NES Games with Famicom Adaptors

[Code Monkey | 2,011]

2 hours ago, darkchylde28 said:

Is that set original to you, as in did you or your relatives actually buy it in the test market themselves and can verify that it never passed into hands other than yours?  If you bought it from someone else, there's no guarantee that the cartridges in box were necessarily the ones that actually shipped with it.  Hence my "requirement" of sealed test market carts to be verified one way or the other via x-ray, so as to not have to open them and ruin someone's day, but also be able to actually verify what's inside.  Out of curiosity, what are the date codes inside those cartridges?  Do they actually match up to the original test market launch dates?  Or would/could they coincide with Christmas of that year, a few months later?

No so you could be correct but very unlikely. I got the set from a local reseller that didn't seem to know much about it and he seemed to have gotten it from a nobody. In fact, the NES inside had been swapped out for a later unit so they knew there was some value there but they left the games in there.

The games were so untouched that they graded 8.5 with the manual grading a 9.4 which is virtually unheard of with matte sticker games. I lifted the box flaps and they appeared to never have been opened, all the contents were still bagged and fit perfectly. If you've ever tried to re-bag an NES game with contents, they never go back in the same way once you take them out.

Also, this is weird but now that I look back at my Wata grade photos, it looks like only Gyromite had the converter, Duck Hunt did not, I was mistaken. Both board chips are dated 8539.

 

[the_wizard_666 | 1,325]

That makes the chip shortage theory much more sound then.  Gyromite seems to have an inordinate number of converters  compared to other games that could potentially have them.  My guess is they started running out of chips, so they used converters for Gyromite and Stack Up, then as the shortage was more dire and demand outstripped supply, they made a run or two of other launch games.  Once they got more chips they reverted back to 72 pin carts.  The shortage was a thing through 88 though, so a few other games that needed more copies than planned in order to fulfill demand may have got the same treatment, though only on a case by case basis.  This is, of course, pure speculation, but it would make sense why some exist, others don't, etc, along with how rare they are.  As for Gumshoe, since there was never a 60 pin version, it stands to reason that a converter copy doesn't exist, as there's no reason why it should exist.

[darkchylde28 | 1,546]

10 hours ago, Code Monkey said:

No so you could be correct but very unlikely. I got the set from a local reseller that didn't seem to know much about it and he seemed to have gotten it from a nobody. In fact, the NES inside had been swapped out for a later unit so they knew there was some value there but they left the games in there.

The games were so untouched that they graded 8.5 with the manual grading a 9.4 which is virtually unheard of with matte sticker games. I lifted the box flaps and they appeared to never have been opened, all the contents were still bagged and fit perfectly. If you've ever tried to re-bag an NES game with contents, they never go back in the same way once you take them out.

So you had sticker sealed games that appeared to have never been opened?  Does this mean that you broke the seals to look inside?  If not, and the seals were broken previously, then most likely somebody had those games out at some point, regardless of how neat the baggies looked.  Once upon a time, back before I ever got my first NES cartridge holding container, I would put everything back in the baggie and then back into the box and close it neatly, leaving them look like them look "new" beyond an accumulating amount of wear on the top flap where it was opened and shut again and again.  It's not inconceivable that whoever originally owned those games did the same, since it seems the seals on both games were broken from the context of your post.  Doesn't make any sense for you to have broken them, and similiarly no sense for the original owner to have broken the seals on both games but never removed them.

10 hours ago, Code Monkey said:

Also, this is weird but now that I look back at my Wata grade photos, it looks like only Gyromite had the converter, Duck Hunt did not, I was mistaken. Both board chips are dated 8539.

Can we be certain that those particular carts would have definitely been present during the initial launch on 10/18/1985 based on that date code?  The 39th week of 1985 would put the manufacturing date of the chip between 9/23/1985 and 9/29/1985.  If it was used immediately, that would give a window of 2-3 weeks (depending on whether the whole package was end-to-end manufactured and shipped on either the first or last day of the week on the chips) between manufacturing and being immediately available for sale.

In the 80s, for goods being manufactured anywhere in Asia and then transported over to the US, this would have been an incredibly fast, if not impossibly fast, turnaround time for standard shipping methods of the day.  Given that this was for a test market, and one that Nintendo was cautious enough about to offer retailers the units on consignment, this would lean toward precluding them spending exorbitant amounts on air freight in order to guarantee delivery of 100,000 units for the launch.

