Famicom

The Japanese equivalent to the Nintendo Entertainment System, the Famicom was released by Nintendo in 1983 and went on to become one of the best-selling videogame consoles of its time. It had a smaller cartridge port on the top of the unit than the NES (60 pins vs. the NES's 72 pins), no regional lockout circuitry, and hard-wired controllers with a 15-pin expansion port on the front of the unit for a light gun, Power Pad, special controller, keyboard for BASIC programming, etc. The Famicom had nearly 1,200 games released for it by the end of its production. Even after release of new games was ended in 1994, Nintendo had been selling Famicom until recently for play with old cartridges. Units made after 1993 was different greatly in appearance and slightly in function, and was called New Famicom or AV Famicom by users.

It had many additional hardware peripherals that were only available in Japan, including a karaoke machine, true 3D glasses, and a floppy disk drive, the Famicom Disk System, that could be used to play games purchased at game kiosks in stores.