I wouldn't say it was a mistake. It was a moderate success in Japan. People still played their famicoms long into the late 90s. And some convenience stores still had the kiosks in the early 2000s because customers were still using them. Sure it was flakey and had its issues but it saved Nintendo and gamers money.
Dude u kniw alote. So if i didn't have enough money to buy more expensive games for the Snes that those things would help me save money and that i can play some Neo geos and Turbo graphic 16 games as well.
@@fidelsolis6070 the motivation to earn more money to buy expensive games isn't that what we all do in order to satisfy our hunger for playing games? You would trade in your unplayed games then get another game, isn't this what we all do in the past? For the Nintendo Disk System you could alsoway (in Japan) goto a Disk station, put in the game disk and it will record the game you want and its writes to it. In Japan they take intellectual property very seriously. Not to mention Nintendo is their Japanese brand.
And that is funnily enough what made the Mega CD and 32x fail, Sega assumed a up front cost for cheaper games going forward would have consumers love the idea, rather than confuse and even anger them. In fact Sega's ideas were better as you also got a graphical increase too and of course storage space with the CD.
Everyone needs to remember. Japan had a really bad economic crash at the turn of the 80s into the 90s. That it is still recovering from today. The average kid having less money so probably favored disks over carts and probably hung on to Famicom longer for that reason too, no money for the latest consoles.
Nintendo wasn't "pulling the same stunt" by rereleasing older games on the FDS. The point was the FDS releases were a fraction of the cost of buying the same game on cartridge.
I remember my friend had a similar set up for his SNES. I wasn't too keen on the piracy scene in middle school, but his dad had gotten an add-on for his SNES that allowed him to play bootleg floppys of SNES games.
I had the Game Doctor. I remember it needed a RAM upgrade to play the larger games and some games spanned 4 floppies making for NeoGeoCD level load times. Had the same thing for N64 called the Mr. Backup Z64, which took zip disks and those drives failed constantly.
There are many brands, some of them are the same,. Some that I can remember are FX-32, FX-64, Pro Fighter, Turbo Fighter, Game Doctor, etc. back then the most important think to know is how many “m” these machine have (if I remember correctly it’s RAM size). 1 disc games are usually 8m. 2 disc games are 12 or 16m games (Dragon Ball Z Super Butouden 1-3 are 16m) 3 discs are 24m and 4 discs are 32m there are some later games that are more than 32m too but I didn’t had that because my FX-32 only had 32m. One drawback aside from being illegal is many of the special chip are not support I thing some of the early system cannot play Mario Kart of Star Fox, for example.
I wouldn't call the FDS a big mistake. Hindsight is always 20/20 and the FDS served an important short term purpose for Nintendo. It allowed games to increase in size until the time when the various mapper chips became easy to integrate into cartridges. The FDS was always meant to be a low cost add-on and not a long term solution. Nintendo had to (temporarily) throw their full support to it in Japan in order to get anyone to purchase it in the first place. While the US NES initially had the expansion port on the underside of it, later revisions of the console removed it entirely since shortly after the FDS was released in Japan it was clear that integrated mapper chips were the way to go for the US. Especially since by late 86 Nintendo was working hard to distance the NES from looking like it had anything to do with a computer as in the US most home computer used floppy disks.
It was a mistake that they learned from and reaped some benefits from. Unlike the Virtual Boy, the only lesson from which they learned was "don't release the Virtual Boy "
@@TJDious 🤣 Man the virtual boy just wasn't a big brain move. it sounded cool and maybe if things were different it could have been good...but sadly it wasn't. cool peace of nintendo/gaming history tho
@@RetroGamerReviews I played virtual boy one time in toys r us I think it was Tetris I just remember a whole lot of red and a head ache no way I could play that thing for a long time
Fun fact:During one of the Peach segments in Paper Mario:The Thousand Year Door, you need to find a disk and upload it on Grodus computer for TEC. The disk is a Famicom Disk system floppy, and what you see on the screen is a video of Mario and Luigi fighting that plays if you have no disk in the FDS
Obviously, this video was not made by someone who was living in Japan when the Disk system came out. i got it shortly after its release and at that time, what i liked about it was that game data can be saved. one disk cost about 3500 yen which was like 1500 yen cheaper than famicom cartridges and kakikae only cost 500 yen per game. when you were a kid, and having not much money, it was a great way to play new games.the disks are pretty good quality as well.
@@besotoxicomusic I wouldn't say it was the only reason. After all, Sony and Sega got a cut of each disc pressed for their consoles as well. Maybe Nintendo's cut was more for a cart, but they also had to pay more to produce a cart. There were other factors like concerns about piracy and copyright protection, which the Famicom and FDS already gave Nintendo a taste of. And ROM was a lot faster than CD-ROM, which affected the gameplay experience, since the CD-ROM games could be plagued by long load times, which wasn't really a thing on ROM carts. And again, they had the 64DD planned, which was to be a compromise between the speed of ROM and the capacity of CD-ROM. In hindsight, it's clear that Nintendo held onto using carts for home consoles one generation too long, especially since the 64DD was also a flop. However, the decision was a lot more complex than just Nintendo wanting more money. And carts can make sense in certain situations, such as how all of Nintendo's portables have used carts and have been more successful than Sony's disc-based portables, all the way to the Switch, which is a massive success despite using carts.
If the accent and love of retro gaming wasn't enough to have me smitten (it was), then the disk-insertion-with-big-toe maneuver certainly pushed me over the edge...
