After taking my broken old blue Lefty RX on an
awesome tour around town last week I decided to do a little online shopping to see if there were any available as I didn`t have a complete, fully functional one. And I found one! A red one! Complete in box!
I entered a bid and long story short it arrived a couple of days later.
It is sooooo smooth.
The controller is pretty nice too. One button is all it takes.
This thing was really complete in box, even with the vintage 1972 batteries still in there.
It also came with the fuel pit refuelling station:
And the decals still haven`t been applied.
Far and away the most interesting thing though was this advertising flyer for Nintendo toys from 1972. This is awesome.
It is full color on both the front and back and has prety much all the toys that Nintendo was trying to sell back in the early 70s.
They were selling my
Ultra Machine for only 1480 yen back then:
My
Electro Safari SP and
SP light gun were also on there:
I`m quite happy with this new acquisition, I now have a blue, gold and red Lefty RX (though only this red one is CIB).
I know I'm not suppose to ask why, so I'll ask this instead: How is it that it only turns to the left? Toddler Shen also wants to know because he had a toy car that did the very same thing (though it definitely wasn't a Lefty RX).
ReplyDeleteThe controller having one button means that it can do only one of two things at a time: either it's sending out a signal, or it isn't. Similarly, the car only needs to detect whether a signal is being sent out or not. However, the moment you add even one more button, the controller needs to be able to combine (mux) the state of both buttons into a single signal and the and the car needs to be able to split (demux) that signal into multiple instructions, at which point you needs all sorts of fancy electronics like filters and transistors.
DeleteConsidering the Lefty RX cost 4980 yen in 1972, which is about $140 in 2013 US dollars, just imagine how much it would cost if it could also go right.
Thanks for the info. Mine was probably even cheaper since it wasn't even remote controlled, just a wire that ran a couple of metres, so I'd have to run after it like a tool.
Delete@Shen
ReplyDeleteI think it had something to do with the cars being cheaper to make if it only went forward and turned left as opposed to having full control. Something like that... I might be wrong.
Also, I like reading your RPG playthroughs!
Shen - yes, what Hetare and Skyrunner said. There is a good write up with a detailed explanation of the whole thing on Before Mario here: http://blog.beforemario.com/2011/10/nintendo-lefty-rx-1972.html
ReplyDeleteI have a question about a certain Famicom-related object, but can't find anywhere to contact you. Do you have an email you use for this blog?
ReplyDeletefamicomblog (at mark) hotmail.com
ReplyDeleteYou've been nominated: http://retro-video-gaming.com/2013/10/23/versatile-blogger-award-2013/ :D :D
ReplyDelete