Famicom Disk System

The Famicom Disk System, short for the Family Computer Disk System, was an add-on for the Famicom released exclusively in Japan. It allowed the Famicom to play games on a proprietary floppy disk format known as "Disk Cards" rather than ROM cartridges. The Disk Cards were cheaper to produce and were able to store more data than cartridges at the time, and they were also rewritable, meaning saving games was made easier. Sharp Corporation created the Twin Famicom, which combined the Famicom and Disk System into one piece, although it was still only available in Japan.
Nintendo sought to make Disk Cards a permanent standard for their consoles going forward. However, this was abandoned as the Famicom Disk System never sold outside of Japan and lost developer support almost completely as a result of many issues. The Disk Cards were notoriously easy to pirate, they could be damaged easily as they didn't have shutters to protect the magnetic disc inside unlike other floppy disks, the Disk System itself was more fragile than the Famicom due to the amount of moving parts needed to make it work, and the fact that most games needed to be written on both sides of a Disk Card due to their smaller size, often forcing players to eject the disk and flip it when they reach a certain point in the game. Piracy was the biggest issue for the system, and is believed to be the source of Nintendo's stringent copyright policies. It's also assumed that the rampant piracy was why Nintendo kept ROM cartridges for the Nintendo 64 rather than the technologically superior CD-ROMs used by competitors.
==Trivia==
*Mario and Luigi appear in the Disk System's BIOS when the system is started. This opening screen is referenced in Paper Mario: The Thousand-Year Door when Peach inserts a Data Disk into Sir Grodus' computer.
*When sped up by about 16 times, the background ambiance in the Nintendo GameCube's menu is revealed to be a slowed-down version of the Famicom Disk System's BIOS.
Category:Consoles
Category:1986
Category:Nintendo Consoles
Category:Add-Ons
Category:Famicom Disk System games