The FDS was indeed doomed for a number of reasons. 1) As you mentioned, they choose the Mitsumi's QuickDisk format instead Sony's 3.5" floppy disks. But this means only 112KB of space instead of 720KB for DD disks. This was what caused them to be surpassed by the maskROMs one or two years later. The 3.5" floppy disks would have taken much longer, and using 2 or 3 floppy disks would multiply that capacity for a much lower cost than maskROMs. 2) Coupled with the FDS, the Famicom came dangerously close to the price of the cheaper MSX2 models, that were way more capable machines which could be used for much more than just gaming
It still had some of the best ports of games. Some very enhanced graphically and a save feature that worked instead of passwords or the Zelda cartridge nightmares.
I don't think it was a big mistake: look at the games we got that initially made their debut in Japan on this: Zelda Legend (The Legend of Zelda) Metroid Light Myth: Palutena's Mirror (Kid Icarus) Super Mario Bros. 2 (The Lost Levels) Devil's Castle Dracula (Castlevania) Link's Adventure (Zelda II: The Adventure of Link) Dream Factory: Heartbeat Panic (formed the basis for our Super Mario Bros. 2 after Nintendo of America deemed that the similarly-titled game we first got years later as Super Mario Bros.: The Lost Levels within Super Mario All-Stars was too difficult yet also too similar to the first game) Dracula II: The Accursed Seal (Castlevania II: Simon's Quest) Were it not for the Famicom Disk System, the American NES versions of these games would never have existed. However, the few mistakes I can think of with the FDS was with the belt drive on the system itself, which was prone to wear after some years of use, and the disks themselves, since Nintendo was concerned about piracy (especially here in the US where some unlicensed games were released for the NES). Also, the long loading times on some FDS titles were a big turn-off for some, especially on the long RPG-themed games like Kid Icarus and Dracula II, where you had to flip the disk over (from Side A to Side B and back) at times to continue the game.
The fds was no mistake.... It had some pretty good games and even games we know in the west but with stuff we in the west didn't have on the same games.....like expansion audio. And as you saod yourself.....the thing was a hit in japan!
Considering that it was already extremely difficult to get an NES to play a single game cartridge without you having to blow on it for an hour, inserting it, taking it out, blowing on it some more and praying it that it actually would work when you put it back in. Nintendo would have caused riots in the streets of America trying to sell an additional add-on for the NES that suffered from the same dust problems that already plagued the NES console and game cartridges.
The only mistake I feel was made with the Disk System was not releasing it overseas. Nintendo could have gotten more developers on board due to how cheap it was to make a Disk System game rather than a cartridge based game. Consumers would have been able to get Disk based games for a cheaper price than a regular cartridge based game if Nintendo decided to make the Disk Writer also available in the West. At the same time, this would also cause poorly designed games to make a quick buck to flood the console, thus possibly causing another video game crash, which is probably the reason Nintendo didn't want to bring it overseas.
Two fun facts about the FDS: Fun Fact #1, Side A of a disk contains more than just the title screen. The entire game program is actually on Side A. Side B contains data that needs to be loaded in and out. Fun Fact #2: Every time a FDS game loads anything, the entire disk is read.
So PS5 supposedly exist but the closest that I've come to one was to see an empty box on display in a used game store. I do nor have any concrete evidence to back up the consoles existence. It's funny since the PS5 was released I've found more Atari Jaguars in stores than PS5s.
11:10 Ghosts n' Goblins was never released for the Disk System. But its release is often cited in discussions about the Disk System losing the advantage of more storage capacity for games. In theory Nintendo could have released an updated "RAM Cartridge" as it's often called which could have improved the capabilities of the Disk System but they were always going to be stuck with the same disks which were vulnerable to copying and only held roughly 128Kb per disk. Many later releases would have required 2 disks, Kirby's Adventure is one of the largest games and would have required 6 disks.
Around 2007 I visited the Philippines for a few months to visit my brother in the Peace Corps. The thrift stores there were stacked high with FDS's and I still regret not buying one (or a dozen).
def not a mistake in fact nintendo readily used the system for a long time. many kids in japan loved it due to the fact you could rewrite games cheaper and in a culture where minimalism is big this was a welcome edition
I love the FDS! It's really fun to play games on floppy disks for some reason. But yeah it's not great hardware, I've had 3 with various problems. I've always wanted. Sharp Twin Famicom. Maybe we'll see a Lady Decade video on that weird console
I absolutely love my twin famicom especially if you get a fds stick it's an optical disc emulator has a USB port on one side like the part that plugs into a computer and the other side has a proprietary cable for the fds you plug it in and Bam all the games instantaneous loading
Wait, Lady Decade - the Floppy Drive’s belt (that spun the read head) doesn’t lend itself to making the floppy discs being ‘bad’ quality. The rubber belt inside the Disk Drive was poor quality. Irregardless, the rubber band really isn’t difficult to replace. With that said, the rubber band was the Disk Drive’s achilles’ heel. Anyway, I just wanted to mention this. It’s your opinion that the Disk Drive itself (and its floppy disc games) are ‘bad’ quality. I’m a big fan of your channel and content. I just wanted you to know, that I’m NOT a troll looking to stir the pot. I don’t agree that the Famicom’s Disk Drive attachment was one of Nintendo’s bad ideas. You said it yourself in your video - there was a chip shortage back then, and the only way Nintendo could deliver games to their consumers, was by Floppy discs. Some may argue that the Floppy Drive attachment wasn’t the best choice, but given the circumstances they faced - it saved the Famicom and it allowed Nintendo and its 3rd party developers to deliver the games their fans craved.