While it's possible that those cartridges belonged to the styrofoam that you found them in and that styrofoam belonged to the serialized box you found it in, it's also possible that the bits were Frankensteined together after the fact, as the system you received in the set clearly indicates happened with at least some part of the set.  The only information I can find about test unit chip dates online provides no specifics about how they came to the "accepted" conclusion that chip dates of 8539 guarantee test market units and yet chip dates of 8549 (10 weeks later, but still possible to be available by Christmas of 1985 and well before the February 1986 second test market in Los Angeles) are somehow guaranteed "not" just a later part of the same test market.  Has there been anyone to report dates from a sealed test market setup that they themselves opened in more recent times or dates pulled from a complete setup that was known/"verified" to be a 100% matching set?

I'm not trying to re-make the wheel here, just asking some honest, common sense (to me, anyway), nit-picky questions which seem to have been neglected in documentation thus far in documenting the factual provenance of this stuff.  So far, everything I've seen tends to have somewhere between a "trust me bro" or a "my uncle works at Nintendo" level of veracity to its data regarding when Nintendo manufactured these things, when they were delivered, etc.  Yes, it's been 37 years since it happened, but at the same time, folks have had that long to have at least asked those questions, and I've not been able to find anybody saying anything like, "We can't know for certain, but this is what's believed based on this data we do have" versus "This is absolutely, for sure, definitely the case" all without hard facts and figures.

I haven't been able to find historical ocean freight data for the 80s (which I assume is what Nintendo would have been using to ship 100K units, if not more), but modern, pre-pandemic estimates for such coast to coast transports show a typical window of 20-45 days.  Looking at Japan to New York specifically is approximately 25-30 days minimum.  And that's not counting unloading at the destination port, transporting over land (as necessary, if the test market units were delivered to a California port versus going through the Panama Canal to get to New York), etc.  Such shipping has only gotten faster and more efficient as time has gone on, so I would posit that it most likely would have been slower nearly 40 years ago when this all happened.

Figuring for best times all around, all units would need to have been end-to-end manufactured, put into a container, had the container delivered to the port all on the same day, 9/23/1985.  If that happened, a best coast to coast delivery time of 20 days would put the units on the west coast on 10/13/1985.  Pre-pandemic modern estimates show 1-3 business days just for unloading the ship.  10/13/1985 was a Sunday, so unloading of a full container (again, best case scenario here) wouldn't start until 10/14/1985 and wouldn't be able to leave the port until the following day.  Current, pre-pandemic trucking rates (at modern speed limits, mind you, which are reasonably significantly above those from nearly 40 years ago) put the best possible trucking freight time between NYC and LA at 41 hours.  This puts the container leaving 10/15/1985 around 8:00 AM Pacific (dock used to open at 7:00 AM, allow ~1 hour for truck to get in, load, and leave the port) and delivering to New York at 4:00 AM 10/17/1985, a single day before all units were to be not only in retailers' hands, but on the shelf, set up, ready to be sold.

This all does put things in the realm of possibility, but leaves it low in the likelihood department given that every single thing would have to go 100% perfectly (including the absolutely ridiculous expectation that not only were the dated chips manufactured on the 1st day possible that they're marked, but that they were delivered to Nintendo, Nintendo completed manufacturing of all cartridges, accessories, etc., then got everything 100% retail packaged, packaged into a container, on the container ship, and then the ship departing that same day) for the test market launch to have happened to day historically documented, all based on 8539 being the absolute first date that ever appeared on a chip inside of an NES.  Realistically, I think we either need to find someone who was there who can testify that the units were shipped via another method, or that only a smaller fraction of the total number of units sold through the holiday season of 1985 (which is what the 100,000 units represents) were actually present on the launch date to make the current data add up believably.  And remember, the estimates and such here are just for the pack-in games and systems, and doesn't account for all of the additional games that were available during the same timeframe, which would further complicate things.

I really think we need more evidence, especially verified/verifiable evidence in order to declare anything/everything with that date code on it a launch, test market unit, as it's really hard to make what numbers we have add up right when you look at them completely critically and dispassionately.

