The Famicom Disk System was a success. Then came the pirates.

A look at Nintendo’s Family Computer Disk System and the tsunami of unauthorized copying it unleashed.

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Peter (Melair)
Kevin Gonzalez
Jon Ingersoll
John DiLiberto
John Trammell
Paraffine
Josh K
Vince Valenti
hertz_donut
jmp 0x0000
William Sullivan
Ryan Brooks
James Taylor
FULLSET
Jim Leonard
ALVIN L BRADFORD
Mark A Andrews
Martin Goodwell
Don Namron
Pierre Kressmann
Mitch Hoffman
Rayner Daniel Pedersen
Wolfgang Behrens
Thomas Jager
Stefan
Jamie Copeland
Leslie Marentette
Mark Krueger
John T Davis
Peter HlaviÄka (phl)

00:00 Introduction
00:47 Background and History
02:17 Technical Specs
03:46 Disk Writer Kiosks
04:54 Unboxing and First Look
07:54 Quick Disks
10:07 Disassembly and Inspection
12:48 Demonstration
15:16 Wavetable Audio Comparison
16:39 Piracy
17:42 Attempting our own Backup
22:50 Conclusion

[RetroRockGamer]

Back when Nintendo was fun and didn't spend all their time suing everyone.

[tombarber]

Those aren’t actual kiosks on eBay. They’re disk storage containers shaped like the kiosk

[MegaManNeo]

I was always curious on seeing how copying those diskettes for the FDS works.
Thank you!

[piratestation]

I own 2 of these bad boys... a rev-5 model and a rev 0 (no copy protection). I use a FDS stick to copy my floppies and a PC using a special usb adapter. The FDS stick only has 256 MB of memory but can get most of the library on there. The famicom was light years ahead of what Atari was doing at the time. Amazing what a 1.79mhz CPU, extra memory, good talented programmers can do. The 3d Logo printing was a very very cool idea. Trying to find real disks are getting expensive.

[striderskorpion]

The "Game Doctor" units (not all were technically Game Doctors) also allowed the playback of modified cartridge games put on to floppies. Some of them got quite advanced for the time, but they can't hold a candle to modern FPGA based ROM carts. The FDS made unlicensed game development even easier. Hence, the Super Pig/Hacker International adult games.

[TastyBusiness]

I've got a Twin Famicom all so I could play Metroid as it was originally designed. It's a fun machine, but I could stand to diversify my library of disks.

[skinsthewin]

The FDS Badge Holder is so damned cool!

[erwindewit]

Very nice. I would need to do quite a lot to get this stuff working here in Europe, so it's great to see it in action here! Cool!

[gilbertnf]

Don't copy that floppy 😅
Pretty hilarious

[elone]

Awesome video - a great follow up to your previous one. Those vending machines to re-write the discs were genius - economical for the consumer whilst still bringing in the money for Nintendo. I didn't know too much about the disc system at all and didn't realise it was packed with all the extra upgrades. You made a solid choice on picking your unit up 👍😉 (ps great job on mcGuvyering that typewriter disc!)

[digitalarchaeologist]

Always a contentious point, but rampant piracy probably helped the Amiga and Atari ST scene somewhat, although probably more from selling hardware than software. It would be interesting to know if it had the same effect on the Famicom

[npaladin]

I would have just removed the front plate of the disk drive where the "Nintendo" bits are instead of 3d printing replacement end pieces. But I guess there's more than one way to pirate Nintendo.

[Jolly-Green-Steve]

8:03 Super Their direct competitor on the Famicom Disk System... Smut Mutt.... put out some quality material as well.

[terran]

I thought each side of the 3 inch floppy could hold 56kb giving a total of 112kb not 128?

[SumeaBizarro]

The blue disks are not "later releases" but special releases mainly meant for competitions and uploading your scores to kiosks for chance to win prizes.
Yellow disks were very much the standard and were not replaced by blue disks, they just coexisted for special versions

[curiousottman]

I had no idea! Very cool tech and wonderful presentation by this channel.

[SumeaBizarro]

The adult titles were not officially licensed by nintendo. They are much more related to disk system piracy as unlicensed games and dumps and other info on the games identify them as such.

[tiemanowo]

3:14 Wait.. What? Every time something was requested from a disk an entire surface was scanned? emm.. why? Disk electronics was simpler / cheaper?

[cyrixinstead]

YES to Disk Writer! Long term FDS owner here!

[TransCanadaPhil]

i’m curious, is it possible to get the Famicom Disk System working with a North American NES using some combination of cartridge adapters for the RAM expansion?