Nintendo's true first mistake was in 1980 when they shipped hundreds of Radar Scope cabinets to the U.S. after having mild success in Japan. It wasn't successful due to the Pac-Man craze. Fortunately the company was saved with Monkey Kong, both successful in Japan and the U.S.
I don't know, i wouldn't call it a mistake. It was successful in Japan. my cousin in Japan had the famicom twin and everyone was playing it. I saw the disks in the stores and everywhere I went when I visited in 1989.
From what I understand, this drive wasn't as bad as this video insinuates it is. Sure, the floppy disk drive wasn't going to last as long as soon as storage on cartridges improved in size and price. But it was a decent stopgap in my opinion, not to mention that unlike CDs it was already a proven technology
I agree. The disk system was a neat peripheral. Also being able to buy a disk for 20 bucks and then rent any game you like effectively forever or until you wanted a different game for 5 bucks would have been pretty cool back in the 80s.
It may have been a mistake for Nintendo but I was able to try so many obscure games thanks to the Disk System. The easy accessibility, not to mention the incredibly low price of each game let me go into a game shop and come home with maybe 8-10 titles to play at home. Sure there were some stinkers but that was where I first played Zelda 1, Zelda 2, Metroid and Simon's Quest.
The Famicom Disk System was popular in Japan due to the floppy disc games being much cheaper than cartridges. Was the Floppy Disk system a smart choice for Nintendo? It really depends on who you speak to. 🤷
If Nintendo does one thing, besides piss of third parties, it's innovate. Yeah, they have several flops but they also have a bunch of really neat stuff. And sometimes flops can be good. The Wii U kind of paved the way for the Switch. Good episode.
The disk system was a good idea in theory. But sadly, the manufacturing of the disk system itself had issues. Namely, the drive belts constantly failing.
Makes you wonder what took nintendo ao long to use off the shelf formats like cd and dvd etc until the wii i mean it cost them more and didnt stop piracy.
Nintendo had a difficult time creating a CD-ROM-based system since they dropped Sony as a partner in the mid-1990s in favor of Phillips. The PlayStation, which started as a Nintendo-Sony collaboration was now just manufactured by Sony. When Nintendo finally used discs, it was during the generation when they developed the GameCube, and the discs were tiny when compared to what their competitors were using at the time...
@@Justin-Hill-1987 i new that but thanks anyway m8 i ment it more as a with the benefit of hindsight question because in the long run it just seems like Nintendo doing it own thing and being different lol because they must have known development cost would be equal to if not more then just licensing existing tech and piracy can only ever be slowed down not stopped
@@Justin-Hill-1987 iirc the GameCube discs were actually a mini DVD format (not that they would work in anything other than Nintendo hardware) so they could store a lot of data (1.46 GB not as much as a regular sized DVD 4.7GB at the time). It was a combination of piracy concerns, and wanting control over what gets released on their console. Another rumor I heard was that in one their hardware the discs spin in the opposite direction than say the PS2, Xbox or a typical DVD player of the time.
Bad Title, The Nintndo was the first to make a floppy disk unit as an add-on and was very successful in Japan, that's their territory Domestic and the Japanese play by their rules, Outside of Japan privacy was bad and clones and copyright was broken, heck there were not many if not hacking groups in Japan. Carts were expensive to make even at 64k so why not pass on the cost to the end users, the Disk System was made. 64k each side lots more on both, if the game had a fault just update and write.
Actually is not a mistake because even though it sold for 2 years it Sell around 4 million units in Japan and take consideration about how small Japan is. Actually the gaming historian make a documentary about the issue.
Ironically? If the nintendo had simply gone all in and made a keyboard addon the NES disk system could have served it well. Then again by the time the NES hit stateside the 16 bit personal computers were about to hit so it would have been anemic compared to its competitors in that area. Still. With Nintendo leveraging its then found popularity and a propritary disk system it could have also served as a cheap entry into home computing.
Nintendo has a Toy Robot?, but only Atari gives you a keyboard for playing advanced computer games. I sure remember when I was a kid, all my friends saying how they wanted to play advanced computer games ;-) I mean who would prefer playing with a stinking robot?
I have a question for anyone who knows; exactly _how_ do the mapper chips work? Is the concept similar to bank switching on Atari 2600 game cartridges?
16:11 i enjoyed the video but like...why and how did she put the controllers in the wrong slots and upside down?? or am i the one who is doing it wrong?
It's crazy cause I just imported an entire Famicom collection through buyee. Sadly I got the second model Famicom, and no Famicom disk system though. This video makes me think that maybe that's no big deal though! 😅
The famicom itself is great! but when the time come and you feel like you're missing out i'd go for the disk system. Seriously it is the best add-on. I play mine quite alot
@@RetroGamerReviews Really? Thanks for the advice! I might need to get it down the road. I found that it does work with the second model Famicom. I bought an entire bundle of Famicom games and a system, Super Famicom games and a system, and then I added Mother 1, 2, and 3 complete in box for the Famicom, Super Famicom, and GBA 😁
@@VinnytotheK nice haul! and yes there are no problems with the second model famicom as i have the second model as well. personally the first model square button famicom isn't really worth going for unless you just want to have it IMO but i will be honest and say i want to own the first model :D
I think the FDS has gained a bit of a cult following in the past few years. I have the stand alone disk system, and the Sharp Twin. My Sharp Twin is RGB modded, and it is my favorite console that I own. I am pretty sure that the disk media wasn't meant to last for 30+ years, but surprisingly I have had pretty good luck with picking up games. I love hearing all of the various clicks and clanks as I load a disk card into the system, and hearing the expanded audio of Zelda no Densetsu. Sure I could easily emulate it, but it's just not the same. It's like listening to Dark Side of the Moon on vinyl record or MP3. It's funny the "copy protect" that Nintendo tried to implement is printing the word "Nintendo" on the quick disk, as the locking mechanism in the FDS was supposed to "lock" certain letters down. I can't fathom how pirates got around such a copy protect device....lol. The Famicom, and it's disk system peripheral is quirky, cheeky, and fun to collect. The more I learn about it, the more I want to learn about it. I just fear the day when my belt finally snaps and I have to replace it. Fun video, LD!
