Nintendo created their Famicom mainly because its president, Hiroshi Yamauchi, wanted to capitalize on the massive arcade success of Donkey Kong by bringing that experience into people’s homes, and he instructed engineer Masayuki Uemura to build a system that could play arcade style games on a television.
By the 1960s, Nintendo’s playing card business was fading, and Yamauchi had already been looking to diversify into new entertainment fields, seeing electronic toys as the most promising direction.
Donkey Kong became a global arcade phenomenon, and Yamauchi wanted to leverage that momentum along with Nintendo’s growing software talent to break into the home market, a plan that looked even more promising once home conversions of Donkey Kong, like the one on the ColecoVision, proved there was real consumer demand.
A dedicated, cartridge based console felt like the natural next step, especially since Nintendo had already experimented with simpler home systems like the Color TV Game.
Uemura was tasked with making a console that stayed technologically ahead of competitors for at least a year while remaining cheap to manufacture, which led to decisions like using the affordable MOS 6502 processor and having Ricoh handle production.
The Famicom launched in Japan on July 15, 1983, and went on to become a massive global success under its Western name, the Nintendo Entertainment System, arriving in North America in 1985, and in Europe in 1986.
It ended up revitalizing the entire industry, selling 61.91 million units worldwide, with 19.35 million in Japan, 34 million across the Americas, and 8.56 million elsewhere, and it stayed in production in Japan until September 25, 2003, giving it a full 20 year lifespan.
Although the Famicom and NES share the same core hardware, Nintendo made several notable changes for the Western release.
The Famicom was designed to look like a colorful toy with its red and white casing, while the NES was deliberately styled as a monochrome “entertainment system” to distance itself from the video game crash of 1983.
Famicom controllers are hardwired directly into the console, and the second controller even includes a microphone used in a handful of games, whereas the NES switched to detachable controllers and dropped the microphone entirely.
The Famicom used a simple top loading cartridge slot, while the NES introduced a front loading “zero insertion force” mechanism that was more convenient in theory but famously unreliable over time.
A few deeper hardware differences also affected how games actually worked.
The NES included a 10NES lockout chip meant to block unlicensed games, while the Famicom had no such chip and could play any cartridge.
The Famicom’s cartridge slot also allowed games to tap into special chips for extra sound channels, a feature the NES’s redesign eliminated, which is why Western versions of games like Castlevania III ended up with simpler audio.
The Famicom additionally had a floppy disk add on called the Famicom Disk System that enabled cheaper games and save functionality, but the NES never received this peripheral, so titles like The Legend of Zelda had to be converted to battery backed cartridges for Western release.
The physical cartridges themselves aren’t interchangeable either, since Famicom carts use a 60 pin connector while NES carts use a 72 pin connector, meaning an adapter is required to play Japanese games on a Western console.
The Famicom and NES ended up being the clear winner of their console generation, outselling every rival by a wide margin in almost every market except Europe. Nintendo’s 61.91 million units worldwide made it the undisputed leader in both Japan and North America. The Sega Master System came in as the runner up with 10 to 13 million units sold, though it mainly found success in Europe and Brazil after failing to break Nintendo’s grip on Japan and the United States. The Atari 7800 trailed far behind with about 3.77 million units sold, never managing to recapture Atari’s earlier dominance, which left Sega and Atari competing over a comparatively small share of the market while Nintendo defined the era outright.
Nintendo’s own titles dominated the platform’s best selling games, helped by the console’s unusually long production life in Japan.
Super Mario Bros., released in 1985, sold 40.24 million copies and remains the undisputed champion, largely thanks to being bundled with the console itself.
Duck Hunt, from 1984, sold 28.30 million copies on the strength of its bundle with the NES Zapper light gun.
Super Mario Bros. 3, released in 1988, sold 18 million copies, making it the best selling game that wasn’t exclusively bundled with the console. Super Mario Bros. 2, also from 1988, sold 7.46 million copies, and The Legend of Zelda, from 1986, sold 6.51 million. Several other titles also crossed the million sold mark, including Tetris at 5.58 million, Dr. Mario at 4.85 million, and Zelda II: The Adventure of Link at 4.38 million.
Exactly when the console was discontinued depends on the region. In Japan, Famicom production ended on September 25, 2003, an impressive 20 year run, and Nintendo kept offering repair services for it until October 31, 2007. In North America and Europe, NES production stopped back in 1995, as Nintendo shifted its focus to the Super Nintendo and the then upcoming Nintendo 64.