NES/Famicom Appreciation Thread

Polioliolio said:
Shoot. That's how I've been thinking. Well thankfully I've only cleaned about 6 or 7 with that kind of thinking..

Will definitely try the eraser thing and only use the glass stover cleaner for non functioning games.


edit: Oh, is there anything that acts as a sort of coating agent, to reapply a protective surface?
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lol, I wrote that up after getting my pupils dilated for an eye exam. I love all the letters that are off by one space.

I've heard good things about DeoxIT Gold, but it looks expensive and I've never tried it out myself.

Again, I don't know the timetable for oxidization once the gold layer has been removed vs. the expected lifetime of the cart, so it might be a non-issue. It took around 20 years and more than likely some horrible storage situations for these carts to get the way they are now, which is really not bad at all. They'll probably be fine for the next 20 years but I'd rather not rub off the gold layer regardless.
 
The_Afroman said:
Got my beautiful baby girl in today! *swoon* isn't she beautiful?!
xKt7C63.jpg

aYHKRSP.jpg
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Looks like it's in good condition. I'd be interested to collect one, but I doubt I'd be making use of the FDS part, so it's not high priority.
 
I picked up a junk Twin Famicom while in Japan.

I don't believe I tested it out yet.


How much would someone charge for a restoration?
I'm sure the fds drive is shot and doubt I'd be able to handle that myself.
 
Mzo said:
That sounds good! In my experience, rubning alcohol doesn't do jack shit and even if it does, it wears off soon after. I have witnessed first-hand the removal of the gold layer with Brasso. I don't know rhe timetables for the contacts oxidizing to the poknt where it interferes with the aystem. It might be about as long as these carts have to live as it is anyway.

Easiest way with no worries is using an art eraser to rub off any buildup. If it's especially ahitty you van upgrade to an abrasive, but don't use a lot and be gentle.

The important thing is to not think "oh, look at all this grime snd dirt!" and keep applying and rubbing. I did it, other people have done it, but it's not the right thing to do and people should know.
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I can vouch for the eraser trick. Have used it for years and it has always made even the dirtiest carts I've gotten my hands on clean and working. After I've erased the dirt I run a q-tip with isopropyl alcohol over the pins to remove any left-over vinyl from the eraser. Then put everything back together and that's it! I suppose it's true that some carts need something more to work again, but so far I haven't run into any.
 
White art eraser between a before and after alcohol scrub works great here. Amazing differences. I don't use the polish for the reasons already stated - do not want to strip the contacts.
 
Velinos said:
Well, a q-tip and some rubbing alcohol on the board and buttons fixed the start button on that NES controller.

I boiled the 72 pin connector and put it back together, but the NES is still giving me a flashing grey screen. Perhaps there is still some gunk that needs to get cleaned out, so I'm gonna try again tomorrow. Anyone know what the difference is between a flashing grey screen and a flashing blue screen?
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Blue screen would be if there is no contact being made... Do you get a grey screen even with nothing inserted? If so there is likely other issues at play. The flashing is, of course, the 10NES doing it's thing.
 
^The_Afroman that's a sexy beast, congrats!

womp said:
White art eraser between a before and after alcohol scrub works great here. Amazing differences. I don't use the polish for the reasons already stated - do not want to strip the contacts.
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exactly what i did, everything plays & looks great now
 
KojiKnight said:
Blue screen would be if there is no contact being made... Do you get a grey screen even with nothing inserted? If so there is likely other issues at play. The flashing is, of course, the 10NES doing it's thing.
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I get a flashing gray screen both with and without a cartridge inserted.
 
Polioliolio said:
I picked up a junk Twin Famicom while in Japan.

I don't believe I tested it out yet.


How much would someone charge for a restoration?
I'm sure the fds drive is shot and doubt I'd be able to handle that myself.
Click to expand...

I've restored lots of other consoles, but not a Twin Fami. I'd certainly give it a shot. PM me if interested.
 
Huh.... So... I replaced the 72-pin connector, cleaned out a ton of my games, and for a week it played perfectly... Now it's getting just as bad if not worse than before. Games that literally worked on their first try after all of the cleaning and replacing are now taking dozens of tries and even then it may or may not work.

