Family Bits V: A Look at Cartridge Shells

[fcgamer | 4,723]

Family Bits V: A Look at Cartridge Shells is here, after a long wait!

This book started out as an idea for a magazine article, as one of my friends had been begging me for the better part of a year to tell him about different kinds of Famiclone shells. We'd go back and forth, but trying to describe things with words only was a nightmare, with us both unsure if we were talking about the same item or not.

One night my friend asked about the cartridges yet again, so I decided to just bite the bullet and make a list. As dove straight into that rabbit hole, and before I knew it, the list was at over two hundred different shell designs. At this point I knew that a visual guide was in order.

Family Bits V looks at the development of unauthorized Famicom cartridge shells from the earliest years up through modern times (so yes, some aftermarket shell designs are in this guide, such as the Mind Kids shell). In addition to describing the different cartridge shell designs, they are also grouped and examined. We can see where the earliest designs came from, and even trace the genealogy of the later designs.

The book is about 160 pages and can be ordered below. It is available as a paperback and also I decided to offer digital too.

https://www.magcloud.com/browse/issue/2597764

 

Note: I'm not sure if I will release this as a hardcover (via Amazon) or not. I tried to do so initially, but they started getting funny, first complaining about the keywords I used and then about the text being on the images, as that would "screw up kindle versions of the book" despite me not even planning to do a kindle release. 

To address these issues would take a bit of time, and the situation just pissed me off, so part of me feels that just doing this paperback release is adequate, even though of course the ocd collector part of me doesn't like this.

Either way, some of you might find this interesting, so enjoy

Edited September 5, 2023 by fcgamer

[Hybrid | 426]

Now you can say you wrote the book on famicom carts

[Tanooki | 4,934]

Repeated books on famicom carts, famiclone carts, and other oddities that few have touched, and none have really properly researched or collected into a volume let alone set of volumes.

Surprised to see this one done already when you ran a few things by me not too long ago.  Nice looking once again too.  It's a solid way about stuff, not taking the heavy workload and easy way out just documenting every legit famicom game from 1-end, like the bitmap bros kind of selectively do with some % of games, or as the Works books do slowly and surely with US stuff largely alone.  A legit famicom book or series of books would get into an obscene level of pages even if you put 4 to a page and put a blurb about each one, digging into history would get into something larger than a chinese phone book.

[DefaultGen | 5,405]

History will remember you for documenting all the collector bullshit for the most important system ever made Dave We know Mike Etler's name for making a nice list and you're out here releasing volumes.

[GPX | 1,369]

I was never into the Famicom gaming/collecting, but can absolutely appreciate the passion and level of dedication one needs to apply in order to make such a book about the Famicom parts! Good luck with the sales @fcgamer!

[DefaultGen | 5,405]

This is officially the craziest, most specifically topic’d book I own.