The Nintendo Famicom is the Japanese version of the NES. It was released as the Family Computer but commonly shortened as either the Famicom or the FC.

The Famicom had an extremely long life for a console of over 20 years, from 1983 to 2003, and Nintendo continued to fix the machine until 2007 until spare parts ran out.

The initial model was RF only and had the controllers in built, unlike the western release, a keyboard and disk system could be added for computer functionality.

In 1993, the AV Famicom was introduced, with a new style Dog Bone controller, and composite output.

Some of the most famous game series were introduced on the machine, such as Super Mario Bros, Zelda, and Metroid, as well as bringing arcade characters onto the home screen such as Donkey Kong, the first two have sales in the hundreds of millions.

With the huge success of the machine and its American version the NES, Nintendo were in no hurry to release their next console the Super Famicom, or Super Nintendo in the west, allowing Sega to grab a decent market share in the USA and Europe.

Manufacturer: Nintendo
Date: 15th July 1983

This exhibit has a reference ID of CH20983. Please quote this reference ID in any communication with the Centre for Computing History.