The Famicom Disk System

I remember back to the time in 1994 or so when my brother told me that at a pawnshop, some guy had a Famicom with 40 games on disk for sale. It cost, like $150 or something. I had to go there and look at it. I had never seen a Famicom before, so I was incredibly excited. It looked so foreign and alluring, like forbidden fruit. The Sahara pawnshop was a new one, run by an owner that had just returned from Japan, or somewhere. He said that while he was there, he bought this Famicom and FDS for his daughter to enjoy. He would often get a new game for his daughter each week. I talked the guy down in price a little bit. When we had finally settled on a price, I had to go back to my place and get my money. I remember taking the seabus one evening with my money, and going to get the FDS. It was late in the year, maybe November. So, it was already dark as I walked down Granville Street. Well, I bought the system and excitedly examined all the games as I sat on the seabus. I was so excited that I had this system, as it had some Japanese games that I had heard about, like Doki Doki Panic, the game which was converted into Super Mario Bros. 2.; and the FDS version of Zelda. What a score!

When I got home, I hooked it up via the RF cables and fiddled around with the TV dial to get it on a channel that worked. Along with the FDS, the FC package came with KinNikuMan (MUSCLE), Twinbee, and a 22-in-1, all on cartridge. Since I had never operated an FDS before, I stuck in the cartridges while I tried to get a picture. The Famicom was a little dirty and old, so it took a little while to get a stable game going. Once that was done, I popped in the FDS, and that wonderful "Nintendo" screen came up. Mario and Luigi were running around, chasing each other. That was so cool! I called up one of my friends to come over, and we tried out all the FDS games that evening. After he had left, I took our TV up into my room and played Doki Doki Panic to the end. That was a good experience. I learned that you had to finish DDP 4 times, once for each character, to get the good ending.

I discovered some great games that weekend. I was most impressed by Doki Doki Panic, Gyruss, Falsion, Arumana no Kiseki, the great Ai Senshi Nicol, and of course, the frighteningly difficult Super Mario Bros. 2. Unfortunately, my FDS drive belts wore out over the years, as is becoming typical of this machine. I can still relive my FDS memories with emulators, but it just isn't the same...