Nintendo Famicom Family Basic

Nintendo Famicom Family BASIC

In this episode, we take a short breather from the ton of vacuum tube work we’ve been on lately, and step into the “modern” era. That’s right, we’re coming all the way up to 8-bits! We take a quick look at the Family BASIC setup for the Nintendo Famicom. I really love this system as it feels like such a weird entry in the history of 8-bit computing. So come join us!

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Intro Music adapted from:
Artist: The Runaway Five
Title: The Shinra Shuffle

Thanks for watching!

Chapters
0:00 Intro
1:05 Family BASIC 101
4:40 Let’s boot it up
6:38 Simple program
8:38 Loading from the Data Recorder
11:18 A look inside the cartridge
13:29 Outro
13:51 Puppy!

[DonnyHooterHoot]

I love a guy who calls Famicom "Modern" tech! Great vid!

[frankowalker]

Cool system. The game was programed to use the joypad. I paused the listing and saw T=STRIG(0):S=STICK(0). So I think STRIG is the fire button (stick trigger) and STICK is movement left and right.

[RinoaL]

I love nintendo games in japanese since they tend to use simple and straightforward enough japanese that I can understand things. When I was learning Japanese, I found japanese Pokemon was a good practice.

[killerpokemon]

4:57 when this guy started speaking fluent japanese this video just blew my mind

[misterkite]

Helpful note: the Sharp Twin Famicom has a compatible expansion port that works with the keyboard. The great thing about it (besides the fact that it includes the famicom disk system), is that it has RCA video built-in, so you don't need a TV with channel 99 or whatever (or need to mod your famicom like you did)

[marsilies]

This was the first homebrew option for a console. I've read that it had a bit of a following in Japan, with users trading programs/games they wrote. The Internet Archive has audio recordings of a number of tapes of games released for this accessory.

[derekchristenson]

If I had had this as a kid, I would've played with it for hours. Too bad it didn't come to North America!

[jarrettdoesstuff]

If the battery-backed RAM circuitry is working alright, it might be that you have to hold RESET on the Famicom before powering down. Lots of older Famicom/NES games tell you to do that to avoid corrupting the save RAM. (Later mapper chips had protection against that, so you stopped seeing that message when saving or in the instruction book.) Dunno! Just throwing it out there!

[buffalo]

When I was around 10, about 40 years ago, I told my dad that I wanted Family Basic. Later, he bought it for me. I was so excited!! I played it everyday since then.
I bought some Family Basic’s program books and typed in the program. Since I was novice to use keyboard, it took couple hours to type the program. Despite two hours of typing, some of the programs did not work due to typos in the books. It was a good memory though.
By the way, from a Japanese point of view, your Japanese pronunciation is honestly fantastic!!

[MrEszet]

Massive kudos for featuring the Fujitsu FM-7!

[lindoran]

I read about that basic cartridge when I was a kid and 8 year old brain thought this would be all I would need to start my video game empire lol great video was wondering when you were going to talk about that thing as I kept getting a glimpse of it in each video. 🙂

[greenerell]

10:10 I like how it tells the user when the program is loaded using the same tape as the data

[lonecom]

Great video man. I loved your hands on approach. It made me feel like I was in the 80s, exploring this interesting program.
Also, I really, really love the Famicom. I think the aesthetic on it is supreme, better than even the Super Famicom and Mega Drive. The colors, different cartridges, commercials, simplicity... I makes it look like a very fun and avanced toy. A continuation to those old Nintendo toys from the 60s and 70s in spirit. The recorder made me laugh

[tommythorn]

Using vocal instructions on the tape is brilliant and yet so obvious, but I don't think I have ever seen that done before. That said, I have no envy for that system. Some of the contemporaries you listed looks a lot more interesting but I was born too early and missed out on some of the best ones (like the earliest Arm boxen). What's the story with you and Japanese?

[KetwunsGamingPad]

What I love is that Nintendo clearly had a micro computer mindset in mind for the home initially. You can tell by the classic micro computer hardware components utilised to sell the Famicom including the machine itself, the keyboard, the tape deck, family BASIC included, a joystick and eventually the disk system. These were fairly standard for most micro computers for the time and BASIC was common to program and play games. So Nintendo was ticking the boxes on what was popular across several regions, and I am surprised this didn't hit the European or Australian market especially because they were popular with micro computers as well. In fact the Famicom was the easiest, fastest and one of the most powerful systems compared to all of those others to even run software! If they played their cards right, Nintendo would have sold this in a much more interesting light than what we ended up with in the 80s-90s and the Nintendo AVS System could have worked instead of the NES. Alternatively, they could have sold it as a fairly powerful gaming micro computer or something, it might have done quite an impact! With the Sharp X1, I would have assumed the Famicom was cheaper and more accessible, and any CRT TV with RF component compatibility would have worked just fine. I think computers needed proprietary monitors.

[misterretrowolf]

Anybody know what software the Japanese folks use for schematics. I love the look of them- 13:25 in the video

[boris]

カタカナしかありませんでした。
I love the message on the tape, it's a pretty good use of the medium.

[MasIndie]

Nobody told me the NES had BASIC? Where has this been all my life!?

[LetsPlayKeldeo]

Hell yeah ! I saw it in the back of your videos and was hopping you did a video on it ! Came from your "Mini" Computer

[timothymccully]

Genuine question. Do you think it's possible to make a keyboard for the NES and run Family Basic on a flash cart?
I often day dream about this.