Been wanting a NES for a minute. Decided on buying myself a toploading unit for my 40th birthday this year. The American NES toploaders were too pricey, but the Famicom AV was much more affordable and with the bonus of AV instead of RF only like the US model. Just by coincidence I bought Mario Bros as my first Famicom game since that was the cheapest, best quality game I could afford and it just seemed right to make it the first Famicom game I owned. But after I purchased it it dawned on me that it was delightfully appropriate to buy Mario Bros on it’s 40th anniversary as my 40th birthday present this year :D
Looking forward to grabbing an Everdrive when I have the cash and really getting down and dirty with it. I have a whole bunch of homebrew and hacks I’m itching to play.
Happy birthday from a fellow Famicom AV owner born in 85! I am playing it on my hd TV at the moment with a RAD2X RetroTink HDMI cable, but I also have a CRT I rescued from the trash 😁
Absolutely badass. I’ll make do with my shaders, but you’re living the dream.
Ever play Faxanadu?
I loved that game.
I didn’t have it but my mom’s friends son had it and I would be STOKED when we were going over there.
9/10 my mom would be like <son> won’t be there so you might be bored, but he has a Nintendo….
It’s my favorite and apparently it even inspired Hollow Knight devs. OG metroidvania but punishingly difficult.
My American toploader has those really grating vertical lines running through the picture - as all of them did apparently. It was a rare known defect that Nintendo just rolled with rather than recalling and fixing them. I’m still a little bit salty about it.
These days I play through other means, but I definitely understand wanting to use original hardware.
At the time, if you bought a new US toploader then complained to Nintendo about the video quality, they would replace it with a revision with no jailbars. There’s also a very rare US toploader with the composite AV port and no jailbars!
It’s baffling to me why the toploader didn’t have AV ports in the first place. Hell, the US NES had them, I don’t see why they went with RF only on the first release. I wasn’t even aware of that fact until I looked into getting one, I always assumed the NES Control Deck had them.
I never even thought to do that. I was angry that their previously-perfect track record for quality hardware hadn’t carried over to that purchase as well. I did exchange my first unit for a second new one, but obviously it was no better.
I still have it. I don’t use it, so I’m going to sell it in the near future.
I’ve read that it’s fairly easy to AV mod those US toploaders. I’ve seen people mention it online. Although, I know it requires some simple sodering to do. There are also RGB mods out there for it as well.
Remember Craigslist? I got a toploader for $40 with games because it had been stepped on and crushed! Some Bondo, paint, AV mod…
Toploader not recommended if you like to use Game Genie.
RGB mod: It’s expensive IIRC because you need to replace the PPU (video chip) entirely with one from an arcade board or a modern FPGA reproduction. Edit: Sweet Jesus, you’re looking at about $250 for RGB kit installation…