Not sure what's brought this on. It's the standard blue screen of "can't read the game" and if I fight hard enough the games work... but even then a slight jar to the system scrambles the graphics... So no doubt this is STILL a connection issue of some sort. Really tempted to just try and deep clean the original 72-pin connector and seeing if I get better results.

Anyone have any advice? The contacts look a little yellowed, but they are still springy and seem to be in place so it looks like a good polish might be all it needs.
 
The_Afroman said:
Yep. Sure does. I just picked up a NESRGB from the US distrib. page a few nights ago. It's going into this bad boy. Oh also. This came in today..

I2IpNcU.jpg
zMymrSm.jpg
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This is amazing. Fami paradise.

What's with that modded NES controller thing though?
 
KojiKnight said:
Huh.... So... I replaced the 72-pin connector, cleaned out a ton of my games, and for a week it played perfectly... Now it's getting just as bad if not worse than before. Games that literally worked on their first try after all of the cleaning and replacing are now taking dozens of tries and even then it may or may not work.

Not sure what's brought this on. It's the standard blue screen of "can't read the game" and if I fight hard enough the games work... but even then a slight jar to the system scrambles the graphics... So no doubt this is STILL a connection issue of some sort. Really tempted to just try and deep clean the original 72-pin connector and seeing if I get better results.

Anyone have any advice? The contacts look a little yellowed, but they are still springy and seem to be in place so it looks like a good polish might be all it needs.
Click to expand...

Are you pushing them down?
 
KojiKnight said:
Huh.... So... I replaced the 72-pin connector, cleaned out a ton of my games, and for a week it played perfectly... Now it's getting just as bad if not worse than before. Games that literally worked on their first try after all of the cleaning and replacing are now taking dozens of tries and even then it may or may not work.

Not sure what's brought this on. It's the standard blue screen of "can't read the game" and if I fight hard enough the games work... but even then a slight jar to the system scrambles the graphics... So no doubt this is STILL a connection issue of some sort. Really tempted to just try and deep clean the original 72-pin connector and seeing if I get better results.

Anyone have any advice? The contacts look a little yellowed, but they are still springy and seem to be in place so it looks like a good polish might be all it needs.
Click to expand...

I replaced the connector and cleaned all my games a week ago, just don't push them down, insert the cartridge and power on the console.
 
Leonsito said:
I replaced the connector and cleaned all my games a week ago, just don't push them down, insert the cartridge and power on the console.
Click to expand...

Peagles said:
Are you pushing them down?
Click to expand...

Quite simply, this works... This will actually be hard for me to get used to honestly. It's hard to overcome lots of self-programming to push it down. Is this common/supposed to happen? The only other thing I can ever remember working with the tray up was using the game genie.
 
KojiKnight said:
Quite simply, this works... This will actually be hard for me to get used to honestly. It's hard to overcome lots of self-programming to push it down. Is this common/supposed to happen? The only other thing I can ever remember working with the tray up was using the game genie.
Click to expand...

Basically, that connector is the worst invention of all time. They want you to push it down so it makes better contact, but pushing it down bends the pins over time, meaning that you then have to push it down to get it to work. But if you never push it down to begin with, you never have to later, if that makes sense.

The dumbest thing is, when the pins are correctly aligned and not bent, it often doesn't work with it pushed down. It's one of the dumbest things I've ever encountered in my life.

But hey, not pushing it down means you should never have to worry about maintenance or replacing your connector again.
 
just got back from japan with my famicom disk system and some games. sadly, i couldn't find any famicoms aside from the ugly revision with the dog bone controllers. anyone know a decent place to buy famicoms aside from getting hosed on ebay?
 
Okay, doing some more experimenting I'm still getting a bit of a mixed bag, but at least now I'm getting mostly positive results by NOT pushing the games down.

It still seems very fiddly and even a slight bump can still cause some graphic corruption... wondering if I have a pin or two that just aren't making very good connections period.

The plus side? A game I had written off as being completely dead (High Speed) is working using this method. How I'm not even sure... the game was bought used a decade ago... when I opened it up, it had apparent water damage (or was left by a window in a salty beach hotel). Besides the contacts being heavily corroded, there was corrosion on the PCB itself... Even at the best of times we often only got the game to work before with graphic issues.

Managed to get the game to not only load up, but looking perfect.

