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NES Accessories
Robotic Operation Buddy (R.O.B.)
Family Fun Fitness / Power Pad
Robotic Operation Buddy (R.O.B.)
The Original Set including R.O.B
R.O.B., Which stands for Robotic Operating Buddy, was a little, one foot high, legless robot which interacted with the videogames compatible with it (e.g. Gyromite and Stack Up). When released in the US it was included in the Original Set together with the control deck, two controllers, the Zapper lightgun and the two games Gyromite and Duck Hunt.
The robot had a sensor in his head which detected when the TV
flashed in different ways. The robot could do things like pick up a chip from
a stack and then drop it on a pad that opened a door in the game. The robot
was a creation of the famous Nintendo employee, Gunpei Yokoi, and his R&D1
team.
Acclaim released this rare set of wireless NES controllers called
The Double Play wireless head-to-head system.
The controller
A red gun (originally in a white and grey design) that was sold with the game Duckhunt. You point the gun at the TV screen and shoot. The game then feels if you hit or miss! Have you ever wondered how it really works? Well fear not, because I have the answer....
Every time you pull the trigger on the Zapper, the NES redraws the screen a little bit different. The "shootable" things on the screen are drawn in white and everything else is in black. The zapper has a little sensor that can tell light from dark and if the sensor "sees" a white spot on the screen, it is a hit. Otherwise, it's a miss.
Available games for the NES Zapper (that I know of!): Duckhunt, Gumshoe, Hogan´s Alley, To the Earth, Wild Gun Man, Track 'n' Field 2, Trickshooting, Bayou Billy, Freedom Force, Gotcha! and Shooting Range.
Camerica (the guys who also released the Game Genie for the NES) announced in the early 90's that they would release many different "mystic" accessories for the NES. Nintendo didn´t like their ideas and sued them, forcing them to lay down their production. As the trial wore on, however, Camerica managed to release both the cheating device, Game Genie, and the Alladin System. The Alladin System was an add-on that you could plug into your NES. You could then plug in the NES game on top of the add-on. "So what?", you might think, but the smart thing about this was that the Alladin System consisted of all the 5 different MMC chips. This would mean that the games themselves didn´t had to have the chips built in anymore, making them much cheaper to produce. The system also included a 64K upgrade for better graphics and bigger games and came bundled with a game called "Dizzy the Adventurer" that was based on an old C64, Amiga game. (Both the Game Genie and the Alladin System were invented by the English company, Codemasters). Camerica assured that 30 games were in production for the Alladin System but only 6 of them were ever completed and I don´t think that any of them were released (Not officially anyway). The Alladin System was, by the way, compatible with both the US and European NES.
The 6 completed but never officially released games
were: Fantastic Adventures of Dizzy, Micro Machines, Bignose
the Caveman, Bignose Freaks Out, Quattro Sports, Quattro Adventure, and Linus
Spacehead's Cosmic Crusade.
Note: Some of these games were later released for the NES.
The never completed games were: Go! Dizzy Go! (seen on Quattro Arcade), Team Sports Basketball (weird 45-degree overhead perspective basketball game), Metal Man (looks like a generic shooter, with you playing a guy with a jetpack), Bee-52, Stunt Kids, Mig-29 Soviet Fighter, F16 Renegade (another overhead shooter), CJ's Elephant Antics (seen on Quattro Arcade), The Ultimate Stuntman and DreamWorld Pogie (wow!!!! this looks totally mega dizzy-clone! :).
One of Gunpei Yokoi´s creations. Not very useful, but at least it looks cool!
.
A little box with two sensors that can read if you have your hands inside the box or not. Maybe fun with Punch Out!
Lets you play with up to four people at one time on the NES.
Family Fun Fitness / Power Pad
"get in shape while you play a Nintendo game!"
When it was "discovered" that sitting and playing videogames day in and day
out wasn´t so healthy for you, Nintendo decided to market this odd NES
accessory under the slogan, "get in shape while you play a Nintendo game!".
The FFF is a big carpet-like mat with 8 big buttons, which you use to control
the game (like a gigantic controller!). It was released with the 5-games-in-one
cart Athletic World. The accessory was first named Power Pad in the US
but changed name to Family Fun Fitness when released over here in Europe. Other
compatible games were later released. Here is a preliminary list: Dance Aerobics,
Eggsplode/shortorder (two-in-one cartridge), World Class Track Meet, Super Team
Games, Street Cop and Athletic World. Most of the games are sports games but
there are some other type of games as well. For example Street Cop is a very
rare beat 'em up where you use both the Power Pad and the regular NES controller.
A keyboard for the NES!
(The Prices are based on the current prices in the Philippines)
Cost: Nintendo Disk System:70 dollars
Disks (including 1 game): 10 dollars
The technical bit.