[ThePhleo | 2,185]

49 minutes ago, darkchylde28 said:

Can we be certain that those particular carts would have definitely been present during the initial launch on 10/18/1985 based on that date code?  The 39th week of 1985 would put the manufacturing date of the chip between 9/23/1985 and 9/29/1985.  If it was used immediately, that would give a window of 2-3 weeks (depending on whether the whole package was end-to-end manufactured and shipped on either the first or last day of the week on the chips) between manufacturing and being immediately available for sale.
 

Virtually EVERY NES game that has a date printed on its box (nearly all games printed and reprinted from October 1988 to December 1996) has its estimated release window within 3 weeks of its earliest known date code. The same goes for chip dates and manual dates.

Nintendo was on its A game in terms of capabilities to get product on shelves.

Of course there are exceptions in a library 713 games large. But generally speaking, there's a clear pattern of amazing manufacturing capabilities.

Also, virtually all black box games first known chip dates are 8538 and 8539. So either Nintendo had zero product for October 18, 1985...or they were just good at selling stuff quick.

Edited December 22, 2022 by ThePhleo

[Code Monkey | 2,011]

56 minutes ago, darkchylde28 said:

So you had sticker sealed games that appeared to have never been opened?  Does this mean that you broke the seals to look inside?  If not, and the seals were broken previously, then most likely somebody had those games out at some point, regardless of how neat the baggies looked.  Once upon a time, back before I ever got my first NES cartridge holding container, I would put everything back in the baggie and then back into the box and close it neatly, leaving them look like them look "new" beyond an accumulating amount of wear on the top flap where it was opened and shut again and again.  It's not inconceivable that whoever originally owned those games did the same, since it seems the seals on both games were broken from the context of your post.  Doesn't make any sense for you to have broken them, and similiarly no sense for the original owner to have broken the seals on both games but never removed them.

Can we be certain that those particular carts would have definitely been present during the initial launch on 10/18/1985 based on that date code?  The 39th week of 1985 would put the manufacturing date of the chip between 9/23/1985 and 9/29/1985.  If it was used immediately, that would give a window of 2-3 weeks (depending on whether the whole package was end-to-end manufactured and shipped on either the first or last day of the week on the chips) between manufacturing and being immediately available for sale.

In the 80s, for goods being manufactured anywhere in Asia and then transported over to the US, this would have been an incredibly fast, if not impossibly fast, turnaround time for standard shipping methods of the day.  Given that this was for a test market, and one that Nintendo was cautious enough about to offer retailers the units on consignment, this would lean toward precluding them spending exorbitant amounts on air freight in order to guarantee delivery of 100,000 units for the launch.

While it's possible that those cartridges belonged to the styrofoam that you found them in and that styrofoam belonged to the serialized box you found it in, it's also possible that the bits were Frankensteined together after the fact, as the system you received in the set clearly indicates happened with at least some part of the set.  The only information I can find about test unit chip dates online provides no specifics about how they came to the "accepted" conclusion that chip dates of 8539 guarantee test market units and yet chip dates of 8549 (10 weeks later, but still possible to be available by Christmas of 1985 and well before the February 1986 second test market in Los Angeles) are somehow guaranteed "not" just a later part of the same test market.  Has there been anyone to report dates from a sealed test market setup that they themselves opened in more recent times or dates pulled from a complete setup that was known/"verified" to be a 100% matching set?

I'm not trying to re-make the wheel here, just asking some honest, common sense (to me, anyway), nit-picky questions which seem to have been neglected in documentation thus far in documenting the factual provenance of this stuff.  So far, everything I've seen tends to have somewhere between a "trust me bro" or a "my uncle works at Nintendo" level of veracity to its data regarding when Nintendo manufactured these things, when they were delivered, etc.  Yes, it's been 37 years since it happened, but at the same time, folks have had that long to have at least asked those questions, and I've not been able to find anybody saying anything like, "We can't know for certain, but this is what's believed based on this data we do have" versus "This is absolutely, for sure, definitely the case" all without hard facts and figures.