So long story short, I'll likely need to fluff the pins, but it's looking good.

A new issue though... The fact that pushing down the game is causing issues (and could lead to future pin issues) I need to find a way to disable the pushing down mechanism. Why? One of the reasons I wanted to get the NES working is for my autistic elder brother. He's very low functioning (high motor function, but low cognitive/intelligence levels). One of his favorite things was playing the NES. He's loving that the system works, but part of his autism is having extremely strong OCD. He knows he's "supposed" to push the cart down... and while he'll listen to me when I'm over his shoulder reminding him, when he works the system himself he reverts back (and gets frustrated and sometimes even mildly violent when the game doesn't work)

I've ordered a cheap-o $15 knock off NES that'll be here in a few days that I HOPE will work well enough to play his favorite games and I'll reclaim the NES myself (having worked on it so much lately, I've started to become VERY attached to it again). That said, if the system doesn't work well enough for him (I plan on letting him have one of the refurbished original NES controllers so quality of that is a non-issue) I'll bite the bullet and take the knock off.

So yeah, anyone have any ideas for a simple way to lock the tray upright?
 
KojiKnight said:
Okay, doing some more experimenting I'm still getting a bit of a mixed bag, but at least now I'm getting mostly positive results by NOT pushing the games down.

It still seems very fiddly and even a slight bump can still cause some graphic corruption... wondering if I have a pin or two that just aren't making very good connections period.

The plus side? A game I had written off as being completely dead (High Speed) is working using this method. How I'm not even sure... the game was bought used a decade ago... when I opened it up, it had apparent water damage (or was left by a window in a salty beach hotel). Besides the contacts being heavily corroded, there was corrosion on the PCB itself... Even at the best of times we often only got the game to work before with graphic issues.

Managed to get the game to not only load up, but looking perfect.

So long story short, I'll likely need to fluff the pins, but it's looking good.

A new issue though... The fact that pushing down the game is causing issues (and could lead to future pin issues) I need to find a way to disable the pushing down mechanism. Why? One of the reasons I wanted to get the NES working is for my autistic elder brother. He's very low functioning (high motor function, but low cognitive/intelligence levels). One of his favorite things was playing the NES. He's loving that the system works, but part of his autism is having extremely strong OCD. He knows he's "supposed" to push the cart down... and while he'll listen to me when I'm over his shoulder reminding him, when he works the system himself he reverts back (and gets frustrated and sometimes even mildly violent when the game doesn't work)

I've ordered a cheap-o $15 knock off NES that'll be here in a few days that I HOPE will work well enough to play his favorite games and I'll reclaim the NES myself (having worked on it so much lately, I've started to become VERY attached to it again). That said, if the system doesn't work well enough for him (I plan on letting him have one of the refurbished original NES controllers so quality of that is a non-issue) I'll bite the bullet and take the knock off.

So yeah, anyone have any ideas for a simple way to lock the tray upright?
Click to expand...

I saw people removing the springs in the front and putting a plastic cilinder instead.

Edit: I mean, the springs on the sides, sorry for not being clear.
 
kunonabi said:
just got back from japan with my famicom disk system and some games. sadly, i couldn't find any famicoms aside from the ugly revision with the dog bone controllers. anyone know a decent place to buy famicoms aside from getting hosed on ebay?
Click to expand...
Doesn't the revision have detachable controllers and an A/V port, while the original does not?

Why would you want the original?
 
KojiKnight said:
Okay, doing some more experimenting I'm still getting a bit of a mixed bag, but at least now I'm getting mostly positive results by NOT pushing the games down.

It still seems very fiddly and even a slight bump can still cause some graphic corruption... wondering if I have a pin or two that just aren't making very good connections period.

The plus side? A game I had written off as being completely dead (High Speed) is working using this method. How I'm not even sure... the game was bought used a decade ago... when I opened it up, it had apparent water damage (or was left by a window in a salty beach hotel). Besides the contacts being heavily corroded, there was corrosion on the PCB itself... Even at the best of times we often only got the game to work before with graphic issues.

Managed to get the game to not only load up, but looking perfect.

So long story short, I'll likely need to fluff the pins, but it's looking good.

