Famicom, NES and Family Game: the 8-Bit Holy Trinity

My first encounter with this deity in the form of a video game console was when I was six or seven years old, when I was given a Family Game to get me through a recovery period after an operation. My memories are vague, but before that we'd had an Argentine Atari clone called the Edu Games 2600, which my dad, one of this country's prehistoric nerds, would share with me to play. A little under the excuse of my recovery, a new console joined the family: an Electrolab, one of the many 8-bit clones that made their way into the country, with a multi-game cartridge and a copy of Excitebike. And you could say that the damage the sound of that little bike engine and the hours spent on Circus Charlie did to my brain was permanent; a stimulus bomb that would kick off my lifelong fanaticism for what professionals call video games.

In the early '80s, in the United States, the video game industry was still reeling from the wound left by Atari's E.T.. Meanwhile, in Japan, Nintendo –a company that came from the world of playing cards and had started dabbling in video games– was figuring out how to bring arcade games into people's homes. This story has three protagonists that are, in reality, the same entity, like the Holy Trinity. Call it what you want: Nintendo Entertainment System (NES), Famicom and/or Family Game. Their journey around the globe, in the form of 8-bit consoles, changed the way video games were made and, 42 years later, people are still collecting them, cloning them, and playing them.

Famicom, the Beginning of a Culture

Today, saying "Nintendo" is synonymous with an entire cultural and commercial movement that began with this great console. But before that, the company already had some early attempts on the market with the so-called Color TV-Game consoles, home systems that came with built-in Pong-style games, and with the "father of the Game Boy", the now highly sought-after Game & Watch handhelds.

In the early '80s, Nintendo president Hiroshi Yamauchi asked his team to create a cartridge-based console that could bring home the games people were playing in arcades and –and I imagine he said this almost as a threat– it had to be powerful enough that the competition wouldn't be able to copy it for at least a year.

The team responsible for developing the console was R&D2. Among the innovations of the 8-bit machine there were several elements Nintendo had already tested in previous products, such as the D-Pad on the controller and the importance not only of graphics but also of the sound chip. On July 15, 1983, the Famicom (Family Computer) went on sale, launched alongside Donkey Kong, Donkey Kong Jr. and Popeye, which were very popular in arcades.

The console's strategy for bringing arcade games home began by supporting other companies that wanted to develop and publish games for it –something we now know as third-party development. This is the case of Hudson with Bomberman and Lode Runner, and of Namco, which contributed heavy-hitters like Galaxian and Pac-Man.

At first, the console had games that today seem very primitive by modern standards, where the whole experience revolved around your score, like the aforementioned Popeye, sports adaptations, or some early games with levels and a story, such as Ice Climber. But as the months and years went by, not only did important IPs from cinema, anime and other media arrive, Nintendo also began creating its first gaming ambassadors.

In September 1985, Super Mario Bros., designed by Shigeru Miyamoto and Takashi Tezuka, was released and set a new standard for the medium with its innovations in storytelling, game design and audio-visual presentation. The Italian plumber would become the most iconic figure of the console, of Nintendo and, today, of video games as a whole, and with his arrival a new era of more complex games on the Famicom would begin –an evolution that would only deepen with titles like The Legend of Zelda and Metroid, both from 1986.

Over the next few years, Nintendo continued to innovate, adding all kinds of peripherals: the famous light guns, floppy-disk systems, modems and even early attempts at virtual reality before the infamous Virtual Boy. While the first RPGs, visual novels and horror games were taking shape in the Japanese market, Nintendo was preparing its next step in world domination with its arrival in the United States.

Nintendo Entertainment System — But Just Call It the NES

To dominate the U.S. market, Nintendo had to make some changes to its original product. The console was launched in 1985 under the name Nintendo Entertainment System, but it became known by its alias, the NES. In those years, the wound left by Atari was still bleeding and the concept of the video game wasn't exactly well regarded, so Nintendo opted for an approach that evoked the relatively new VCRs.

Aside from the name change, the console changed its appearance to look more like something "serious": it traded its red-and-white color scheme for shades of gray, and the Famicom's small Japanese cartridges became as big as a VHS tape. To reinforce the launch and convince toy stores, Nintendo of America released the R.O.B. robot alongside the console, included in the Deluxe Set, and the Zapper light gun, included in the more popular Action Set.

