Peripheral Vision: Famicom Network System

This obscure Famicom add-on had very little to offer… unless you loved gambling

» PLATFORM: Famicom » RELEASED: 1988

» COST: I ¥19,800 (launch), £30+ (boxed, today), £5+ (unboxed, today) n the late Eighties bubble economy of Japan, stockbroker Nomura Securities was looking for new ways to provide services to its customers. With the Famicom established as a fixture in households across Japan, the company viewed it as a low-cost computer capable of hosting network services, and partnered with Nintendo to develop a modem peripheral and accompanying software. The bulky device accepted software on thick ROM cards, and featured its own ROM including common elements such as kanji characters to free up program space on those cards. The device came bundled with a special controller, featuring a number pad and function buttons for browsing menus.

Reports state that 130,000 units were sold, covering less than 1% of the final Famicom user base. The service was plagued with reliability issues early on, and though most of the software released was related to financial services, it was hard to convince people that business transactions should be conducted on a kid’s Mario machine. Nintendo developed prototypes of online games including Go, but connection speeds were so slow that most games were impractical, though

Konami did release an online shogi title.

Bizarrely, gambling turned out to be the system’s most popular use.