A new issue though... The fact that pushing down the game is causing issues (and could lead to future pin issues) I need to find a way to disable the pushing down mechanism. Why? One of the reasons I wanted to get the NES working is for my autistic elder brother. He's very low functioning (high motor function, but low cognitive/intelligence levels). One of his favorite things was playing the NES. He's loving that the system works, but part of his autism is having extremely strong OCD. He knows he's "supposed" to push the cart down... and while he'll listen to me when I'm over his shoulder reminding him, when he works the system himself he reverts back (and gets frustrated and sometimes even mildly violent when the game doesn't work)

I've ordered a cheap-o $15 knock off NES that'll be here in a few days that I HOPE will work well enough to play his favorite games and I'll reclaim the NES myself (having worked on it so much lately, I've started to become VERY attached to it again). That said, if the system doesn't work well enough for him (I plan on letting him have one of the refurbished original NES controllers so quality of that is a non-issue) I'll bite the bullet and take the knock off.

So yeah, anyone have any ideas for a simple way to lock the tray upright?
Click to expand...

I've had very similar problems, and I keep just giving up on the thing and going back to my NES 2, because even if that stupid thing has only awful-quality RF full of vertical lines in the picture, at least the games start up, something not true on the toaster...
 
Doesn't the original Famicom also have issues working on some non-Japanese televisions, due to different RF channel requirements or something? I know that a lot of people have trouble getting it to work, and the ones that do still have issues with video and sound, such as loud humming noises. If you get one, I hope it works for you. I guess you could get it modded if anything...right?

Personally, I wanna get an AV Famicom myself one day. It'd like nice next to my top-loading NES. They'd be like twins! Hah.
 
A Black Falcon said:
I've had very similar problems, and I keep just giving up on the thing and going back to my NES 2, because even if that stupid thing has only awful-quality RF full of vertical lines in the picture, at least the games start up, something not true on the toaster...
Click to expand...

That's my 'fear' I guess that this is as good as it gets. At least with the 10NES disabled it's one less thing I have to worry about. Hopefully the knock-off NES coming in will be good enough for my disabled brother and I can cart off the original. I love him to death, but he's not gentle (not because he's incapable of it, but because if a game doesn't work right away, he gets frustrated).
 
KDash31987 said:
Doesn't the original Famicom also have issues working on some non-Japanese televisions, due to different RF channel requirements or something?
Click to expand...

yeh getting an original Famicom to work via RF can be difficult, if you prefer the OG form factor you can find AV modded ones on eBay pretty regularly, this one for example.
for people in PAL regions there was an official Famicom released in Hong Kong that has a 50hz/60Hz switch, but these are a lot harder to come across. more details here.
 
So... I have to ask, is it some sort of myth that those save batteries die? I figured, you know, 20 years+ with these games that I'd be coming back to play and the saves wouldn't work... but going through my entire collection, I haven't found a single game that doesn't still have saves on them.

As an aside question to that, I see quite a few games are built on PCBs that support saves even though they weren't designed for saving... Did Nintendo just have a lot of extra save-style PCBs available at one point and just shoved non-save games onto them to save costs or what? Examples: Metroid, Vegas Dream, and like 3-4 others I found.

Obviously soldering on a battery won't magically enable them to save, but it seems odd since the housing takes up so much real estate on the board.

Another aside to that, what's the actual largest (physical dimensions) game for NES? So far Castlevania 3 seems to be by a large margin amongst my collection. I imagine the early games that used an adapter would be pretty close to filling it as well. Just seems like sucha waste to have all of that space in them.
 
LayLa said:
yeh getting an original Famicom to work via RF can be difficult, if you prefer the OG form factor you can find AV modded ones on eBay pretty regularly, this one for example.
for people in PAL regions there was an official Famicom released in Hong Kong that has a 50hz/60Hz switch, but these are a lot harder to come across. more details here.
Click to expand...

I've been on the lookout for top loader but those modded famis may be a decent alternative. Although after currency conversion, 72p adapter and ad adapter I may be in top loader territory anyway.
 
KojiKnight said:
So... I have to ask, is it some sort of myth that those save batteries die? I figured, you know, 20 years+ with these games that I'd be coming back to play and the saves wouldn't work... but going through my entire collection, I haven't found a single game that doesn't still have saves on them.

