. You can see pics of it in its new home here.
Related Posts:
- Mega Bargain of the Day: Another Square Button Famicom
- Famicom Console Wars
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