The Famicom Disk System, attached to a late-model AV Famicom

The Famicom Disk System (FDS) was released in 1985 by Nintendo as an add-on to its overwhelmingly popular Family Computer ("Famicom") console in Japan. It was a unit that sat underneath the Famicom and used non-standard floppy disks for data storage. It was announced, but never released, for the North American Nintendo Entertainment System. The AV Famicom The AV Family Computer was a redesign of the original Family Computer video game console released by Nintendo in Japan in the early 1990s. ... 1985 is a common year starting on Tuesday of the Gregorian calendar. ... Nintendo (Japanese: 任天堂; TSE: NTDOY) was originally founded in 1889 by Fusajiro Yamauchi to produce handmade hanafuda cards, for use in a Japanese playing card game of the same name. ... The Nintendo Entertainment System (U.S., Europe, and Australia) NES redirects here. ... A floppy disk is a data storage device that is composed of a circular piece of thin, flexible (i. ... World map showing location of North America A satellite composite image of North America North America is a continent in the northern hemisphere, bounded on the north by the Arctic Ocean, on the east by the North Atlantic Ocean, on the south by the Caribbean Sea, and on the west...

The device was connected to the Famicom deck by plugging an included cartridge, known as the RAM adapter, into the system's cartridge port, and then connecting a supplied cable from this cartridge to the disk drive. The RAM adapter contained 32 kilobytes of RAM for temporary program storage, 8 kilobytes of RAM for tile and sprite data storage, and a custom IC known as the 2C33. This ASIC acted as a disk controller for the floppy drive, and also included additional sound hardware featuring primitive FM synthesis capabilities. The floppy disks used were double-sided, with a capability of 64 kilobytes per side. Many games spanned both sides of a disk, requiring the user to switch sides at some point during gameplay. A few games used two full disks (four sides). The Famicom Disk System was capable of running on six C-cell batteries in lieu of the supplied AC adapter, even though the Famicom itself was not portable. This article is about the animal, sheep; for other meanings of Sheep, see Sheep (disambiguation). ... A kilobyte (derived from the SI prefix kilo-) is a unit of information or computer storage equal to either 1024 or 1000 bytes. ... The term Sprite has several meanings: A sprite is a class of preternatural legendary creatures. ... An integrated circuit (IC) is a thin chip consisting of at least two interconnected semiconductor devices, mainly transistors, as well as passive components like resistors. ... An ASIC (application-specific integrated circuit) is an integrated circuit (IC) customised for a particular use, rather than intended for general-purpose use. ... The disk controller (or hard disk controller) is the circuit which allows the CPU to communicate with a hard disk, floppy disk or other kind of disk drive. ... Frequency modulation synthesis (or FM synthesis) is a form of audio synthesis where the timbre of a simple waveform is changed by frequency modulating it with a modulating frequency that is also in the audio range, resulting in a more complex waveform and a different-sounding tone. ... Four double-A (AA) batteries In science and technology, a battery is a device that stores energy and makes it available in an electrical form. ...

The Disk Writer vending machine

The primary appeal of the FDS was the cost: a disk could be produced for a fraction of the price of a cartridge. Disk-based games retailed for around ¥3,000, compared to approximately ¥5,000 or more for cartridges. Because floppy disks were less expensive than Nintendo's proprietary cartridge format, and because of the additional features offered by the Disk System's hardware, many developers produced titles for the system that were sold cheaply at kiosks in retail stores. Also of note was Nintendo's Disk Writer, a vending machine that charged ¥500 to write a new game onto blank diskette. With blank disks costing only ¥2,000 apiece, this approach had obvious advantages over a ¥5,000–7,000 cartridge. In a variety of electronic equipments, a cartridge (in video game terms, cart, game pack, or Game Pak) can be one method of programming different functionality, providing variable content, or a method by which consumables may be replenished. ... A 1,000 yen note, featuring the portrait of Natsume Soseki. ... Proprietary indicates that a party can exercise control or use over an item of property, usually to the exclusion of other parties. ... a pagoda-like kiosk in Lausanne. ...

