Gotta love those Famicom carts. So colorful. 
I`ve never really organized them by color like this before but I thought I`d give it a try to see how they look. I`m rather pleased with the results. The effect reminds me of going into Uniqlo and seeing all their generic T-shirts in primary colors stacked up evenly on the shelves. Very pleasing to the eye.
My only regret is that there aren`t enough pink games to make a stack of them too. The pink carts are really the ones that stand out the best, at least the ones that are really vibrant pink like Super Mario Bros. USA or Banana.Anyway, as I`ve said before, it is the color of the carts (among other things) that really separates the Famicom from almost every other console out there, except the colorfully-carted Epoch Super Cassette Vision (which is unfortunately massively hard to collect due to its scarcity).
A pile of Super Famicom or Nintendo 64 carts just can`t compete with that!
Oh, that is a beautiful sight! How many -- maybe I should say "few" -- pink carts do you have, by the way? Just two or three? The only other one I can think of (besides Banana and SMB USA) is Kirby...
ReplyDeleteHi Bryan, they do look kind of pretty, eh?
ReplyDeleteI think I probably have a dozen or so pink carts. In addition to those you mentioned there is also Binary Land (very good game BTW), Bug te Honey, Adventure Island II, Super Star Pro Wrestling and a few other odds and ends.
Brown, incidentally, is another color that there arent many carts in. Challenger, Ninja Hattori Kun, and a few others but that is it. Fortunately brown carts don't really do it for me so I don't mind that:)
Sean: How could I forget Binary Land! I love that game :) You've made me very curious about Banana, by the way. I'd never heard of it before coming here, and until today I'd never seen it in action. It certainly looks a little archaic, but also cute and kind of fun. I'm guessing you'd recommend it?
ReplyDeleteYes, I do recommend Banana. It is kind of similar to Lode Runner, another game I quite enjoy. The sound effects are particularly cute on Banana though.
ReplyDeleteOh, that's great to hear, Sean. Now I'll just have to find me a copy :) Also, I just thought another pink Famicom cart: Penguin-Kun Wars!
ReplyDeleteBRazilian here.
ReplyDeleteThat is a beautiful collection you have there!
Not much to add to your article, but the West kinda got their small share of colored cartridges too, on the SNES at least Doom and Maximum Carnage came on blood red cartridges, and Killer Instinct came in a black cart, that was supposed to warn parents about the violent content in the games, but Nintendo ended up dropping the idea. There weren't that many violent games for the SNES anyway.
Turok 2 and Perfect Dark for Nintendo 64 were pitch black as well, strangely other much more violent games for the console still had gray casings.
You probably already knew this but every Zelda game came on a shiny golden cartridge, all except for most versions of Ocarina of Time.
I actually owned a relatively boring revision 1.1 of Ocarina of Time on a grey cart, the one that still had Islamic chants on fire temple and the religious crescent moon and star symbol for the Gerudo, but sadly you couldn't steal the fishing rod from the pond or teleport away during Ganon's final fight, that only worked in the super rare revision 1.0.
I'm glad it was just a grey cart though, all golden OoT carts are revision 1.2 with all Islamic symbolism removed, Nintendo even offered a recall option for grey carts, but that was actually a clever way of censoring the religious stuff in the game.
Majora's Mask fittingly came on a darker shade of gold than usual, since that game was darker than your usual Zelda it kinda made sense, and Donkey Kong 64 parodied that with a special 'banana yellow' cart, that didn't shine.
Back on topic, the colored carts did finally make a short appearance on the Gameboy Color, all GB games that had special features when played on a Gameboy Color had colored cartridges, and carts that were meant to be played exclusively on a Gameboy Color had transparent colors to set them apart, so you could literally see the circuit boards inside, pretty cool stuff.
I got a little overexcited with this comment, but none were as cool as the Famicom, of course!
Correction, Rainbow Six had a black case, not Perfect Dark.