As an aside question to that, I see quite a few games are built on PCBs that support saves even though they weren't designed for saving... Did Nintendo just have a lot of extra save-style PCBs available at one point and just shoved non-save games onto them to save costs or what? Examples: Metroid, Vegas Dream, and like 3-4 others I found.

Obviously soldering on a battery won't magically enable them to save, but it seems odd since the housing takes up so much real estate on the board.

Another aside to that, what's the actual largest (physical dimensions) game for NES? So far Castlevania 3 seems to be by a large margin amongst my collection. I imagine the early games that used an adapter would be pretty close to filling it as well. Just seems like sucha waste to have all of that space in them.
Click to expand...
It's just a matter of time. They will die. If batteries didn't die, why would anyone be concerned? My Pokémon Gold died years ago. Other games should start following suit any day now.

That's cute about Metroid. I checked Kid Icarus, figuring that since they were on the same engine, it would be likely be on the same board (they were different revisions but they had the battery support). It's possible the original plan was to include battery backup SRAM, but closer to release they figured all the save batteries weren't worth the cost but had already produced the PCBs. Or it might come down to how the games were programmed. Checking NESdev seems to verify that theory.

As for largest PCBs, Nintendo World Championships has to win out on NES.

circuitboard-nwcp8yty.jpg


Retail games would probably be anything on Nintendo's MMC5 ETROM AND EWROM boards--probably the same size as the NES-EVENT boards.

nes_etrom2pl9k.jpg
nes_ewromf7zu7.jpg

ETROM board Games:
Bandit Kings of Ancient China
L'Empereur
Nobunaga's Ambition II
Uncharted Waters

And the only EWROM board game was Romance of the Three Kingdoms II.

None of those even compare to the SNES Powerfest '94 board, though.

powerfest941zxep.jpg
 
georgetheplushie said:
It's just a matter of time. They will die. If batteries didn't die, why would anyone be concerned? My Pokémon Gold died years ago. Other games should start following suit any day now.
Click to expand...

Hah forgot my /s tag on that bit. Was vaguely wondering if anyone had actually had their NES batteries die yet... As I said, I was expecting the worst, but everything from Zelda 1 to Dragon Warrior 1, etc all seem to be working and saving properly. I thought the batteries for these games had something like a 5-10 year life expectancy.

Thank you for those pics/info. Since I've been working on the system I've learned quite a bit but I've also just had a strong desire to learn more. Had an intense fascination with things like the mapper chips used in the games and the board layouts, etc.
 
Sometimes batteries are used for different purposes that take more out of them. My NES Zelda still saves but my Boktai's battery is dead. That game saves to the cart but uses its battery to keep a clock running. Maybe the same is true of Pokemon Gold.
 
Mzo said:
Sometimes batteries are used for different purposes that take more out of them. My NES Zelda still saves but my Boktai's battery is dead. That game saves to the cart but uses its battery to keep a clock running. Maybe the same is true of Pokemon Gold.
Click to expand...

Definitely true for Pokemon Gold and Silver. You get the same with later Pokemon RTC games but only for the clock functions. They had the sense the split the save from the clock function later on.
 
Tempy said:
Can anyone recommend any of the portable famicom handhelds?
Click to expand...

I bought one while in Japan.

The screen resolution was somewhat smaller than the resolution of the games it was running. It also felt cheap.. very light weight for it's size.

Screen also had some dust behind it or something.. Just cheap overall.


I made it a point eventually to leave it in the bathroom with King Kong 2, so if you had to poop, you had a shitty game to keep you company.


I wouldn't really recommend one.
 
My sincerest apologies to the copy of Lee Carvello's Putting Challenge that I had to massacre, but I finally made a nice case for my Everdrive N8.

IMAG0436_zps5ef2a756.jpg
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Okay, it was Lee Trevino's Fighting Golf, same difference.
 
It's not really "bad". It seems competently made really. Graphics are pretty good and controls are decent. It's just that it's so unfairly hard that it's almost unplayable. I'd buy a copy of it for the soundtrack alone though.
 
Just bought Star Tropics 1 & 2 complete in box with manuals, etc. Was SUPER cheap. I'll upload pics when I'm home, they are like in perfect condition!

They also had a CIB LoZ with the manual, map, & box in fairly good shape. I just couldn't bring myself to spend $60 more bucks hah.
 
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