As part of a series of a series of posts celebrating the 30th anniversary of The Legend of Zelda series, Nintendo Japan released some pictures from inside its closet full of Famicoms and its add-on, the Famicom Disk Systems. The latter could be used to play floppy disk games that could be rewritten using store-based "Disk Writer" kiosks in Japan (see last picture below). This expansion was discontinued after 3 years following the ease of piracy of these floppy disks and the advent of innovations increasing the memory capacity of regular cartridges.

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They even did an unboxing to show that they're not just for show:

All in mint condition!​

And to prove that they actually do work, they booted this on a retro CRT TV, evoking even more nostalgic memories:

Just like old times!​

We didn't even know Nintendo had such storage rooms with these goodies and now a lot (if not all) of us will dream to get into one of them. And we can't help but wonder what's out of shot or what other rooms are hiding...

SOURCE

 

[gamesquest1]

No, no... I don't think you wanna live in tbe closet.

lol

well he will have to wait till next year to come out now, he missed his chance

 

[migles]

i bet 20$ theres a virtual boy in one of those room

ok, but if the virtual boy is in another room, you own me 20 bucks
the pictures make me think it's a closet or some janitor room size maybe they got a room for each system type
1 room for super famicom stuff, other room for famicom stuff... maybe virtual boy has is own room

i am just guessing btw...

 

[Pluupy]

am I the only one that would prefer a snes mini instead of a nes/famicom mini?
anything below gba/snes/md(genesis) is kind of unplayable for me

How are they unplayable? NES games are so extremely simple. Hell, Earthbound plays the same way as Earthbound Zero.

The only thing that would make them unplayable, and this was a large problem until the 2000s, was conveyence (not sure if that's the right term). Old video games lacked the hand-holdy tutorials, hints, and "GO HERE" signs most games have today.

I'm just gonna cut in to say a little FUCK YOU to the person who thought Shin Megami Tensei IV players absolutley needed the AI Burroughs cutting in everytime you picked up a quest item.

Anyway, old games didn't have hand-holdy shit. Sierra games, like Kings Quest and Leisure Suit Larry, were infamous for being bloody difficult because the logic behind progressing wasn't intuitive. The games simply didn't convey what they wanted the player to do next well. It was easy to get lost or frustrated. And you know what? That was the plan.

In the old days, there wasn't GBATemp or Wikipedia or whatever. No luxury of "oh lemme check online for a walkthrough". It was you and the game. People would buy a single game for their platform and play that one game non-stop. Poor conveyence was an easy way to make people spend more time on games and make them think they got their money's worth. (And to some extent, devs still make us waste our time with artificial difficulty bloating via grinds LOOKING AT YOU STORY OF SEASONS)

TL;DR: It's only hard because no hand-hold shit. Just use a walkthrough when you get stuck. They're easy after that for the most part.

 

[TotalInsanity4]

i bet 20$ theres a virtual boy in one of those room

I'm not going to try to go up against you because Reggie used one in his "training video" for the Nintendo World Championships, and he would have had to get that from somewhere

 

[migles]

In the old days, there wasn't GBATemp or Wikipedia or whatever. No luxury of "oh lemme check online for a walkthrough". It was you and the game. People would buy a single game for their platform and play that one game non-stop.

yeah.. when i was a kid, i was allowed like 1 new game a year (christmass)...
i remember i snatched some abandoned cartridges from an attic... there even was a majong game and i didn't liked majong... i was not a fan and i didn't enjoyed.. but in the end i spent loads of hours playing it
i am still not a fan of majong but.. it's what i had... i wanted more gaemz, but i couldn't have them and i would had to make the best of what i had...

ho noes, i am talking just like my grandpa does

 

[Pluupy]

Actually no. There's more reasons why old games may be unplayable.

- unintuitive progression
- gameplay mechanics is just so bad it's difficult to play (like Elder Scrolls:Arena)
- gameplay incomptatible with latest software and hardware (I think GOG fixes these for PC/Mac/whatever)
- access (simply finding an old, functioning console is hard so gotta use emulators)

Someone add more if they can think of any obstacles to playing and enjoying old video games.

I remembered that I tried playing Elder Scrolls III: Morrowind some years back and the attacking and NPC talking was so ugly and bad I hated the game instantly. Still do. I hate tiny, bloating interfaces. People bash Elder Scrolls IV: Oblivion for potato people and V for...whatever dumb reason, but at least you could actually attack enemies correctly. In Oblivion, You swing a sword, that sword will hurt the enemy. In Arena and Morrowind, you just wildly swing like a moron and hope one connects. Any Elder Scrolls games before Oblivion had awful handling.

 

[Arecaidian Fox]

I read in an article recently that Ninty actually has the completely finished and unreleased Star Fox 2 floating around in their storerooms. And not the "finished" version we see on the internet, but the actual, honest to goodness complete game. The dev team decided to finish it after it was cancelled, since it was almost done. Seems a shame that Nintendo will probably hold onto it until the end of time, since they legally can't release it... Well, here's hoping some employee leaks it someday!

