Nintendo Entertainment System

• Also known as: Nintendo, NES¹⁾, Family Computer ²⁾, Famicom ³⁾, FC

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• gargling amiga arpeggios on an nes chip - SB thread.
• How NES Music Was REALLY Composed - NESDev forum thread.
• how NES music was made - The Shizz forum thread.
• Retro Game Audio, Episode 21 - High Quality Sound Playback on the NES - Podcast

The NES/Famicom palette is a strong icon of the era. NES games tend to flicker a lot, caused by having too many sprites sharing a horizontal division of the screen.

• Do any games use tile/sprite overlap for more colors? - A list of games which use this trick on the NESDev forums.

NES cameos / Famicameos.

Joy Mech Fight

A cassette recorder for saving data created with Famicom BASIC, and a small selection of released games: Mach Rider, Excite Bike, Wrecking Crew, and Castle Excellent.

It's just a regular tape player, so, theoretically, could be easily substituted.

Famiclones are unoffical versions of Famicom/NES hardware. Though initially they were proper copies, they are now made with NES-on-a-chip (often shortened to NOAC), which, though imperfect, are tiny, and cheap to manufacture. They come in all sorts of shapes and sizes: some mimic Nintendo hardware, some mimic other consoles, some are handhelds, some are original designs. There are hundreds of them. Compatibility is never perfect, and there are common video and audio problems, but they are cheap and strange and curious.

Pirate Carts tend to go hand-in-hand with Famicones. Famiclones usually come with one, and they are easily purchasable in markets where Famiclones are popular. That being said it was not unusual for me to come across them in video rental shops as a kid, even though I'd never seen a Famiclone.

Typically they're multicarts, with names like 4-in-1, or 100-in-1. Also typically they actually feature far less games than they advertise, most of the separate titles being clones with tweaked graphics, difficulties, scoring rules, and other trivialities. The same games tend to show up on all of them too—mostly early, simple, Famicom games—though there are original pirates games too! They pretty much always have great nonsensical labels, with graphics taken from manga, and who-the-heck-knows.

• The Klik & Play Pirate Karts - An ongoing series of game compilations made somewhat in the pirate cart style.

The Dendy series of Famiclones were made in Taiwan for the Russian market—which never saw an official Nintendo presence in that era. There are ? models: Dendy Classic, Dendy Classic II, Dendy Junior, Dendy Junior II and Dendy Junior IVP.

• Dendy (console)
• Dendy Chronicles - Great series of videos on Youtube about the Dendy in Russia.

• Nintendo Entertainment System hardware clone - Wikipedia article with nice info. on what Famiclones are popular where.
• Famicom Clones - Comprehensive list of famiclones, with images.
• Famicom Pirate Markets - Some photos from chops selling famiclons and pirate carts in Vietnam and Russia.
• Famiclones - BootlegGames Wiki entry.

A curiosity from Hong Kong, which is mostly a Japanese Famicom with a unique method of converting its output to PAL.

• Hong Kong version Famicom clock frequency is 21.3125MHz - Technical details on the NESDev forums.
• Lost Levels forum post - with some details on the relationship between Hong Kong and the NES/Famicom.

• C1 NES TV

An officially licensed version of the Famicom made by Sharp. Apart from being one of the most attractive consoles ever manufactured (the red version, at least), it is notable for including a built-in Famicom Disk System, and composite A/V output.

Nestopia is the most accurate, and has some really nice NTSC filtering.
You may also find FCEUX handy for the odd occasion Nestopia doesn't play nice.

_{Last updated: September 6th, 2011}

• Homepages: FCEUX | Nestopia

• SB Recommends NES/Famicom Games
• Famicom World - Information on Famicom hardware, and good technical help in the forums.
• Zophar - NES emulation downloads, and details.
• NESDev - Forum with info regarding developing games, music, etc., for the NES.
• NESDev Wiki - And they also have a wiki.
• パチモノいろいろ - Images of Famicom demakes, including cassette designs.