Just by the rich sound youu can tell is a famicon disk system. Its sound way better than the regular nes. I believe because it has a extra audio channel.
Ironically, it's not even their worst mistake. When you consider both the famicom carts and the NES carts held less memory than the later versions, it's understandable they used magnetic disks to improve how much could be held at once. Not to mention you could have two games internally due to the disks being double sided. While the Disk System eventually became unneeded, some famciom games successfully got transferred onto the NES. Though if there is one thing the Disk System manages to still do better than the NES, it be the improved sound channels.
I have a bunch of disks that sill work... stowed away. I use the FDS Stick if I want to run actual hardware, or my Everdrive too because they are so flemsy, yes I had to replace my zelda twice now. lol. I do really love the music that was added with the disks and wish that was taken advantage of more.
can you have nintendo 64 !!!? i am super nostalgic about that console !!! by the way, i love you very much, i hope you will have my request one day !!!! can you also have nintendo gamecube !!!!?
In my opinion Sega Of America fumbling The USA Sega Saturn launch and of course Sony Announcing the infamous price point $299 as to Sega Saturn's outrageous price point of $399 and no one cared that Sega secretly released the Saturn that very same day as the 1995 E3
Yeah well the game never got a release with mega cd and 32x combined in eu and japan anyway. But I emulated Redbox thing instead. But due to the sake of International Age Rating Coalition that gameplay cutscenes night trap was changed from usual genesis/megadrive controller to the hasbro nemo control vision which almost got triple vision. And also hasbro console didn’t have the rating either jeez.
This was actually a huge sucsess in japan. Developers profited more and gamers got the gamws for way way cheaper for exanple legend of zelda being only 20 their on disk and 60 in us on a cart.
You cannot save your position in the game to the game cartridge so you need a disc or something else and some games needed a way to add extension packs to popular games OK.
I wouldn't say it was a mistake. It was a moderate success in Japan. People still played their famicoms long into the late 90s. And some convenience stores still had the kiosks in the early 2000s because customers were still using them. Sure it was flakey and had its issues but it saved Nintendo and gamers money.
Dude u kniw alote. So if i didn't have enough money to buy more expensive games for the Snes that those things would help me save money and that i can play some Neo geos and Turbo graphic 16 games as well.
@@fidelsolis6070 the motivation to earn more money to buy expensive games isn't that what we all do in order to satisfy our hunger for playing games? You would trade in your unplayed games then get another game, isn't this what we all do in the past? For the Nintendo Disk System you could alsoway (in Japan) goto a Disk station, put in the game disk and it will record the game you want and its writes to it. In Japan they take intellectual property very seriously. Not to mention Nintendo is their Japanese brand.
And that is funnily enough what made the Mega CD and 32x fail, Sega assumed a up front cost for cheaper games going forward would have consumers love the idea, rather than confuse and even anger them. In fact Sega's ideas were better as you also got a graphical increase too and of course storage space with the CD.
So true. I want to save money also.
Everyone needs to remember. Japan had a really bad economic crash at the turn of the 80s into the 90s. That it is still recovering from today. The average kid having less money so probably favored disks over carts and probably hung on to Famicom longer for that reason too, no money for the latest consoles.
Nintendo wasn't "pulling the same stunt" by rereleasing older games on the FDS. The point was the FDS releases were a fraction of the cost of buying the same game on cartridge.
Well said!
It was essentially a digital download.
Surprisingly, Nintendo was NOT the first to do it. Early Intellivision titles were available for play with the PlayCable service.
I remember my friend had a similar set up for his SNES. I wasn't too keen on the piracy scene in middle school, but his dad had gotten an add-on for his SNES that allowed him to play bootleg floppys of SNES games.
The Super Wild Card
I had the Game Doctor. I remember it needed a RAM upgrade to play the larger games and some games spanned 4 floppies making for NeoGeoCD level load times. Had the same thing for N64 called the Mr. Backup Z64, which took zip disks and those drives failed constantly.
It was known as the "Super UFO" around here!
There are many brands, some of them are the same,. Some that I can remember are FX-32, FX-64, Pro Fighter, Turbo Fighter, Game Doctor, etc. back then the most important think to know is how many “m” these machine have (if I remember correctly it’s RAM size). 1 disc games are usually 8m. 2 disc games are 12 or 16m games (Dragon Ball Z Super Butouden 1-3 are 16m) 3 discs are 24m and 4 discs are 32m there are some later games that are more than 32m too but I didn’t had that because my FX-32 only had 32m.
One drawback aside from being illegal is many of the special chip are not support I thing some of the early system cannot play Mario Kart of Star Fox, for example.
@@etiennerodrigue8471 Wow u know alote. I didn't know that
Legware fetish alert, lady decade knows her audience.
