Nintendo celebrated the 40th anniversary of its first home game console “Famicom” (also known as Family Computer, or FC for short) on July 15, and opened aFamicom 40th Anniversary Event Sitethrough hardware introduction, knowledge quiz, host chronology, software overview, and the “Famicom National Voting” activity that selects the first place in various Famicom games under different themes every week, and has fun with players.
Famicom was developed under the leadership of Masayuki Uemura, who was the second director of Nintendo’s development department at the time. The product development code was named “GameCom”. It was rejected by Hiroshi Yamauchi, the president at the time, so it became a version designed with an 8-bit processor, which met Hiroshi Yamauchi’s requirement that it must be cheaper than competitors.
Compared with competing products at that time, Famicom actually established many design directions for home game consoles later, including making the use of interchangeable game cartridges mainstream, and controller designs including cross buttons and AB buttons. The front expansion port uses accessories such as light guns, keyboards, and large joysticks, and the subsequent addition of accessories such as disk drives also greatly increases the playability of Famicom.
Although Nintendo has stated that when the game cartridge cannot be used normally, it is not recommended for players to blow air on the metal contact part of the bottom of the cartridge, which may cause damage to the cartridge at a faster rate due to moisture, but after doing this, the player usually can make it The card box is used smoothly, so it has become a common memory of many players, and it has become one of the characteristics of Famicom.
In addition, after letting game industry players including Hudson Soft, Namco, Taito, CAPCOM, Jaleco, and KONAMI join in the development of Famicom games, Nintendo has established a complete licensing model, including that game developers must pay in advance to purchase development platform tools. The platform usage fee must be paid according to the game distribution.
Famicom was later also launched in the European and American markets as a gray host and under the name of Nintendo Entertainment System (namely NES). Although the appearance design and the use of the cartridge are completely different, the basic operation is still roughly the same as Famicom. Some games are due to copyright, distribution market, etc. factors vary.
According to relevant records, Famicom has sold a total of 61.91 million units so far, and the cumulative number of games released has exceeded 500 million sets. If derivative versions and unauthorized design versions are added, the total sales of Famicom may be even more, and pirated copies are circulating in the market. It is even more difficult to calculate the specific number of privately copied game cartridges.