 

[gamesquest1]

Actually no. There's more reasons why old games may be unplayable.

- unintuitive progression
- gameplay mechanics is just so bad it's difficult to play (like Elder Scrolls:Arena)
- gameplay incomptatible with latest software and hardware (I think GOG fixes these for PC/Mac/whatever)
- access (simply finding an old, functioning console is hard so gotta use emulators)

Someone add more if they can think of any obstacles to playing and enjoying old video games.

I remembered that I tried playing Elder Scrolls III: Morrowind some years back and the attacking and NPC talking was so ugly and bad I hated the game instantly. Still do. I hate tiny, bloating interfaces. People bash Elder Scrolls IV: Oblivion for potato people and V for...whatever dumb reason, but at least you could actually attack enemies correctly. In Oblivion, You swing a sword, that sword will hurt the enemy. In Arena and Morrowind, you just wildly swing like a moron and hope one connects. Any Elder Scrolls games before Oblivion had awful handling.

- access (simply finding an old, functioning console is hard so gotta use emulators)
old consoles are just as easy to find as modern consoles, go to ebay type in name of console, buy (with the odd rare exception but in most cases they are just collectors pieces) and at least you have the option of emulators, i cant just go, oooh i like the look of that ps4 game, i will play it on my 3ds on the bus

- unintuitive progression
Most old games are simply follow the screen from left to right.....its kinda intuitive, go where you are allowed XD

- gameplay mechanics is just so bad it's difficult to play (like Elder Scrolls:Arena)
bad games are bad games, im sure you could pull up examples of badly made modern games

 

[flame1234]

They have classic Nintendo items on display all the time at the Nintendo store in NYC.

 

[Pluupy]

- access (simply finding an old, functioning console is hard so gotta use emulators)
old consoles are just as easy to find as modern consoles, go to ebay

So in other words, they really are difficult to find and you must resort to Ebay. Glad we agree on that.

- unintuitive progression
Most old games are simply follow the screen from left to right.....its kinda intuitive, go where you are allowed XD

You've never played King's Quest or Leisure Suit Larry, have you?

- gameplay mechanics is just so bad it's difficult to play (like Elder Scrolls:Arena)
bad games are bad games, im sure you could pull up examples of badly made modern games

The difference being that the game was still played by many. As I stated, any Elder Scrolls prior to Oblivion is unplayable for me because I abhor the interface and poor attack accuracy. There will be people who disagree cause I damn well know people are rabid for Morrowind (and I wouldn't be surprised if some diehard fan is already breathing profusely and aggresively typing an angry response on their keyboard).

We're not talkin shovelware here, we're talking about games which had such poor mechanics that they are "bad" to modern standards. In the old days, they were not percieved as bad.

For instance, Takashi's Challenge on NES. That game does not have saving, so if you mess up or die you must restart the entire game. It has extremely particular methods of progression that nobody could fathom. There are no clues in-game but there were clues in the TV advertisements when the game was released. It is really an unbelievably difficult game. This massively discourages any future players.

Another example is Breath of Fire and Breath of Fire II. I don't even know how I played these games when I was little and understood what was going on. The english translation is so bad I don't even know what i'm equipping on characters or what is being said. The GBA ports did not change anything either.

There's the damned Sierra games like in Leisure Suit Larry 6 you need to progress by making sure the mechanic in your hotel room finishes fixing the sink to retrieve an item he dropped by mistake to progress. Just...wat?

 

[DinohScene]

A relic from the 80's

 

[pas7680]

25-30 year old FDS systems with working belts??? i call BS.

 

[mashers]

25-30 year old FDS systems with working belts??? i call BS.

Why?

 

[bowser]

Damn I just jizzed in my pants.

 

[Pluupy]

Damn I just jizzed in my pants.

 

[Deleted User]

Where's their room with all the copies of EarthBound that never sold? :^)

 

[Deleted User]

IDK why you're all surprised; I still think they have a storeroom somewhere with all per-console shit (like PCs that can sign for dev + retail, dev equipment that's even better than the stuff you can order from them, etc)

 

[RemixDeluxe]

I'm surprised they didn't have a PVM or BVM to go along with their retro consoles. Any respectable enthusiast knows those type of monitors can get the best possible quality from the systems. Probably has to do with the brand belonging to Sony.

 

[mechagouki]

I'm surprised they didn't have a PVM or BVM to go along with their retro consoles. Any respectable enthusiast knows those type of monitors can get the best possible quality from the systems. Probably has to do with the brand belonging to Sony.

Famicom only puts out composite video (possibly even just RF actually, can't remember for sure), it wouldn't look much better on a PVM. In fact, I used to run my NES on my 24" Sony PVM through the BNC inputs - still a blurry mess. You need separate chroma/luma to get a crisp image.

 

[Eurasiam]

thats really cool. I really want a famicom and seeing nintendo having many in mint condition is awesome