To keep hammering home that this console wasn't like the ones that had destroyed the market, Nintendo added a Nintendo Seal of Quality to its games, along with strict quality control for titles developed by the company itself and by third-party publishers. And, as in Japan, little by little the best-known film and comic franchises began to join the growing NES game catalog.

Nintendomania exploded in the United States along with an entire arsenal of merchandise and related products around the console and heroes like Mario. Very quickly, just as the pop world embraced video games, Nintendo characters began to invade comics, toys and trading cards, and even had their own magazines, 0800 hotlines and bizarre TV shows like The Super Mario Bros. Super Show! or Captain N: The Game Master, in 1989.

By the mid-to-late '80s, the NES was an institution and a battle had begun with SEGA, another Japanese giant, competing with its 8-bit console, the Sega Mark III, known globally as the Master System. While the rest of the world was about to witness the real console war –continued in the next generation between the Super Nintendo and SEGA's Mega Drive– across Latin America, and especially in Argentina, the Famicom/NES was just finding its footing, but under a different skin and with different rules.

Family Game, the Clone War

For much of the '80s, Argentina had strong import restrictions aimed at rebuilding domestic industry, and at that time bringing in an NES or a Famicom was very complicated and expensive. Heading into the '90s, with 1-to-1 peso-to-dollar convertibility plus the opening of imports, the little 8-bit beast finally arrived in our country.

Although there was an attempt by Nintendo of America to bring the NES in officially, it didn't work out. This new phase of imports brought with it the cloned version of the Japanese Famicom. The chips arrived to be assembled by different local manufacturers, the best-known being the one produced by Electrolab, which bore the name Family Game and had a design similar to the Famicom and a slot for Japanese cartridges. But there were many other consoles in that style that kept the cartridge format, such as the Froggy, the Good Boy and thousands more, with hilariously sketchy names and strange shapes and colors.

Because Famicom hardware lived on through the Family Game and its cartridges, the game catalog was shared between Japanese titles cloned somewhere in Asia and multi-game cartridges that started at 9-in-1 and ended at 99,999,999-in-1. And that's where the real fun began, because these cartridges didn't just come loaded with copied original games; they also started to include the first bootleg games in their code, like the many weird Mario hacks out there. One example is Super Bros 10 Kung Fu Mari –known in Lomas de Zamora as Mario Karateka– which was originally a Jackie Chan game for the Famicom, but some mad genius simply swapped the main character's head for Mario's.

This beautiful tradition gave rise to mods and bootlegs that are still being released today in ROM format for emulators, developed by a community that does everything from translating games that never left Japan to creating entirely new titles. Other interesting arrivals came from anime, such as the impossible Saint Seiya game –known as Knights of the Zodiac– a side-scrolling RPG in Japanese that no one could finish, and the Super Champions (Captain Tsubasa) game, which many of us played with a notebook in hand to jot down what each menu option meant.

The downside of this setup was that some very good Nintendo titles, like The Legend of Zelda, Metroid or Kirby, and others from different companies, such as Castlevania or Final Fantasy, were almost impossible to find on these clone cartridges. Even so, we were able to enjoy a lot of titles that never made it to the NES.

The years went by and, even though Family Game units stopped being manufactured in Argentina, clones kept arriving –and they still do today. Every new console generation got its own "mimic" Family version: Nippon Games adapted the hardware into all kinds of bizarre form factors –as if it were a notebook, a Sega Mega Drive, or with entirely invented case designs made just to catch your eye. Then the famous Polystation entered the scene, joining the world of PlayStation doppelgängers and recreating every Sony console right up to the present day.

The legacy of the clones lives on in toy stores across the country. The new models already come with built-in games or with cartridges containing a massive selection of titles. Thanks to the power of emulation, we can access the Japanese, American and bootleg catalog of the console, plus fan-translated games and new bootlegs, and we also have the convenience that an NES emulator can now run anywhere: from a cellphone to the new portable emulation handhelds.

A little while after the operation I had as a kid, during the magical year of 1995, my dad worked at a video store. One Saturday he brought home a giant bag filled with Family cartridges and Sega Genesis/Mega Drive carts and gave me a challenge: I had to choose five cartridges of each for the video store to buy and put up for rent. I don't remember all the titles, but I do remember that Ikari Warriors III and Samurai Pizza Cats made it into the Family Game selection.

The possibilities for playing are enormous and, thinking back to that moment when I had to make my picks for the video store, I can’t help wondering: what would my definitive 99-in-1 cartridge look like?