Retro Unit

Nintendo Famicom - Family Computer Network System w Modem, Controller +Card RARE

$399.95 AUD

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Nintendo Famicom - Family Computer Network System HVC-FCNS-A-01. Sent with Australia Post Standard Parcel.

Complete system. Hasn't been used! Note this is for the Japanese Nintendo Famicom!

Rare with controller, modem, card and box!

Description

The Famicom Network System (Family Computer Network System, Japanese: ファミリーコンピュータネットワークシステム), also referred to as the Famicom Modem was Nintendo's first known online platform for a home console, specifically the Famicom (Japanese version of the Nintendo Entertainment System). It was released in Japan in September of 1988, and is a dial-up modem that attaches to the Famicom, supporting its own special cartridges. The cartridges, known as Tsuushin Cartridges compared with a Famicom Game Pak (which are of a rectangular shape excluding where their connector part is) appear as long, rectangular vertical portrait-shaped cards.

The service was part of a collaboration between Nomura Securities (specialising in financial services, global investments, financial securities) and Nintendo. The focus for this platform was not on online video games (though the released Konami licensed Tsuushin Shogi Club game for the Famicom Network System possibly was one, and some prototypes were conceived including an online version of Go) in this case, on request of the Nintendo president at the time Hiroshi Yamauchi).

The main services for the service (but possibly not limited to) was live stock trading, horse race betting (the most popular software; later re-released on other consoles), race boat betting and information on video game reviews moderated by a network of toy stores (transmitted through the 1991 introduced Super Mario Club software and service).

History

Development

In 1986, Nintendo's entry into basic online communications was the Disk Fax kiosks, preannouncing the deployment of 10,000 kiosks throughout Japan's toy and hobby stores within the following year. This allowed Famicom players with Famicom Disk System games to bring their writable Disk Cards into stores and upload their high scores to the company's central leaderboards via fax, enter nationwide achievement contests, and download new games cheaper than on cartridge.[4]:75–76[5][6][7][8]

By 1987, Nintendo president Hiroshi Yamauchi foresaw the impending information age, developing a vision for transforming Nintendo beyond a toy company and into a communications company. He wanted to leverage Famicom's established and totally unique presence in one third of all of Japan's homes, to bring Nintendo into the much larger and virtually limitless communications industry and thus presumptively on par with Japan's largest company and national telephone service provider, Nippon Telegraph and Telephone (NTT). He believed the Famicom should become an appliance of the future, as pervasive as the telephone itself.[4]:76–78 Beginning in mid-1987, he requested the exploration of a partnership with the Nomura Securities financial company, to create an information network service in Japan based on the Famicom. Led by Famicom's designer Masayuki Uemura, Nintendo Research & Development 2 developed the modem hardware; and Nomura Securities developed the client and server software and the information database. Uemura cautioned that they "weren't confident that they would be able to make network games entertaining". Five unreleased prototypes of network-enabled games were developed for the system, including Yamauchi's favorite ancient Japanese board game, Go.

Production

The Famicom Modem began mass production in September 1988. The accompanying proprietary online service called the Famicom Network System was soon launched the same year alongside Nippon Telegraph and Telephone's new DDX-TP telephone gateway for its existing packet switched network. NTT's launch initially suffered reliability problems that were painstakingly assessed by Nintendo at individual users' homes and traced back to the network.[1][4]:78

Yamauchi said in Nintendo's 1988 corporate report that this system would "link Nintendo households to create a communications network that provides users with new forms of recreation, and a new means of accessing information". Yamauchi said to employees that the company's new purpose in addition to games was now "to provide information that can be efficiently used in each household".[4]:76

By 1989, Nintendo had become Japan's number one company and Yamauchi wanted to position the Famicom as the key portal to a previously inconceivably large-scale potential future network of freely accessible and vital information in all aspects of daily life. Anticipating a new economy of service fees and sales commissions, he imagined Nintendo's future as the gatekeeper of expanded online shopping, with airline tickets and constant information feeds of news and movie reviews. With "intense personal commitment", he approved a multimillion dollar advertising budget for online services, personally met with representatives in the financial industry, and successfully signed up the Daiwa and Nikko stock brokerages as service providers.[4]:77–78 In June 1989, Nintendo of America's vice president of marketing Peter Main, said of the Japanese market that the six-year-old Famicom was present in 37% of Japan's households and that the Famicom Network System had been supporting video games and stock trading applications for some time in Japan.[9] New services included buying stamps online from the postal service, betting on horse racing, the Super Mario Club for game reviews, and the Bridgestone Tire Company using a Famicom online fitness program for its employees.[4]:78

By 1991, all these Famicom Network System online services had shut down, except for the Super Mario Club as the sole final application of the Famicom Modem and Network System. Super Mario Club had been formed for toy shops, where the Famicom was deployed as a networked kiosk, serving consumers with a member-store-created searchable online database of Famicom game reviews. Nintendo performed market research by analyzing users' search behaviors, and directly receiving user feedback messages.[1]

In that year, the disappointed but steadfast Yamauchi stated, "It is just a matter of time. When the people are ready for it, we have the Network in place."

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