Wednesday, January 19, 2011

Mega Bargain of the Day: Another Square Button Famicom

I was at Omocha Souko yesterday and they had a couple of new things in their junk section. Mostly stuff I already had, but in the pile of used consoles - mostly Saturns, Play Station ones and Super Famicoms - for 300 yen (3$) they had just put out this baby:
Yup, a Famicom. A Square Button Famicom! Whoo yeah!

This is my second square button Famicom. The first one I got last May at Hard Off for 525 yen. I did a post of it at the time which explains a bunch of the background behind the Square Button Famicom and has pictures of the thing's guts when compared to a regular Famicom. I won't repeat all that here, except to mention that they are pretty rare and it is insanely hard to find these things - especially for only 300 yen!

Anyway, I had never been satisfied with my old Square Button Famicom. It is completely useless and doesn't load games. More importantly from an aesthetic point of view though is the fact that it was missing one of its square buttons (see the older post, it was such a heartbreaker to discover).

Last week I was talking about how much I like stuff in "bad" condition, but that is only true to the extent that the wear and tear somehow enhances the look and feel of the item. Missing buttons - SQUARE buttons - and consoles that don't work definitely do not fall into that category. Plus despite my liking stuff in bad condition, I am still a sucker for something that looks really nice and clean. So a nice square button Famicom was still on my want list when I walked into Omocha Souko yesterday afternoon.

And this one is the exact opposite of my other square button Famicom. It is in unusually good condition. It works perfectly, has all its buttons and is incredibly clean. The only problem with it (apart from some very minor wear and tear) was that it was missing the expansion port cover (most used Famicoms are missing these). The control pads are exquisite:
Here is an interesting mystery for all you hardcore Famicom collectors out there. All of my other Famicom consoles, including my old square button Famicom, have black wires for the controllers. In fact, every Famicom console I have ever seen has black wires for the controllers.

But not my new one. It has gray wires. Note the contrast in the below picture. The top one is a regular Famicom with black wires. The bottom one is my new square button Famicom with gray wires:
I realize that wire color isn't exactly an issue of earth shattering importance, but still, I found this difference kind of interesting. Anybody know why they are different?
Anyway - this is my fifth post in January. I am a posting machine this month. Well, speaking as someone who doesn' t update his blog very often I am a posting machine anyway.

7 comments:

  1. Great find! I am completely jealous. Of course, if I were in your shoes (meaning, if I were in Japan right now) I'd probably be on the brink of divorce, as I'd be unable to keep myself from buying games and systems every other day.

    How many Famicoms do you have at this point, by the way?

    As for the gray wires -- is it possible they were replaced at one point? Other than that, maybe you have a really early square-button Famicom...

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  2. LOL, you understand my situation quite well, it actually is getting to be a problem.

    They have something else that is tempting me at Omocha Souko and I'm not sure I can hold out against it much longer.

    They put out another Twin Famicom in the same junk section for 300 yen. Its the Turbo Twin Famicom (black, green and gray) - which I don't have. If I buy it I will have all three versions of the Twin Famicom.

    BUT as they don't have a power cable for it, I would essentially just be buying another piece of useless eye candy - a BIG and heavy piece of useless eye candy at that. I already have two Twin Famicoms that I can't use, do I really need 3?

    But 300 yen! So cheap!

    Argh! The pressure! I'm so conflicted. I just hope someone else buys it before me to get it out of my sight. My shelves can't hold much more!

    I have 15 Famicoms at this point, BTW. Two of them I use, 13 are on the shelf.

    Anyway, about the wires, I thought about the possibility that they might have been replaced. Its possible, though probably they would have replaced the black wires with more black wires if that was the case. Unless it was somebody doing it on their own and not Nintendo doing it.

    The mystery continues...

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  3. it probably belonged to a cat owner once; http://chzlolcats.files.wordpress.com/2010/05/funny-pictures-cat-fixes-wires.jpg

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  4. Long live Famicom, Master System sucks

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  5. Expansion port covers did not come on the earlier serial # famicoms. I've currently got quite a few famicoms including several square buttons (even a mid 83 revision 3 which I AV modded to play) & a sealed one in the box & it does not have the 15 pin port cover.

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  6. What is the serial number on your gray wire famicom? I have a very low serial number famicom that has this too.

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    Replies
    1. Not sure, I sold the one in this post about 5 or 6 years ago!

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