10:29
@8:34
I wouldn't call the FDS a big mistake. Hindsight is always 20/20 and the FDS served an important short term purpose for Nintendo. It allowed games to increase in size until the time when the various mapper chips became easy to integrate into cartridges.
The FDS was always meant to be a low cost add-on and not a long term solution. Nintendo had to (temporarily) throw their full support to it in Japan in order to get anyone to purchase it in the first place.
While the US NES initially had the expansion port on the underside of it, later revisions of the console removed it entirely since shortly after the FDS was released in Japan it was clear that integrated mapper chips were the way to go for the US. Especially since by late 86 Nintendo was working hard to distance the NES from looking like it had anything to do with a computer as in the US most home computer used floppy disks.
Me personally, I consider it to be more of an experiment rather than something Nintendo would've committed themselves to.
It was a mistake that they learned from and reaped some benefits from. Unlike the Virtual Boy, the only lesson from which they learned was "don't release the Virtual Boy "
@@TJDious 🤣 Man the virtual boy just wasn't a big brain move. it sounded cool and maybe if things were different it could have been good...but sadly it wasn't. cool peace of nintendo/gaming history tho
@@RetroGamerReviews I played virtual boy one time in toys r us I think it was Tetris I just remember a whole lot of red and a head ache no way I could play that thing for a long time
@@johndewberryiii9925 I got to play wario land about 4 years ago and honestly it was super cool,but i probably couldn't play for long periods of time
Fun fact:During one of the Peach segments in Paper Mario:The Thousand Year Door, you need to find a disk and upload it on Grodus computer for TEC. The disk is a Famicom Disk system floppy, and what you see on the screen is a video of Mario and Luigi fighting that plays if you have no disk in the FDS
Obviously, this video was not made by someone who was living in Japan when the Disk system came out. i got it shortly after its release and at that time, what i liked about it was that game data can be saved. one disk cost about 3500 yen which was like 1500 yen cheaper than famicom cartridges and kakikae only cost 500 yen per game. when you were a kid, and having not much money, it was a great way to play new games.the disks are pretty good quality as well.
@Raven Cutrere doing a research is not the same thing as experiencing it when it came out.
@Raven Cutrere i guessed that too.
Exactly.
Maybe the history of the FDS explains why Nintendo decided to stick with cartridges for the N64
Of course, Nintendo basically repeated the mistake with the 64DD add-on, which also was only released in Japan, and did even worse than the FDS.
It’s because they got a cut for the production of the carts. It’s the only reason the n64 wasn’t optical like the competition.
@@besotoxicomusic I wouldn't say it was the only reason. After all, Sony and Sega got a cut of each disc pressed for their consoles as well. Maybe Nintendo's cut was more for a cart, but they also had to pay more to produce a cart. There were other factors like concerns about piracy and copyright protection, which the Famicom and FDS already gave Nintendo a taste of. And ROM was a lot faster than CD-ROM, which affected the gameplay experience, since the CD-ROM games could be plagued by long load times, which wasn't really a thing on ROM carts. And again, they had the 64DD planned, which was to be a compromise between the speed of ROM and the capacity of CD-ROM.
In hindsight, it's clear that Nintendo held onto using carts for home consoles one generation too long, especially since the 64DD was also a flop. However, the decision was a lot more complex than just Nintendo wanting more money. And carts can make sense in certain situations, such as how all of Nintendo's portables have used carts and have been more successful than Sony's disc-based portables, all the way to the Switch, which is a massive success despite using carts.
If the accent and love of retro gaming wasn't enough to have me smitten (it was), then the disk-insertion-with-big-toe maneuver certainly pushed me over the edge...
8:34 u nasty
The FDS was indeed doomed for a number of reasons.
1) As you mentioned, they choose the Mitsumi's QuickDisk format instead Sony's 3.5" floppy disks. But this means only 112KB of space instead of 720KB for DD disks. This was what caused them to be surpassed by the maskROMs one or two years later. The 3.5" floppy disks would have taken much longer, and using 2 or 3 floppy disks would multiply that capacity for a much lower cost than maskROMs.
2) Coupled with the FDS, the Famicom came dangerously close to the price of the cheaper MSX2 models, that were way more capable machines which could be used for much more than just gaming
I appreciate that it opened up the ability for homebrew/unlicensed titles.
8:36 Don't let Tarantino see this .. erm.. foot'age 😅
It still had some of the best ports of games. Some very enhanced graphically and a save feature that worked instead of passwords or the Zelda cartridge nightmares.
I don't think it was a big mistake: look at the games we got that initially made their debut in Japan on this:
Zelda Legend (The Legend of Zelda)
Metroid
Light Myth: Palutena's Mirror (Kid Icarus)
Super Mario Bros. 2 (The Lost Levels)
Devil's Castle Dracula (Castlevania)
Link's Adventure (Zelda II: The Adventure of Link)
Dream Factory: Heartbeat Panic (formed the basis for our Super Mario Bros. 2 after Nintendo of America deemed that the similarly-titled game we first got years later as Super Mario Bros.: The Lost Levels within Super Mario All-Stars was too difficult yet also too similar to the first game)
Dracula II: The Accursed Seal (Castlevania II: Simon's Quest)
Were it not for the Famicom Disk System, the American NES versions of these games would never have existed. However, the few mistakes I can think of with the FDS was with the belt drive on the system itself, which was prone to wear after some years of use, and the disks themselves, since Nintendo was concerned about piracy (especially here in the US where some unlicensed games were released for the NES). Also, the long loading times on some FDS titles were a big turn-off for some, especially on the long RPG-themed games like Kid Icarus and Dracula II, where you had to flip the disk over (from Side A to Side B and back) at times to continue the game.
