Two Cheap Twins Went Opposite Ways in 1993

Two Cheap Twins Went Opposite Ways in 1993

I will say it plainly: the New Famicom is not a good-looking machine. Not the box it came in, and not the shell. Everything about it tells me it was built to cost as little as possible. There was no AC adapter in the box and no cable. You were expected to borrow them from your Super Famicom.

What I did not know until recently is that it had a twin. In October 1993, Nintendo released a cut-down NES in America for $49.95. That December, the New Famicom came out in Japan for ¥6,800. From the front they look like brothers. At the back they went opposite ways. Japan dropped the old RF antenna output and gave its machine a clean composite signal. America did the reverse. The new NES lost the composite output the old one had, and kept only RF. I assume that was to save money. I have not found Nintendo's reason written down anywhere.

Both came out into a market that had supposedly moved on. The Super Famicom was already three years old. And yet in Japan, Nintendo still shipped 540,000 Famicom consoles in 1993. The demand was still there, even for a machine this plain.

On my bench, the plainness turns into something else. Apart from the board itself wearing out with age, a New Famicom rarely breaks. The controllers almost never arrive damaged. There is one small board inside, and not much else to go wrong.

I would still not call it beautiful. But to cut a machine down that far, in 1993, was interesting in its own way. It is also why the ones that reach me still work.