The Nintendo Disk System was released in 1986 in Japan. It used 3-inch floppy
disks to store games. The Disk Drive was attached under the Famicom and a
black "box" was plugged into the cartridge slot (see picture). This black
box contained RAM. When you inserted a disk containing a game, the Disk Drive
copied the game to the RAM memory in the black box and when you played the
game the Famicom accessed the data from the RAM memory on top. The Disks
were yellow and could be purchased from special Nintendo Disk System vending
machines called "Disk Writers". When you wanted a new game you just walked
down to a Disk Writer and either bought a new disk containing a the new game
or inserted the old disk and let the machine overwrite the old game with
the new one. This way you didn´t have to buy a new disk! The Disk Drive
unit costed around $70 and the disks (including one game) around $10. The
system also contained a better sound chip. The Disk System versions of, say,
Metroid and The Legend of Zelda sounded much better than the
Famicom versions.
Why didn't this technically brilliant system become a success
then?!
The system sold half a million copies in three months and 2 million copies
for all of 1986. By 1990, it had sold in 4.4 million copies but it never
became any big success. Why? There were many reasons:
Due to the many pirates copying games released for the Disk System, (it was
very easy to copy games from these disks. Pirated games from Taiwan
and Hong Kong could (and can) be bought for as little as $0.50!) it was only
released in Japan. Not many games were released for the format. This was
partly Nintendo's own fault since game companies that wanted to release their
games had to not only pay Nintendo to become a "licensed Nintendo product,"
but also had to forfeit half of the copywrite ownership to Nintendo! Thus,
few companies other than Nintendo made any games for the system!
Another problem was that the MMC technology had developed further
and semiconductors were becoming cheaper. This meant that cartridge games
were actually becoming bigger than the disk games! Nintendo first planned
to release all their best games for the system but they couldn't risk losing
money over pirating As a result, many of the best games were released
on cartridge only or later as Disk System games! For example: Super
Mario Bros was first planned to be a Disk System game only,
but it ended up being released first as cartridge and later as a disk
system game. Even though the system was never actually released abroad, Asian
gamers could easily obtain the drive and the games anyway. The Disk System
doesn´t work very well with a the american or European NES, not even
with adapters.
Advantages & Disadvantages
The good things
1. Many games were released on the Disk System format before on the
Famicom.
2. Better sound thanks to the special sound chip.
3. Cheaper games
The Bad things
1. Slow loading time
2. Piracy and illegally copied software
3. Few games released for the format
4. Almost only games made by Ninetndo were released
The Games
Many games were released for the Disk System format way ahead of the Famicom
versions. Here are some examples:
Metroid
Zelda 1 & 2
Dream Factory: Doki Doki Panic (The US Super Mario Bros 2,)
Super Mario Bros. 2 (a.k.a. Lost Levels)
Miracle Stone ( A Konami game that played like Indiana Jones. Not even released
on the Famicom)
Special Thanks to Anthony Te (email: nautilus@usa.net) who has given us the information required for the making of this excellent coverage of the Nintendo Disk System!
In 1993 a new add-on was released for the NES/Famicom which enabled 2 NES/famicom owners to play games head-to-head over the phone line. Great, huh?! Well, it turns out you could only play games specifically written for the Teleplay system and, since it wasn´t an official Nintendo product, there weren´t many. It came bundled with a game called Terran Wars. The Teleplay System was, as far as I know, only released in Japan.
Cheatcarts etc. (Game Genie etc.)
(I don´t know if there are any NES cheating devices other than the Gamegenie .)
Game Genie By far the most popular/only cheating device for the NES.
History: The Game Genie was made by Galoob and distributed
by Camerica (the guys who also released the Alladin System for the NES). On
the SCES 1990 Galoob announced that they would release this cheating device
for the NES. Nintendo didn´t like their ideas and sued them, trying to
force them to lay down their production. Nintendo claimed that the Game Genie
lessened the life of a game by allowing players to use codes making the games
too easy.
Nintendo didn't win the trial and Galoob could sell their Game Genie in Canada.
After another trial that Nintendo also lost the Game Genie was released in the
US. Nintendo´s revenge was to make their redesigned NES, which they released
in 1993, uncompatible with the Game genie! There is also rumours that Nintendo
released some SNES games (like Final Fantasy 3 and Chrono Trigger) that didn't
work with the SNES version of the Game Genie.
You wan't to know more about Galoob/Camerica and their products?
Go to our huge History of Nintendo section.
How it works: The Game Genie uses its own code format,
it's in hexadecimal. The codes consists of 8 letters.
The first four numbers are the hexidecimal address of the value to be changed
in the code that passes through from the cart to the deck. then next numbers
are the value to be put in.
The last 4 last letters stands for the new codes that the old code is replaced
with.
All data transferred between the NES and the NES cartridge passes through the Game Genie. If the Game Genie finds some code that matches the first part of the G.G. codes it replaces the codes with the new code (the last 4 letters of the G.G. codes).
Note: some early games, like the first mario, had only 6 letters in their game genie code. Well, these games are much simpler, so they had shorter strings of code, only three per line.)
Thanks to Dan Letchworth. for the explanation of the Game Genie code system.
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