Famicom Disk System
To understand the reason for the Famicom Disk System's existence, you need to look back to 1985. While video game consoles were dead in the US, the Famicom boom was taking hold of Japan's populous. However, the game's time honored ROM cart manufacturing was expensive. Even the simplest games retailed for over 5000 yen, bringing them beyond the reach of most children's allowances. Nintendo's answer? Release games on disks, which are much cheaper than cartridges to make. A disk's contents can also be changed easily and at low cost to the buyer. And so the Famicom Disk System was born
Nintendo's disk format sparked a wave of enthusiasm among Japanese game freaks at the time Once you buy a disk, you can change the contents of the disks as many times as you want, as long as the disk holds out, for 500 yen per game. Disk Writers were available in toy and department stores all across Japan, and getting a new game written was as simple as waiting a couple of minutes. The very first Disk System game was none other than The Legend of Zelda.
However, even though over two million Disk Systems were sold in 1986, results still were not as great as the expectations Nintendo had. For one, ROM cartridge technology eventually progressed well beyond the disk’s 64k per side capacity The Disk System was suddenly killed in 1988 when Nintendo literally took them off the shelves due to rampant illegal copying of the disks, but the system lasted long enough to give some great games The Disk System was a moderate success. Over 180 games (licensed and non) were released and Disk Writers were chugging away in stores until 1993. Nintendo even held several special contests using Disk Fax machines that read the high scores on an inserted disk and sent them to Nintendo for inclusion in a national scoreboard. The Famicom Disk system was never released outside of Japan for obvious reasons. Many of the popular disk games were converted to cartridge form. The rest of the world saw Zelda in cart form. Another popular title called Doki Doki Panic was also converted to cart with changes that took advantage of the Mario character's popularity. (Check HERE for details). The game became Super Mario 2 USA.
Also check out the Famicom Disk System FAQ
for more information.
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