I work with a guy who had a disk system when he was a kid. He said he and his friends loved it when they were kids.
The fds was no mistake....
It had some pretty good games and even games we know in the west but with stuff we in the west didn't have on the same games.....like expansion audio.
And as you saod yourself.....the thing was a hit in japan!
I could watch Lady Decade videos all day
Considering that it was already extremely difficult to get an NES to play a single game cartridge without you having to blow on it for an hour, inserting it, taking it out, blowing on it some more and praying it that it actually would work when you put it back in. Nintendo would have caused riots in the streets of America trying to sell an additional add-on for the NES that suffered from the same dust problems that already plagued the NES console and game cartridges.
I can't believe you used your foot to push the disk in lol 😆
I'm pretty sure this whole video was directed by Quentin Tarantino.
@@danielsavage7123 nah it was Dan Schneider lol
link was the first cart I had with a battery and internal save on it, instead of absurd password keys. loved Link
Your videos are enjoyable and quite relaxing. Subscribed!
The only mistake I feel was made with the Disk System was not releasing it overseas. Nintendo could have gotten more developers on board due to how cheap it was to make a Disk System game rather than a cartridge based game.
Consumers would have been able to get Disk based games for a cheaper price than a regular cartridge based game if Nintendo decided to make the Disk Writer also available in the West.
At the same time, this would also cause poorly designed games to make a quick buck to flood the console, thus possibly causing another video game crash, which is probably the reason Nintendo didn't want to bring it overseas.
Loving the detail you go into in your videos!! I have been binging. 🙂
Two fun facts about the FDS: Fun Fact #1, Side A of a disk contains more than just the title screen. The entire game program is actually on Side A. Side B contains data that needs to be loaded in and out. Fun Fact #2: Every time a FDS game loads anything, the entire disk is read.
That is correct how that disk works.
Best system i ever had was the sega nomad. I could play it on tv, pause it, unplug and play on the go, which i think what every gamer wants to do.
12:24 - genius
So PS5 supposedly exist but the closest that I've come to one was to see an empty box on display in a used game store. I do nor have any concrete evidence to back up the consoles existence. It's funny since the PS5 was released I've found more Atari Jaguars in stores than PS5s.
11:10 Ghosts n' Goblins was never released for the Disk System. But its release is often cited in discussions about the Disk System losing the advantage of more storage capacity for games.
In theory Nintendo could have released an updated "RAM Cartridge" as it's often called which could have improved the capabilities of the Disk System but they were always going to be stuck with the same disks which were vulnerable to copying and only held roughly 128Kb per disk. Many later releases would have required 2 disks, Kirby's Adventure is one of the largest games and would have required 6 disks.
Yes that is another valid example of that mistake.
Around 2007 I visited the Philippines for a few months to visit my brother in the Peace Corps. The thrift stores there were stacked high with FDS's and I still regret not buying one (or a dozen).
The Philippines is awesome! how did he get a posting there?
It makes me sad something so beautiful could be called a mistake 💔
def not a mistake in fact nintendo readily used the system for a long time. many kids in japan loved it due to the fact you could rewrite games cheaper and in a culture where minimalism is big this was a welcome edition
Great video thank you!!
Youre channel is very good
I love the FDS! It's really fun to play games on floppy disks for some reason. But yeah it's not great hardware, I've had 3 with various problems. I've always wanted. Sharp Twin Famicom. Maybe we'll see a Lady Decade video on that weird console
I absolutely love my twin famicom especially if you get a fds stick it's an optical disc emulator has a USB port on one side like the part that plugs into a computer and the other side has a proprietary cable for the fds you plug it in and Bam all the games instantaneous loading
@@Lownamebrand optical disc emulator? , you meant it simulates the floppy head reader
Wait, Lady Decade - the Floppy Drive’s belt (that spun the read head) doesn’t lend itself to making the floppy discs being ‘bad’ quality. The rubber belt inside the Disk Drive was poor quality. Irregardless, the rubber band really isn’t difficult to replace. With that said, the rubber band was the Disk Drive’s achilles’ heel.
Anyway, I just wanted to mention this. It’s your opinion that the Disk Drive itself (and its floppy disc games) are ‘bad’ quality.
I’m a big fan of your channel and content. I just wanted you to know, that I’m NOT a troll looking to stir the pot. I don’t agree that the Famicom’s Disk Drive attachment was one of Nintendo’s bad ideas. You said it yourself in your video - there was a chip shortage back then, and the only way Nintendo could deliver games to their consumers, was by Floppy discs. Some may argue that the Floppy Drive attachment wasn’t the best choice, but given the circumstances they faced - it saved the Famicom and it allowed Nintendo and its 3rd party developers to deliver the games their fans craved.
"Irregardless" is not a word.
Nintendo's true first mistake was in 1980 when they shipped hundreds of Radar Scope cabinets to the U.S. after having mild success in Japan. It wasn't successful due to the Pac-Man craze. Fortunately the company was saved with Monkey Kong, both successful in Japan and the U.S.
I could listen to you banter for ages. Love this series
I don't know, i wouldn't call it a mistake. It was successful in Japan. my cousin in Japan had the famicom twin and everyone was playing it. I saw the disks in the stores and everywhere I went when I visited in 1989.
