Famicom Disk System

History

By January 1985, over 3,000,000 Famicom units had been sold, giving Nintendo command of the Japanese home video game market. This success brought difficulties: retailers struggled with stock demands, sometimes due to chip shortages, and requested cheaper games than those on chip-based cartridges. Nintendo investigated lowering game costs. In July 1983, the company had rejected a Hudson Soft proposal for a Famicom add-on using Bee Cards, ROM-based cartridges tested on their MSX computer; though it allowed game saving, the technology was expensive and required royalties.

Nintendo later decided to release games on a medium similar to floppy disks, which were cheap to produce, offered increased capacity for longer games and improved music, and allowed rewritable saves. The proprietary Disk Card was based on Mitsumi's Quick Disk, a cheaper alternative to floppy disks for Japanese home computers. The Famicom Disk System add-on was produced by Masayuki Uemura and Nintendo R&D2, the same team that designed the Famicom.

After several delays, it launched in Japan on February 21, 1986, at ¥15000 (US$80). Launch titles included The Legend of Zelda and re-releases of earlier Famicom games. Marketing featured a yellow mascot named Diskun, or Mr. Disk. The FDS sold over 300,000 units in its first 90 days, reaching over 2,000,000 by the end of 1986.

Nintendo resolved to make future first-party releases exclusive to the system, installed Disk Writer kiosks in toy and electronic stores, and introduced high-score tournaments where players submitted scores via Disk Fax machines in retail stores, with winners receiving exclusive prizes.

Technology

The Famicom Disk System connects to the Famicom console via a RAM Adapter cartridge that plugs into the system's cartridge port and attaches to the disk drive via a cable. The RAM Adapter contains 32 kilobytes of RAM for caching program data from disk, 8 KB of RAM for tile and sprite data storage, and an ASIC named the 2C33. This ASIC acts as a disk controller and includes single-cycle wavetable-lookup synthesizer sound hardware, plus an embedded 8KB BIOS ROM.

Disk Cards are double-sided, with a total capacity of 112 KB per disk; many games span both sides, and a few span multiple disks requiring user switching during gameplay. The system can run on six C-cell batteries or a supplied AC adapter; batteries typically last five months with daily play. The battery option was included because standard AC plugs were often already occupied by a Famicom and television. The Disk Cards are a modification of Mitsumi's Quick Disk 71 mm × 76 mm (2.8 × 3 in) 56K-per-side double-sided floppy format, used in some Japanese computers, synthesizer keyboards, and word processors.

Mitsumi manufactured the Famicom and NES consoles and had close relations with Nintendo. Modifications include the "NINTENDO" moulding along the bottom of each Disk Card, which acts as copy protection: a device inside the drive bay has raised protrusions that fit into recessed counterparts on official disks, preventing loading of disks without these recesses. Technical measures in data storage also prevented swapping copied media into official shells.

Both measures were defeated by pirate distributors, who produced special disks with cutouts and simple devices to modify standard Quick Disks; an advertisement with a guide for such a modification appeared in at least one magazine.

Games

The Famicom Disk System library contains about 194 games. Some are FDS exclusives, some are Disk Writer exclusives, and many were re-released on cartridge format years later, such as The Legend of Zelda for NES in 1987 and for Famicom in 1994. Notable FDS originals include The Legend of Zelda, Zelda II: The Adventure of Link, Kid Icarus, Metroid, and Akumajō Dracula (Castlevania). Square's Disk Original Group published Disk System games from Japanese PC software companies, but the venture largely failed and nearly pushed a pre-Final Fantasy Square into bankruptcy.

Final Fantasy was planned for the FDS but a disagreement over Nintendo's copyright policies led Square to release it as a cartridge. Nintendo released a disk version of Super Mario Bros. alongside the cartridge version; the Western-market Super Mario Bros. 2 originated from the FDS-only game Yume Kōjō: Doki Doki Panic. Nintendo used the disk medium for a Disk Writer exclusive advergame, Kaettekita Mario Bros., a remastered version of Mario Bros. with enhanced jump controls, high score saving, and a slot machine minigame co-branded for the Nagatanien food company. The final FDS game was Janken Disk Jō on December 22, 1992, a rock paper scissors-themed sokoban game featuring Diskun.

Legacy

The Famicom Disk System enabled a new wave of home console video games and experiences, primarily by tripling cheap game storage compared to affordable cartridge ROMs and allowing progress saving. This supported open world designs and enduring series launches such as The Legend of Zelda and Metroid (both 1986), which became very popular and led to sequels considered among the greatest games of all time. The system's writable and portable storage also enabled online leaderboards and contests via in-store Disk Fax kiosks, nearly a decade before Nintendo's Satellaview service, and these are seen as early forerunners of modern online gaming and distribution. Many of the 194 original games were re-released on cartridges for Famicom and NES, though without the FDS's additional sound channel.