I haven't been able to find historical ocean freight data for the 80s (which I assume is what Nintendo would have been using to ship 100K units, if not more), but modern, pre-pandemic estimates for such coast to coast transports show a typical window of 20-45 days.  Looking at Japan to New York specifically is approximately 25-30 days minimum.  And that's not counting unloading at the destination port, transporting over land (as necessary, if the test market units were delivered to a California port versus going through the Panama Canal to get to New York), etc.  Such shipping has only gotten faster and more efficient as time has gone on, so I would posit that it most likely would have been slower nearly 40 years ago when this all happened.

Figuring for best times all around, all units would need to have been end-to-end manufactured, put into a container, had the container delivered to the port all on the same day, 9/23/1985.  If that happened, a best coast to coast delivery time of 20 days would put the units on the west coast on 10/13/1985.  Pre-pandemic modern estimates show 1-3 business days just for unloading the ship.  10/13/1985 was a Sunday, so unloading of a full container (again, best case scenario here) wouldn't start until 10/14/1985 and wouldn't be able to leave the port until the following day.  Current, pre-pandemic trucking rates (at modern speed limits, mind you, which are reasonably significantly above those from nearly 40 years ago) put the best possible trucking freight time between NYC and LA at 41 hours.  This puts the container leaving 10/15/1985 around 8:00 AM Pacific (dock used to open at 7:00 AM, allow ~1 hour for truck to get in, load, and leave the port) and delivering to New York at 4:00 AM 10/17/1985, a single day before all units were to be not only in retailers' hands, but on the shelf, set up, ready to be sold.

This all does put things in the realm of possibility, but leaves it low in the likelihood department given that every single thing would have to go 100% perfectly (including the absolutely ridiculous expectation that not only were the dated chips manufactured on the 1st day possible that they're marked, but that they were delivered to Nintendo, Nintendo completed manufacturing of all cartridges, accessories, etc., then got everything 100% retail packaged, packaged into a container, on the container ship, and then the ship departing that same day) for the test market launch to have happened to day historically documented, all based on 8539 being the absolute first date that ever appeared on a chip inside of an NES.  Realistically, I think we either need to find someone who was there who can testify that the units were shipped via another method, or that only a smaller fraction of the total number of units sold through the holiday season of 1985 (which is what the 100,000 units represents) were actually present on the launch date to make the current data add up believably.  And remember, the estimates and such here are just for the pack-in games and systems, and doesn't account for all of the additional games that were available during the same timeframe, which would further complicate things.

I really think we need more evidence, especially verified/verifiable evidence in order to declare anything/everything with that date code on it a launch, test market unit, as it's really hard to make what numbers we have add up right when you look at them completely critically and dispassionately.

I cannot prove my comments.

[Code Monkey | 2,011]

8 minutes ago, ThePhleo said:

Virtually EVERY NES game that has a date printed on its box (nearly all games printed and reprinted from October 1988 to December 1996) has its estimated release window within 3 weeks of its earliest known date code. The same goes for chip dates and manual dates.

Nintendo was on its A game in terms of capabilities to get product on shelves.

Of course there are exceptions in a library 713 games large. But generally speaking, there's a clear pattern of amazing manufacturing capabilities.

Also, virtually all black box games first known chip dates are 8538 and 8539. So either Nintendo had zero product for October 18, 1985...or they were just good at selling stuff quick.

There are boes with 1996 date codes? I have a Millipede cartridge with chipdates in 1995 but nothing later than that.

[darkchylde28 | 1,546]

3 minutes ago, ThePhleo said:

Virtually EVERY NES game that has a date printed on its box (nearly all games printed and reprinted from October 1988 to December 1996) has its estimated release window within 3 weeks of its earliest known date code. The same goes for chip dates and manual dates.

Nintendo was on its A game in terms of capabilities to get product on shelves.

Of course there are exceptions in a library 713 games large. But generally speaking, there's a clear pattern of amazing manufacturing capabilities.

Also, virtually all black box games first known chip dates are 8538 and 8539. So either Nintendo had zero product for October 18, 1985...or they were just good at selling stuff quick.

Again, as I stated in my long diatribe earlier, you're not citing specific data and sources, just a level of "trust me, my uncle works at Nintendo" level of verification.

You guys might just trust each other, as part of the "good 'ol boys club" of Nintendo historians, but seriously, for everybody else, some actual documentation of when stuff happened, how, why, etc., with sources cited would be really nice.