From what I understand, this drive wasn't as bad as this video insinuates it is. Sure, the floppy disk drive wasn't going to last as long as soon as storage on cartridges improved in size and price. But it was a decent stopgap in my opinion, not to mention that unlike CDs it was already a proven technology
I agree. The disk system was a neat peripheral. Also being able to buy a disk for 20 bucks and then rent any game you like effectively forever or until you wanted a different game for 5 bucks would have been pretty cool back in the 80s.
quick man theme is pretty good
It may have been a mistake for Nintendo but I was able to try so many obscure games thanks to the Disk System. The easy accessibility, not to mention the incredibly low price of each game let me go into a game shop and come home with maybe 8-10 titles to play at home. Sure there were some stinkers but that was where I first played Zelda 1, Zelda 2, Metroid and Simon's Quest.
The Famicom Disk System was popular in Japan due to the floppy disc games being much cheaper than cartridges. Was the Floppy Disk system a smart choice for Nintendo? It really depends on who you speak to. 🤷
If Nintendo does one thing, besides piss of third parties, it's innovate. Yeah, they have several flops but they also have a bunch of really neat stuff. And sometimes flops can be good. The Wii U kind of paved the way for the Switch.
Good episode.
The disk system was a good idea in theory. But sadly, the manufacturing of the disk system itself had issues. Namely, the drive belts constantly failing.
I feel like mid-gen console upgrade (aka pro versions) are the modern version of addons.
I really enjoy your work. I fist saw you in the recommended video in one of your husband's videos. You're both great in your own right.
Wait, who is she married to?
@@ceticobr Top Hat Gaming Man.
hello! Nice video
I feel love in your words to the old school gaming
Wish you 1 million subscribers soon
Well Done.
Makes you wonder what took nintendo ao long to use off the shelf formats like cd and dvd etc until the wii i mean it cost them more and didnt stop piracy.
simplest answer is probably because those specific formats, they didn't want to pay fees. the GCN, Wii, and Wii-U discs are proprietary formats
@@thecunninlynguist ironic in the end the fees would have been cheaper lol
Nintendo had a difficult time creating a CD-ROM-based system since they dropped Sony as a partner in the mid-1990s in favor of Phillips. The PlayStation, which started as a Nintendo-Sony collaboration was now just manufactured by Sony. When Nintendo finally used discs, it was during the generation when they developed the GameCube, and the discs were tiny when compared to what their competitors were using at the time...
@@Justin-Hill-1987 i new that but thanks anyway m8 i ment it more as a with the benefit of hindsight question because in the long run it just seems like Nintendo doing it own thing and being different lol because they must have known development cost would be equal to if not more then just licensing existing tech and piracy can only ever be slowed down not stopped
@@Justin-Hill-1987 iirc the GameCube discs were actually a mini DVD format (not that they would work in anything other than Nintendo hardware) so they could store a lot of data (1.46 GB not as much as a regular sized DVD 4.7GB at the time).
It was a combination of piracy concerns, and wanting control over what gets released on their console.
Another rumor I heard was that in one their hardware the discs spin in the opposite direction than say the PS2, Xbox or a typical DVD player of the time.
It would be great if you did a video about the infamous ill fated Sega Genesis Virtual Reality.
This gal doesn't look old enough to make such a video when this Era of gaming was outside of her timeline.
1:37 I saw that
Bad Title, The Nintndo was the first to make a floppy disk unit as an add-on and was very successful in Japan, that's their territory Domestic and the Japanese play by their rules, Outside of Japan privacy was bad and clones and copyright was broken, heck there were not many if not hacking groups in Japan. Carts were expensive to make even at 64k so why not pass on the cost to the end users, the Disk System was made. 64k each side lots more on both, if the game had a fault just update and write.
Actually is not a mistake because even though it sold for 2 years it Sell around 4 million units in Japan and take consideration about how small Japan is. Actually the gaming historian make a documentary about the issue.
Ironically? If the nintendo had simply gone all in and made a keyboard addon the NES disk system could have served it well.
Then again by the time the NES hit stateside the 16 bit personal computers were about to hit so it would have been anemic compared to its competitors in that area. Still. With Nintendo leveraging its then found popularity and a propritary disk system it could have also served as a cheap entry into home computing.
Nintendo has a Toy Robot?, but only Atari gives you a keyboard for playing advanced computer games. I sure remember when I was a kid, all my friends saying how they wanted to play advanced computer games ;-) I mean who would prefer playing with a stinking robot?
I have a question for anyone who knows; exactly _how_ do the mapper chips work? Is the concept similar to bank switching on Atari 2600 game cartridges?
Your videos are nicely put together, I enjoy watching! Cheers
Very interesting Lady Decade! Appreciate you sharing this!
What is the game at 2:41??
lol. I'd watch out with those feet. Some people are like... a little bit too into that.
I think your videos are getting better, as documentaries.
growing to be my fave youtuber ,ima catch up on other platforms aswell ,bravo !!
that bit at 12:22 really threw me. lol
I do really enjoy these videos!
Hi Lady D!
16:11 i enjoyed the video but like...why and how did she put the controllers in the wrong slots and upside down?? or am i the one who is doing it wrong?
Ha, oh yeah. I've just tried to put the controllers upside down in my famicom and they won't quite fit because the cord gets in the way. How odd 🤔
@@w00dyblack i tried the same thing lol. i was like bruh there's no way. Lady Decade has achived big brain plays haha.
