Nintendo Japan have today given fans a brief glimpse at what must be one of the most sought-after areas of the entire company: one of their storage rooms, where old consoles and peripherals are kept.
Part of a series of posts celebrating the 30th anniversary of the release of The Legend of Zelda in 1986, it opens up some closets to dig out both an original Famicom and its fancy expansion, the Famicom Disk System.
Both were needed to play the game, because while Zelda’s release in America came on a cartridge that had a battery in it (in order to save your game), that function in Japan was handled by the Disk System.
Look at this shelf!
And this one!
Then they open everything up, and that shit is mint.
I can smell it from here. The warehouse even had an old CRT TV on hand so that these consoles had something appropriate to be played on:
Perhaps most interesting was that they also have a working Famicom Disk System Disk Writer back there as well, which was a kiosk designed to...write games onto blank disks (there were around 3000 of these installed in game shops across Japan in the Famicom’s prime).
And that’s about it, sadly. No look at the closets full of Nintendo 64DDs, or crates full of Virtual Boys covered in tape that reads DO NOT OPEN. Still, even if it is limited to a few pieces of hardware, it’s an interesting look behind the scenes!
If ever there was a place in the real world you’d want to break into, Deus Ex/Hitman-style, surely this would be it. Only instead of hacking anything or killing anyone, you’d just sit quietly in a corner, and enjoy some vintage Nintendo games in an air conditioned office.
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