Cool Stuff: A Famicom with some Famitsu Stickers on the Controllers

 One thing that I like about finding old Famicoms is when they have stickers on them.  Not just random stickers, mind you, but stickers which were specifically designed to be placed on a Famicom.

This one I picked up a while ago and is sort of my back-up Famicom now.  I mainly got it for the stickers on the controllers.  Famitsu Magazine used to sometimes include various Famicom stickers that they`d include as special promotions.  By far the most useful ones were designed to put on the top sides of Famicom carts so that you could easily identify which cart it was.  Actually a lot of Famicom carts floating around out there still have those on them.

Much harder to find though are the ones designed to put on Famicom controllers.  I`ve only ever seen two Famicoms with those on them, this one and another that I found at Omocha Souko a few years back which had the remnants of Dragon Quest stickers on them.

I guess one of the reasons they are hard to find is that they don`t really have any function other than to make your Famicom controllers look different, and maybe people were therefore reluctant to put them on.  Also they look like they would have been kind of difficult to apply to the controllers, there are a lot of things (buttons, etc) you have to line up perfectly and if you mess it up by even 1mm it just wouldn`t look right. 

I particularly like these ones in part because whoever applied them did a really good job of it, they are perfectly lined up and centred.  And the artwork on them is pretty cool.  Another thing I like is what these stickers tell me about this Famicom.  The sticker on the number 1 controller is pretty messed up, indicating that it was used a lot.  The sticker on the number 2 controller however is immaculate and looks like it was put on yesterday.  Obviously whoever owned this Famicom was accustomed to playing it solo. 

Anyway, I just kind of thought these stickers were cool and wanted to do a post about them :)

Famitsu turned 25, and the top Famicom games of 1986

I scored a rather interesting piece of Famicom history today, a copy of the very first issue of Famicom Tsushin.

As kind of an interesting coincidence, this was published in June of 1986, making it almost exactly 25 years old.

Edited to add: at least it would have been. Reading the fine print I realized that this was actually a reprint of the first issue. Very cunningly disguised as the real deal, even the ads are all the same as in the original (as is the publication date). On the bottom of each page in small print, however, it states that it is a reprint and tells readers not to call any of the phone numbers in the ads as they don't work anymore. Guess that explains why it only cost 500 yen! And why it came with a towel celebrating the 800th issue, which I didn't notice until getting it home. This must have been made as part of some sort of commemorative promotion or something:
Anyway, Famicom Tsushin, for those who don't know, is a biweekly video game magazine in Japan that now goes by the abbreviated name of "Famitsu". It is another testament to the power of the Famicom back in the day that this magazine - which is not published by Nintendo and is a general video game mag - was named after the Famicom. It is far and away the most famous gaming magazine in Japan.

Anyway, despite being a repro, there is a LOT of interesting stuff in this thing which will provide me with ample material for a whole bunch of posts. I thought I'd start off with the info on pages 8 and 9 here:
On the left are the results of "reader surveys" in which respondents ranked their favorite games for the Famicom and Famicom Disk System. I put "reader surveys" in quotation marks since I find it hard to figure how they could already be displaying the results of a reader survey in their first issue. But anyway, I thought it was kind of neat just to see what people liked 25 years ago.

Here are the results in order.

Famicom

1. Goonies
2. Legend of Zelda
3. Gegege no Kitaro
4. Gradius
5. Ninja Hattori Kun
6. Twin Bee
7. Super Mario Bros.
8. Dig Dug II
9. Nazo no Murasamejo
10. Mighty Bomb Jack
11. Kage no Densetsu
12. Atlantis no Nazo
13. Spy vs. Spy
14. Portopia Renzoku Satsujin Jiken
15. Tag Team Pro Wrestling
16. Argus
17. Son Son
18. Hydlide Special
19. Obake no Q Taro Wan Wan Panic
20. Gyrodine

Famicom Disk Writer:

1. Nazo no Murasamejo
2. Super Mario Brothers
3. Baseball
4. Tennis
5. Legend of Zelda
6. Soccer
7. Golf
8. Mahjong

On the right page, they display the top ten most popular games for the NES in the US at the time, based on sales. It provides for an interesting comparison:

1. Super Mario Bros.
2. Spartan X (Kung Fu)
3. Baseball
4. Excitebike
5. 10 Yard Fight
6. Golf
7. Soccer
8. Pinball
9. Tennis
10. Wrecking Crew

They even have a little featured article about the NES in there:
The caption under the picture reads

"The console is high class, but unfortunately for some reason they made the cartridges big, so Japanese Famicom carts won't fit it."

An early (perhaps the earliest?) example of somebody noting that it was too bad the NES carts didn't follow the Famicom pattern!

Related Posts:
- 1985 Famicom High Scores