And 8539 would be the week that Nintendo's chip manufacturer created that chip, not when Nintendo did, as they didn't fab their own chips in-house, then or now.  If you look at just the logistics data on shipping the stuff via what would have been the standard method of the day (and even today, in most cases), it creates some serious iffiness of stuff marked 8539 being there at the launch on 10/18/1985.  Nintendo debuted the US NES at CES in June of 1985, and obviously decided to leap into the market based on the response they received there.  With that in mind, I would think that they'd have started manufacturing a lot earlier than 3 months later in order to get product out and in consumer's hands for the 1985 Christmas season.  Just looking at the numbers and how the shipping data works out, I would think that there should be earlier chip dates out there for games/systems that were actually on shelves on day 1 of the launch itself.

So, before discounting me out of hand, take a look at that timeline again and notice that chip fabrication, board assembly, game assembly, etc., all the way to the ship leaving the dock would have to occur on the exact same day in order to his the street on 10/18/1985 with an 8539 date code if there wasn't something else going on (partial shipment was air freighted, 8539 were actually replenishment units due to great sales of day 1+ stock, etc.).  There's more here that needs to be filled in, or at least acknowledged as being missing from the picture.

[Tulpa | 3,517]

Frank Cifaldi wrote a little bit about the launch. Back half of this article (first half is about the original AVS.)

https://www.ign.com/articles/2015/10/19/in-their-words-remembering-the-launch-of-the-nintendo-entertainment-system

Looks like Phillips, Don James and Rob Thompson were there.

[ThePhleo | 2,185]

32 minutes ago, Code Monkey said:

There are boes with 1996 date codes? I have a Millipede cartridge with chipdates in 1995 but nothing later than that.

Yep! Asterix, and Smurfs were reprinted in 1996 for PAL regions.

 

30 minutes ago, darkchylde28 said:

Again, as I stated in my long diatribe earlier, you're not citing specific data and sources, just a level of "trust me, my uncle works at Nintendo" level of verification.

You guys might just trust each other, as part of the "good 'ol boys club" of Nintendo historians, but seriously, for everybody else, some actual documentation of when stuff happened, how, why, etc., with sources cited would be really nice.

And 8539 would be the week that Nintendo's chip manufacturer created that chip, not when Nintendo did, as they didn't fab their own chips in-house, then or now.  If you look at just the logistics data on shipping the stuff via what would have been the standard method of the day (and even today, in most cases), it creates some serious iffiness of stuff marked 8539 being there at the launch on 10/18/1985.  Nintendo debuted the US NES at CES in June of 1985, and obviously decided to leap into the market based on the response they received there.  With that in mind, I would think that they'd have started manufacturing a lot earlier than 3 months later in order to get product out and in consumer's hands for the 1985 Christmas season.  Just looking at the numbers and how the shipping data works out, I would think that there should be earlier chip dates out there for games/systems that were actually on shelves on day 1 of the launch itself.

So, before discounting me out of hand, take a look at that timeline again and notice that chip fabrication, board assembly, game assembly, etc., all the way to the ship leaving the dock would have to occur on the exact same day in order to his the street on 10/18/1985 with an 8539 date code if there wasn't something else going on (partial shipment was air freighted, 8539 were actually replenishment units due to great sales of day 1+ stock, etc.).  There's more here that needs to be filled in, or at least acknowledged as being missing from the picture.

 

This again goes back to me being tongue-in-cheek to "Do we even know that all 677 NES games aren't modern fabrications? Did 1985 ever even happen? Did the universe exist even a second ago?"

Nintendo themselves claims that they launched the NES on October 18, 1985 and that through the holiday season of 1985 approximately 90,000 units were sold during that time. I'll have to find the source for that, but it's known data.

There are multiple instances of chip dates reading 8539, 5K1, 5K2, 5K3 and I think 5K4 (5 = 1985, K = September, 4 = Week 4)

In order for any of these games to run in a USA NES it must have the USA CIC chip inside the cartridge. The earliest known CIC chip is 8538 or 8539. For there to be ANY chance of them not getting the games on the store shelves of FAO Schwarz on October 18, 1985, then you would have to deny that the NES launched on that date and come up with a new reasonable date.

