Famicom Disk System — Games Rewritten for ¥500

The Famicom Disk System went on sale in Japan on Friday 21 February 1986. It was a product for Japan: no version was released in North America or Europe. The Legend of Zelda came out on Disk Card the same day. Nintendo's official page does not give the hardware price; English and Japanese Wikipedia both put it at ¥15,000. A Disk Card could be taken to a "Disk Writer" kiosk in a shop and rewritten with a different game for ¥500, with some exceptions.

The Disk System was not a console in its own right but an add-on for the Family Computer of 1983. Even so, it tried to change both the medium and the way games were sold, which made it closer to a generational shift than an accessory.

How it connected

According to Nintendo's official page, the disk drive (model HVC-022) came with a RAM adapter (HVC-023). The RAM adapter went into the Famicom's cartridge connector, and a cable from it plugged into the back of the drive. Power came from six C-size batteries or a separately sold AC adapter (HVC-025).

Nintendo gives the capacity only as "about three times" a cartridge. Japanese Wikipedia puts it at 112 KB across both sides (56 KB per side) and describes the medium as based on Mitsumi's Quick Disk; English Wikipedia gives the same figure.

Selling by rewriting

According to Famitsu's 2024 retrospective, Disk Card games cost about half as much as cartridges, and the Disk System was promoted with the slogan that the age of buying software was giving way to the age of rewriting it. Denfami Nico Gamer notes that cartridges at the time cost roughly ¥4,000 to ¥6,000.

Nintendo describes the mechanism: Disk Writers were installed in department stores, toy stores and Famicom shops, and an existing Disk Card could be rewritten with another game for ¥500 (except for some titles). Famitsu adds that a game could never sell out of shop stock.

Disk Cards had one more use. According to Famitsu, cards with a blue shutter could send data to Nintendo through a "Disk Fax" in the shop, so players could enter game tournaments.

Zelda and Metroid

The headline launch title was The Legend of Zelda, which Nintendo's timeline lists as the first game in the series. Famitsu says the launch line-up also included Super Mario Bros., Golf, Tennis, Baseball, Soccer and Mahjong. The Mysterious Murasame Castle, planned for launch, was delayed twice and arrived in April.

Later Disk System games included Metroid, Castlevania and Famicom Detective Club. According to Nintendo's timeline, 86 cartridge titles and 34 Disk Card titles came out in 1986, the first year with more than 100 releases.

Stuck in Japan, overtaken by cartridges

According to English Wikipedia, a North American release was announced in 1986 and cancelled by November 1988. The same article lists fragile disks, widespread piracy and slow loading among the system's problems.

Japanese Wikipedia attributes the decline to cartridges catching up. One-megabit, then two-megabit ROM cartridges appeared during 1986, and battery-backed cartridges that could save followed in 1987. Within a few years the disk's advantages in capacity and saving were no longer special.

Nintendo's timeline, in its entry for the early 1990s, when Street Fighter II and Dragon Quest V reached the Super Famicom, says in-store rewriting ended and the Famicom gradually came to the end of its role. Rewriting inside Nintendo continued, however, and according to Nintendo's official page the service ended on 30 September 2003. Famicom production also continued until 2003.

Units sold

An official Nintendo sales figure could not be found. Japanese Wikipedia, citing a Nintendo online magazine, gives "more than 4 million," and English Wikipedia gives about 4.4 million.

Nintendo's next step was to put more into the cartridge, not the disk. The successor console, the Super Famicom, launched on 21 November 1990. For the wider story, see the game consoles timeline.