RetroGE

my wife grew up in Bytom Poland and we still have her childhood Fami-clone. The Pegasus was the most common clone in Poland but her’s is called something like Enderman 2000. Definitely not something that is special in our collection (even if I can’t remember the name off the top of my head )

Awesome, thanks for the clarification. The manual is the second best source for confirming if the rules are different but given you have a cart it isn’t needed. I’ll update the string, about if he dumped it and if he put the rom up anywhere, once I hear back from him.

I didn’t see your first response when I replied and frankly don’t see your logic (with regards to me changing my position). I didn’t change my position, “notable” by definition means worth noting and different rules is notable. I don’t have a dog in this fight I just want to share info. Discussions and debates are helpful, arguing over if something was implied or not is useless and better suited for Twitter. If you want to discuss anything productive or that further’s our understanding of what’s out there (and as I said I know you have made major contributions) I’m happy to do that but I have better things to do with my time trying to “win”.

I’m not looking to argue, I appreciate all your work on documenting Famicom stuff and your approach, but I believe bringing up unlicensed is hyperbolic. Most people, when talking about 72 pin games, from outside NA, don’t care about unlicensed and this has been implied throughout the string (outside of a stray RetroUSB commonly or 2). Modern homebrew is unlicensed. Most of Eastern Europe had famiclones (Dendy/Pegasus/Ender-Man and so-on) that had multi-carts that were unlicensed, etc… Using your logic, I don’t believe Chinese Checkers is unique to the Sancen cart: I have my wife’s childhood Dendy carts (which she got in the early 90s in Poland) and I’m fairly certain one 1000 (more like 80) in 1 cart has Chinese checkers on it. You could argue this wasn’t retail but her dad bought it in an official Polish store brand new. You could argue 60 pin Famiclones and “modern” homebrew don’t count… ok, but we’re right back to how we define terms and what nuance we can assume is implied. Assuming the rules are different, which I’m waiting to hear back on if that’s true, HKMJ it is notable and as far as my definitions go, it’s unique in the world-wide licensed retail set (since I believe both the gray and black FamicomBox versions were never sold in retail stores new).

Agreed, depending on where you draw the line on what constitutes a different game, you can rationalize away a lot of games (including SE ). The Famicom Box exclusives are Super Chinese 2 and Gomoku Narabe Renju Fun fact: since I know you are a fan of manuals, I should note that HKMJ has an English manual

Sorry, just saw this. I don’t own a copy, I just know someone who does. I haven’t been watching sales closely so I’m far from an expert on quantity or price. I’ve definitely not seen more than 5 copies but I don’t live in HK so maybe they just don’t make it to the internet. I know about 10 people interested in the $1k+ price range but I doubt I know anyone willing to pay $10k+ for CIB or otherwise.

You seem pretty confident, can you site a source? If it’s the NESDev site I’d be careful, I’ve found issues there before. I try not to make definitive statements unless I’m confident (VGS is a great repository for info and we need to make sure we don’t mislead anyone who is looking for facts). Both NES and Famicom were released in HK, are you sure that isn’t the Famicom ROM? HVC is part of the Unique ID for Nintendo published Famicom games and there is a HK Rad Racer up on EBay now and it has the unique ID of NES-RC-HKG. Note, this is all complicated by there being a HKMJ for FDS (but that code is GTS-HKD) All that being said they occasionally interchanged these codes on boards and in the roms so maybe HVC-MJ-1 is the HK one). I’ve reached out to my friend who owns a copy to see if there is a difference. I am fairly certain he dumped it but not sure he uploaded it anywhere. Unfortunately he doesn’t have the manual, which would clear all this up as well).

To my comment about the rules being different and it being “notable”, I believe this is different than Sachen games: HKMJ is licensed and depending on what definition of “set” you use I still stand by it being notable since most people these days care about mild licensed variants over unique unlicensed games. All that said, I love Senchen games, I just don’t think they are a good example. A better one would be regional rom differences, something similar to Dragon Ball and Dragon Power, or to a lesser extent significant ROM differences within a region (the early Zelda Roms come to mind but I’m sure there is a better example).

UPDATE: I was misinformed, the rules aren’t different. I retract my “it’s notable” statement . HK Mahjong is notable because the rules are different than standard Mahjong. And at my age, I’d much rather play it than Stadium Events . A guy I know in Germany has a loose copy I believe he picked up in the last 5 years or so. I’ve seen maybe 2 other copies online over the years (never for sale) but I’m not actively looking so maybe I’ve missed some. If I had to take the over under on $3k I’d say over but I agree demand is relative on this one so maybe if you luck into the right place/time you could get a deal on it.

Wow! Great sleuthing! I’m sitting on a couple hundred disks and some free time. I’ll dig in on my end. As a side note my 2 copies of Kaettekita Mario have codes of FD47E09 and J106I22. This was a disk writer exclusive so it would make sense those codes could be all over the place

I was thinking the same. Or maybe city?

Thanks for that! I’ve based the list I’ve used for years off of an early version before anyone added the Japanese kanji. I’ve made edits to include some variants and to correct a couple identifiers. I also split off the FDS stuff to its own tab. I can share, but want to wait till I give it a good once over and clean it up a bit (it’s been mostly for personal use so some things are lazily slapped together).

I meant to respond to your response (I’m too old to remember this format )

100%, I love seeing what games didn’t make it over there (like Rad Racer 2). BTW thanks for putting together the Famicom guide! It’s been a great resource

I have a little over 600 unique NES carts, 600 unique Famicom, and 130+ Famicom Disk Games. I keep track of these in Excel and I'm working a unified workbook, where I have 3 tabs (NES, Famicom, and Famicom Disk System) and a column on each noting the name for Famicom/NES variants (US centric). Anyone have a good starting point for personal use? I'm fully aware of the complexities that would popup in creating a grand unified database that can be used as a definitive reference. This is not my end goal. For Famicom I'd like Japanese title using Kanji, Japanese title using English Alphabet, Unique ID (e.g. Super Mario Bros 2 is FMC-SMB), Release date, Publisher, Developer (if available), and if it was released on NES that title as well. For Famicom I have a master list with Famicom and the Disk System mixed together but no Kanji and only about 100 NES titles filled in from my personal collection. I'm happy to share if anyone needs but it's not really set up for others to view. If anyone is interested in seeing a comparison of Famicom and NES releases, of the same title, you can see my hashtags on instagram: #NESVsFamicomArt and #NESVsFamicomBoxArt Thanks!