[darkchylde28 | 1,546]

28 minutes ago, ThePhleo said:

Yep! Asterix, and Smurfs were reprinted in 1996 for PAL regions.

 

 

This again goes back to me being tongue-in-cheek to "Do we even know that all 677 NES games aren't modern fabrications? Did 1985 ever even happen? Did the universe exist even a second ago?"

Nintendo themselves claims that they launched the NES on October 18, 1985 and that through the holiday season of 1985 approximately 90,000 units were sold during that time. I'll have to find the source for that, but it's known data.

There are multiple instances of chip dates reading 8539, 5K1, 5K2, 5K3 and I think 5K4 (5 = 1985, K = September, 4 = Week 4)

In order for any of these games to run in a USA NES it must have the USA CIC chip inside the cartridge. The earliest known CIC chip is 8538 or 8539. For there to be ANY chance of them not getting the games on the store shelves of FAO Schwarz on October 18, 1985, then you would have to deny that the NES launched on that date and come up with a new reasonable date.

I'm not denying that the launch happened, or even necessarily that some of those games with those date codes made it there to be there on day 1.

What I'm really getting at, is there is missing data here, and no allowance for, or admittance of, said missing data.  In order for chips that were fabricated on the dates that they were to go end to end through a manufacturing process and be delivered halfway around the world less than 2-3 weeks later, realistically, you'd need something like a small initial shipment of systems to go via air freight and the rest to follow on a ship in order for it to make economic sense to Nintendo.  However, the "100,000 launch units" for the test market (which seems to be the number they sold through, not necessarily the total number manufactured) is always the mantra.

So when did all 100,000 units arrive?  How many were actually there in NYC on 10/18/1985?  If the stipulation is that all 100K units were present and accounted for, that creates a nonsensical logistical nightmare based on my post above.  You'd have to have Santa Claus making those things, as he's the only person known to be able to get that sort of thing done in a single night.  However, if a smaller number were rushed over a week or so pre-launch, via air freight (incredibly expensive now, even more so back then), the launch could happen, some of those units with those dates could be legitimate launch test market units, with the rest coming in a few weeks later via standard ocean freight + trucking, and then supplemented ~10 weeks later by the stuff with date codes of 8549, which could have hit right around or just after Christmas and all the way up to and into the second test market in February 1986 when they started being sold in Los Angeles as well.  If any 8549 units were sold in NYC before the LA launch, they'd still be original test market units, just late ones.  But without receipts to document where somebody purchased their unit and an unbroken chain of custody (even if it's just anecdotal), there's no way to be certain.

If we really want everyone to know these things as facts, they need to be well documented, with names, dates, interviews, etc., all written down somewhere beyond the memories of a small handful of experts who assure folks what they say is true.  WATA helped spoil that sort of trust in the general community, so all i's should be dotted and all t's crossed, which really ought to have been happening from the beginning.  As you pointed out, the currently known earliest dates for the CIC's are 8538 & 8539.  Even that one additional week provided by the 8538 example(s) would help pad things out to make delivery of the whole ~100K test market/launch units more plausible if done all at once via the most economical freight methods (ocean + trucking).  However, for all we know, there might still be chips out there that are as yet undocumented as having even earlier fabrication dates on them, which could change the picture yet again.  Without the data regarding how many were initially shipped/delivered for the actual launch day and how that was done, there are issues with folks just assuming that anything with 8539 on the chips was or could have been present day 1 due to the transport logistics.  And while it doesn't paint nearly as neat or pretty a picture, that discrepancy should be admitted and addressed as such when folks recount these facts and stories.

[ThePhleo | 2,185]

They were definitely not all shipped on day 1. As I said, 8539 is the first known print run, but there's 5K1, 5K2, 5K3, and 5K4 which is basically the entire month of October.

So, they sold their initial print run, and had more manufactured.

Also, only the first of first of all first print black box prints have a manual typo on the back. The PO Box number is 957, but is erroneously listed as 9572.

This is corrected in the next batch of manuals.

There are currently 5 known chip dates for Super Mario Bros., and the 9572 manual is only found in the 8539 print run.

