Famicom
Disk System or FDS for short was an addon for the
Famicom and was launched in 1986. It was bought out
to lower the price of games and open up a new world
for young kids that didn't have much money. Quite
a few of the NES and Famicom's biggest titles first
came out on the FDS such as Super Mario Bros 2 (Doki
Doki Panic) The Legend of Zelda 1, 2 and even Metriod.
Like most of Nintendo's
wacky inversions they unfortunately chose to only
release the FDS in Japan, I guess making a NES RAM
adaptor would be quite tricky?. Even though the FDS
was a hit and selling well piracy was a huge problem
for the system.
Things like the Hacker
disk came along which allowed people to copy games
needing nothing more than a Disk System a game and
a blank disk. It proved very easy to pirate the games
even on their non standard 2.8" disks. Nintendo
tried to stop FDS piracy by releasing new disk drives
in the FDS which stopped the Hacker from working.
However this didn't stop pirates from using other
methords of copying the disks such as connecting two
systems together using the RAM adator port. Pirates
also took it to another level by porting and selling
Disk only games on cartridges.
Without
piracy the Famicom Disk System could still only go
so far, the disks were pretty limiting with only 64k
of space on each side of the disc, swapping and switching
disks can get very annoying. The disks are also very
fragile and can get erased easily if not looked after.
Another problem with
the FDS which is a lot more well known now due to
the age of the system. Is the rubber band or belt
as some people call it inside the disk drive. Without
it the disks cannot be read disks making it completely
useless. The belt over time either drys up and breaks
or turns into a black tar like mess. I have written
a full guide that can be found here
which shows you how to replace the band and fix the
system.
The FDS managed to surve for six years the last official
game was released in 1992 I doubt this stopped the
pirates from releasing new stuff though.
The Disk
Writer, found in most shopping centers back in the
day in Japan. There are even still a few around and
in use to this day. I think the main selling point
of the Disk System was that you could get new games
written to your old disks very cheaply.
The Twin
Famicom released by Sharp nearing the end of the life
of the Famicom Disk System. A nice system as it has
the regular Famicom and Disk system built in to one
unit, it was avaliable in black and red. My main gripe
with the system is the built in controllers, just
like the original Famicom the cable is far too short
making it very unpractical.
FDS
SOFTWARE
Click here
for a list of FDS games both original and pirate with
scans.
FDS
ACCESSORIES
Click here
for a list of hardware add-ons for the FDS. |