DeleteThere were other random N64 games that came in red, blue or green carts too but they're so random and inconsistent it's not even worth mentioning. Sometimes they are grey sometimes they come in colors. It's pretty weird, it's like someone at Nintendo ran out of ink at one point lol. Maybe they are from different reprints?
I wonder why they stopped doing this, it's such a cool little idea.
Now that I look at it, my Famicom collection is mostly black & white with a dash of yellow, green and blue.
ReplyDeleteFascinating.
Bryan - yes, do get one:) And good call on Penguin Kun Wars (another good one)!
ReplyDeleteBrazilian - thanks for the excellent comment! It is a very good and interesting summary of the non-standard colored carts issued overseas. Interesting about Turok and Perfect Dark for the N64, in Japan those carts are grey like the rest!
Kaibun - interesting. Judging from my collection (these pictures are just a few doubles I had lying around) I would say that black and white are definitely the most common cart color. Together probably about half of all Famicom carts are either black or white. Blue seems to be the most popular primary color for carts, I would guess maybe 15-20 percent or so are in that color.
What about green? Just how common is it anyway? You remember the titles of those carts in your pics besides Gegege no Kitaro?
ReplyDeleteGreen is also a popular color, probably second after blue. There is Yoshi no Tamago, Rockman 3, Combat,JuJu Densetsu, Buggy Popper, Tetrastar, Choplifter and a whole bunch of others in that color.
ReplyDeleteBR here again.
DeleteI just looked it up and you're right, also oh my god Violence Killer is the most badass name for any videogame ever made. It's just too awesome.
I looked it up on ebay and sometimes the US Turok 2 came in grey cartridges as well. Probably reprints. Seems like Nintendo simply didn't care. I wonder if it's either the grey or the black cart that's the rare one?
Here's the full black cart Turok collection I found looking on ebay, just for curiosity's sake
http://i.imgur.com/9cWDI.jpg
Perfect Dark carts really were never black, I messed it up because of the name, haha.
I swear I'll stop talking about the N64 now. Back to famicom!
Off the top of my head there's a Momotaro board game of some sort with a pink cart...I believe I actually bought it from you for a buck last year so I could make a custom label for it (for a nonexistant game that is, not momotaro). Of course the ultimate pink cartridge is not Kirby, but Binary Land! Here's a custom label I drew up for my reproduction of it...just a photoshop mockup since I haven't printed it out yet: http://tinyurl.com/7jxkf2b
ReplyDeleteJascony: Sorry to stick my head in here, but I just had to tell you that your custom label for Binary Land is adorable. Really great work :)
DeleteBR - Yeah, I love that name Violence Killer. Very....direct! I like the N64 too so I do enjoy learning this little trivia about the cart colors for that one!
ReplyDeleteJascony - Ah yes, the Momotaro game is also pink!
I agree with Bryan too, that Binary Land custom label looks fantastic!
Thanks guys!
ReplyDeleteGorgeous! Yet again you manage to make the rest of the gaming world jealous of the Famicom treats in Japan!
ReplyDeleteThanks Retro Games!!
ReplyDeleteWould it be possible if I could get a list of all the purple colored ones you have? I want to buy a cart that's purple for an illustration project.
ReplyDeleteWow, great looking collection! You could make a mosaic out of them :) I must admit to finding Famicom carts aesthetically pleasing as well - the only carts I've ever collected that looked okay were my MegaDrive ones which had some nice labels that went onto the top of the carts. Still nowhere near as cool as these though!
ReplyDeleteI have a purple/pink cartridge, but have no idea what game/show it is. Could you tell me? pic.twitter.com/2hVylexk5m @sillysyd via Twitter
ReplyDeleteThat is a pirated cart. The characters are all from Kinnikuman (known as Muscle Man outside of Japan), so I am guessing it might be Kinnikuman Muscle Tag Team.
ReplyDelete