[darkchylde28 | 1,546]

1 minute ago, ThePhleo said:

They were definitely not all shipped on day 1. As I said, 8539 is the first known print run, but there's 5K1, 5K2, 5K3, and 5K4 which is basically the entire month of October.

So, they sold their initial print run, and had more manufactured.

Also, only the first of first of all first print black box prints have a manual typo on the back. The PO Box number is 957, but is erroneously listed as 9572.

This is corrected in the next batch of manuals.

There are currently 5 known chip dates for Super Mario Bros., and the 9572 manual is only found in the 8539 print run.

Interesting to know.

Regarding what was present, while we still don't know numbers (or at least I've not been able to find any documentation of such just yet), it appears that at least some stuff did get flown in specifically for the launch.  Per the article linked above by @Tulpa (thanks for that, btw!) that I just got a chance to read through:

"The three of them were a part of a twelve-person squad flown in from Seattle specifically to set up and tear down floor displays, demonstrate the products, accept air freighted shipments from Japan, and do absolutely anything and everything necessary to get the NES sold for the next three months."

So it appears my guesstimation was at least partly spot on, with them needing to air freight in at least part of what they sold in the test market (and specifically at launch) in order to have it there in time, with ocean freight for the whole lot with an arrival and distribution time prior to 10/18/1985 being logistically impossible.  As it's Howard Phillips providing these details in his interview, I'd say these are as solid a set of facts as any paper trail that might ever be found from the time.

It's possible that everything got air freighted over throughout the first test market period, but we don't have data to say one way or the other at the moment.  I'd still put money behind a smaller chunk being flown over to guarantee stock in-hand and the bulk of the rest shipped slow-boat over the ocean, to arrive 3-6 weeks later.

Do you happen to have documentation of the ~90,000 unit figure you said represented sales?  The linked article says that "while sales did not set the world on fire, they were encouraging," seeming to indicate that they didn't sell through as many units as they shipped over for the NYC test market.  I would think that selling 90K of 100K would be "crazy" numbers for a dead market, but maybe sales were 90K of some larger number, and that 90K has just gotten estimated up to a nicer sounding 100K as time has gone on?  Difficult to know without the data and their sources.

[Code Monkey | 2,011]

10 hours ago, ThePhleo said:

They were definitely not all shipped on day 1. As I said, 8539 is the first known print run, but there's 5K1, 5K2, 5K3, and 5K4 which is basically the entire month of October.

So, they sold their initial print run, and had more manufactured.

Also, only the first of first of all first print black box prints have a manual typo on the back. The PO Box number is 957, but is erroneously listed as 9572.

This is corrected in the next batch of manuals.

There are currently 5 known chip dates for Super Mario Bros., and the 9572 manual is only found in the 8539 print run.

Both of my manuals from 8539 have 957 on the back. Thanks to paying for Wata pre-grading photos.

[Tyree_Cooper | 757]

[Joshua Rogers | 77]

For the past 10 years I've heard rumours that Spaco, a Spanish distributor for Nintendo, released Tiny Toons 2 in 1997:

or https://www.kaiserland77.com/wikines77/index.php/Historia_de_la_NES from 2011. then even from 2007: https://forum.digitpress.com/forum/showthread.php?99604-History-of-the-NES-in-Europe

I would love to get my hands on one of those carts to check it out.

[Joshua Rogers | 77]

Hey, speaking about the famicom adapators in NES games, what about Ice Climber? I outline here why I expect it not to exist:

 

[Ankos | 445]

Five screws means it has an adapter right? This cart appears to be five screwed (not sure if it is legit though)

[darkchylde28 | 1,546]

26 minutes ago, Ankos said:

Five screws means it has an adapter right? This cart appears to be five screwed (not sure if it is legit though)

With the US library, five screws just means that it's part of an early production run, it doesn't automatically mean that there's a Famicom adapter inside.  I'm not extremely familiar with the Asian and Hong Kong versions in the NES shells, but I would think that they should be following the same rules as the US library, and that only games that happened to come out there around Christmas of 1985 should have a chance of having a Famicom adapter inside, as that's when those were manufactured and used as a stopgap measure when full size 72-pin NES boards were in short supply.