It's crazy cause I just imported an entire Famicom collection through buyee. Sadly I got the second model Famicom, and no Famicom disk system though. This video makes me think that maybe that's no big deal though! 😅
The famicom itself is great! but when the time come and you feel like you're missing out i'd go for the disk system. Seriously it is the best add-on. I play mine quite alot
@@RetroGamerReviews Really? Thanks for the advice! I might need to get it down the road. I found that it does work with the second model Famicom. I bought an entire bundle of Famicom games and a system, Super Famicom games and a system, and then I added Mother 1, 2, and 3 complete in box for the Famicom, Super Famicom, and GBA 😁
@@VinnytotheK nice haul! and yes there are no problems with the second model famicom as i have the second model as well. personally the first model square button famicom isn't really worth going for unless you just want to have it IMO but i will be honest and say i want to own the first model :D
@@RetroGamerReviews Yeah I honestly want it too lol, it's just so iconic!
Yes, the “mistake” that allowed for them to make games that were cost prohibitive on their three year old console at the time.
I think the FDS has gained a bit of a cult following in the past few years. I have the stand alone disk system, and the Sharp Twin. My Sharp Twin is RGB modded, and it is my favorite console that I own. I am pretty sure that the disk media wasn't meant to last for 30+ years, but surprisingly I have had pretty good luck with picking up games. I love hearing all of the various clicks and clanks as I load a disk card into the system, and hearing the expanded audio of Zelda no Densetsu. Sure I could easily emulate it, but it's just not the same. It's like listening to Dark Side of the Moon on vinyl record or MP3. It's funny the "copy protect" that Nintendo tried to implement is printing the word "Nintendo" on the quick disk, as the locking mechanism in the FDS was supposed to "lock" certain letters down. I can't fathom how pirates got around such a copy protect device....lol. The Famicom, and it's disk system peripheral is quirky, cheeky, and fun to collect. The more I learn about it, the more I want to learn about it. I just fear the day when my belt finally snaps and I have to replace it. Fun video, LD!
Almost as unbreakable as the region lockout Nintendo used for SNES and N64 games.
How about content about the TurboGrafx 16 and the best game ever Keith Courage!
Just by the rich sound youu can tell is a famicon disk system. Its sound way better than the regular nes. I believe because it has a extra audio channel.
it does, but the Famicom can also input audio from cartridge sound chips, which less games used but they usually had better capabilities.
I had a 32x. I didn't install the stupid metal pieces cuz I didn't see the necessity. And I was right
I AMLIVE EVERY SATURDAY EVENING AT - twitch.tv/ladydecade
I love your whole joke about "now you're playing with power" always funny every time
Yay!
Nice icon dude. I need to draw more aliens 👽
Thanks lady decade i migjt go to twitch goodluck and thanks for the console content
Ironically, it's not even their worst mistake. When you consider both the famicom carts and the NES carts held less memory than the later versions, it's understandable they used magnetic disks to improve how much could be held at once. Not to mention you could have two games internally due to the disks being double sided.
While the Disk System eventually became unneeded, some famciom games successfully got transferred onto the NES. Though if there is one thing the Disk System manages to still do better than the NES, it be the improved sound channels.
Yeah I know, but I still want to watch until the end… weird.
Keep up the work lass and stay safe!
Lol I saw that sneaky Alex Kidd inserted! 🤣
Fantastic once again dear lady what a brilliant history on nintendo's first big mistake 🤩🤩🤩
7:56 *BOUJEE* 💅💅💅💅🤣🤣🤣🤣
AVGN should do this system for an episode.
I love the Disk System! First game I played was 3D Hot Rally.
I find it interesting that Amiga was released before NES (not before Famicom though).
Have got the famicom and the disk system think it is good
I have a bunch of disks that sill work... stowed away. I use the FDS Stick if I want to run actual hardware, or my Everdrive too because they are so flemsy, yes I had to replace my zelda twice now. lol. I do really love the music that was added with the disks and wish that was taken advantage of more.
can you have nintendo 64 !!!? i am super nostalgic about that console !!! by the way, i love you very much, i hope you will have my request one day !!!! can you also have nintendo gamecube !!!!?
I’m sorry… “What a short load of fork!” ???
What exactly does that mean? I’m American. I’m confused.
In my opinion Sega Of America fumbling The USA Sega Saturn launch and of course Sony Announcing the infamous price point $299 as to Sega Saturn's outrageous price point of $399 and no one cared that Sega secretly released the Saturn that very same day as the 1995 E3
32X was great when combined with Sega CD. Night Trap was a good example of this.
Yeah well the game never got a release with mega cd and 32x combined in eu and japan anyway. But I emulated Redbox thing instead. But due to the sake of International Age Rating Coalition that gameplay cutscenes night trap was changed from usual genesis/megadrive controller to the hasbro nemo control vision which almost got triple vision. And also hasbro console didn’t have the rating either jeez.
This was actually a huge sucsess in japan. Developers profited more and gamers got the gamws for way way cheaper for exanple legend of zelda being only 20 their on disk and 60 in us on a cart.
7:11 TMNT manhattan project submarine level music :)
Very interesting video
Interesting that they supported the FDS for so long, but cut off the Wii online services much earlier.
Famicon Feet System.
I'm thinking the exact same thing 😂
I like how Alex Kidd stuck his way into the video 2:43 😂
man, i love your hair
When she pushed that disk in with her toe 🤤
You cannot save your position in the game to the game cartridge so you need a disc or something else and some games needed a way to add extension packs to popular games OK.