Additionally, in 1985, the disks' 128K of storage space was quite appealing. The rewritable qualities of the disks also opened up interesting possibilities: games such as The Legend of Zelda (the first FDS game), Metroid, and Kid Icarus were first released to the FDS with a save feature. Many of these titles were subsequently ported to cartridge-format and released for the NES a year or two later, with the save feature frequently replaced with password-resume and battery back memory features. 1985 is a common year starting on Tuesday of the Gregorian calendar. ... A kilobyte (derived from the SI prefix kilo-) is a unit of information or computer storage equal to either 1024 or 1000 bytes. ... This article is about the first game in the series. ... Metroid is the first game in the Metroid series of video games, and was released for the Nintendo Entertainment System in 1986. ... Screenshot of Kid Icarus Kid Icarus (derived from the Greek myth of Icarus) is a console game for the Famicom Disk System in Japan, where it is known as Hikari shinwa: Parthena no kagami (光神話 パルテナの鏡 Hikari shinwa parutena no kagami), or Myth of Light: Parthenas Mirror. ... In computing, a port (derived from seaport) (more the hole in the side of a ship to view to and from) is usually a connection through which data is sent and received. ...

The machine did not catch on very well in Japan. Nintendo turned off developers at the outset by demanding partial copyright ownership over any games developed for the FDS. This caused many licensees to simply ignore the system outright. Then, four months after the release of the FDS, the first 128K cartridge-based game, Ghosts 'n Goblins, was released. Transistor prices went down and battery backup technology improved a lot faster than Nintendo had anticipated, and all of a sudden, the FDS's storage capacity and saving abilities were no longer as appealing to developers. Publishers and retailers complained that the Disk Writer machines, while great for game buyers, were severely cutting into their sales. The final nail in the coffin was an unlicensed device that connected two FDS systems in order to copy games. After a brief surge of FDS sales following this device's release, Nintendo eventually pulled the plug on the system.
Ghosts n Goblins (魔界村 Makai mura in Japan) is a 1985 arcade game by Capcom. ...

Errata

Disk-kun (a.k.a. Mr. Disk)

• The FDS disks were proprietary 3"×4" 64K/side floppy disks for data storage. These "Disk Cards", as Nintendo called them, were a slight modification of Mitsumi's "Quick Disk" format which was used in a handful of Japanese computers and MIDI keyboards.

• Square Co., Ltd. had a branch at one point called 'Disk Original Group' for producing FDS games. After a series of management blunders and shoddy games, Square pinned their survival on a well-crafted Dragon Quest-inspired title that they called, with tongue-in-cheek, Final Fantasy. This game was to be released for the FDS, but a disagreement over Nintendo's copyright retention policies caused Square to about-face at the last minute and release the game as a cartridge.

• Nintendo released a disk version of Super Mario Bros. as well as the cartridge one. A lesser known fact is that the disk version has extended minus world levels. The original Japanese version of Super Mario Bros. 2 (eventually released abroad as The Lost Levels as part of the Super Mario All-Stars collection for the Super Nintendo Entertainment System) was a disk-only game.

• Nintendo used to hold game score contests, and the mascot was called Disk-kun (Mr. Disk).

• Nintendo provided service to rewrite Disk Cards until September 30, 2003.

Square Co. ... Final Fantasy, also known as Final Fantasy I (FF1), is a RPG originally developed and published by Square Co. ... Super Mario Bros. ... The Minus World in Super Mario Bros. ... SMB 2 title screen (Japanese version) Super Mario Bros. ... Super Mario All-Stars, known in Japan as Super Mario Collection (スーパーマリオコレクション), is a video game that was developed and published by Nintendo for the Super Nintendo Entertainment System in 1993. ... The North American Super Nintendo Entertainment System The Super Nintendo Entertainment System, also known as the Super NES or SNES for short, is a 16-bit video game console released by Nintendo in North America, Europe, and Australia. ... September 30 is the 273rd day of the year (274th in leap years) in the Gregorian Calendar, with 92 days remaining, as the final day of September. ... 2003 is a common year starting on Wednesday of the Gregorian calendar. ...

See also

• List of Famicom Disk System games