The Nintendo AV Famicom is the first and only major rebuild of the Nintendo Famicom in Japan. The original Famicom was released as the Family Computer in July 1983, but is 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 built in, unlike the Western release, a keyboard and disk system could be added for computer functionality.

In 1993 the AV Famicom was introduced. It came with a new dog bone-style controller, and composite output, standing for Audio Visual. It was the first machine that used the composite connector socket and lead that would be seen right up to the GameCube, released in 2001. Much in keeping with Nintendo's policy today, there is no mains adaptor or AV lead in the box.

Some of the most famous game series were introduced on this 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. However this allowed Sega to grab a decent market share in the USA and Europe.

Manufacturer: Nintendo
Date: 1st December 1993

This exhibit has a reference ID of CH60842. Please quote this reference ID in any communication with the Centre for Computing History.

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