[Ankos | 445]

24 minutes ago, darkchylde28 said:

With the US library, five screws just means that it's part of an early production run, it doesn't automatically mean that there's a Famicom adapter inside.  I'm not extremely familiar with the Asian and Hong Kong versions in the NES shells, but I would think that they should be following the same rules as the US library, and that only games that happened to come out there around Christmas of 1985 should have a chance of having a Famicom adapter inside, as that's when those were manufactured and used as a stopgap measure when full size 72-pin NES boards were in short supply.

Ah ok. Thank you for the explanation. I'm not super familiar with NES stuff, and was under the impression all five screw carts had the adapter. Come to think of it, I think that the Asian version carts are PAL, so I don't think they could have famicom boards in them

[darkchylde28 | 1,546]

9 minutes ago, Ankos said:

Ah ok. Thank you for the explanation. I'm not super familiar with NES stuff, and was under the impression all five screw carts had the adapter. Come to think of it, I think that the Asian version carts are PAL, so I don't think they could have famicom boards in them

No problem.  The only 72-pin NES cart that's guaranteed to always have an adapter inside is Stack Up, presumably because it didn't sell all that well compared to Gyromite (which was packed in with the system at one point).  I don't know where it is, but somewhere on VGS, in the relatively recent past, one or two members put together a "complete" list of all of the NES launch titles that could have Famicom adapters inside of them.

Edit:  Apparently that list was in this very thread, with me not realizing which thread I was replying to when "read new" took me straight to your newest reply, lol.  It's on the first page and posted by Tulpa, but I've copied it below for your convenience.  I think the only one of these that isn't necessarily vouched for by someone was Gumshoe, as I seem to recall a separate thread spawning where someone started offering a cash bounty for a legitimate copy of with a Famicom adapter inside.

List:

1942
Clu Clu Land
Donkey Kong Jr.
Duck Hunt
Elevator Action
Excitebike
Golf
Gumshoe
Gyromite
Hogan’s Alley
Mike Tyson’s Punch-Out!!
Pinball
Raid on Bungeling Bay
Rygar
Soccer
Stack Up
Tennis
Urban Champion
Wizards and Warriors
Wrecking Crew

Edited February 21, 2023 by darkchylde28

[Retrogamer222 | 0]

I know this is a thread almost a year ago. But what’s the deal about these specific pcb boards with famicom adapters are. I’ve seen these and do not know much about them apart from there in some 5 screw carts. Be interesting to know which ones are rare from which game. And what are there value?

[Tanooki | 4,939]

2 hours ago, Retrogamer222 said:

I know this is a thread almost a year ago. But what’s the deal about these specific pcb boards with famicom adapters are. I’ve seen these and do not know much about them apart from there in some 5 screw carts. Be interesting to know which ones are rare from which game. And what are there value?

It's not so much about the value of the adapter, it's minimal in the big picture.  It's more about just an original launch day or shortly after cartridge where not knowing if they'd fail they just made adapters in the factory and mounted the existing Japanese boards to it to minimize their costs if they took a loss.  At that rate they could toss the adapters and shells, and salvage the actual working games for more Japanese sales.  They only popped up in original carts with the smooth top(fold side) that has screws instead of 2 plastic tabs, and those five screws show be flat head instead of 3 security bits.

[Retrogamer222 | 0]

Thank you for the information, I’ve got wrecking crew with the adapter, only discovered today when deciding to clean contacts of my carts when I discovered the famicom adapter inside. Amazing to find after all these years I find something new that I never knew I had myself.

[Tulpa | 3,517]

Some of the launch titles are more likely to have them. My first post in this thread I listed seven games that I've personally seen have adapters, and Wrecking Crew was one of them.

Stack Up is all but guaranteed to have an adapter; smaller print run, ROB game, wasn't a runaway hit all suggest they just took some existing famicom stock of the game Robot Block and called it a day. Heck, they didn't even bother to change the title screen on it (or Gyromite.)

The list from Famicom World has some questionable games, though, and would love to see verification. I trust @the_wizard_666 about MTPO and all, but I'm curious as to the dearth of documentation on the interwebs about it.

 

[guitarzombie | 924]

Im still not convinced about MTPO.  Mainly because the middle screw wouldn't fit.  It would have to go thru the actual PCB, so it would be a 4 screw.