Retronauts - Retronauts Micro 043: The Famicom Rainbow

Episode Date: July 25, 2016

Caitlin Oliver chats with Jeremy about gaming's most aesthetically pleasing collecting habit: Acquiring the full spectrum of Nintendo's multi-colored Japanese 8-bit cartridges. Be sure to visit our blog at Retronauts.com, and check out our partner site, USgamer, for more great stuff. And if you'd like to send a few bucks our way, head on over to our Patreon page!

This week in Retronauts, taste the rainbow. Hi, everyone, and welcome to another micro episode of Retronauts. We're down to the letter F, and here to celebrate the letter F with us is Caitlin Oliver, whose name does not start with F. No, it does not. F is the failure. So what's up with you, Caitlin? Who are you?

Tell us about yourself. I am mostly known for being a world record holder in Splatterhouse, the arcade version from 1988. And we're actually at Midwest Gaming Classic Expo right now, or Midwest Gaming Classic, I guess it's just what it's called. which is why it's so noisy, but that's okay. You like noise. You like liveliness. We're not going to talk about Splatterhouse, though. Instead, we're talking about one of the other things that Caitlin's famous for,

which is her resplendent shelf of Famicom cartridges, the Famicom Rainbow. Yeah, I like to make rainbows and arrange things in very particular ways. It satisfies my need to obsessively organize. Yeah, every few weeks I see on the Something, awful forums retro thread you post like a new photo of your gaming setup and it's not that different it's just you like find new ways to arrange things in rainbow colors and it's it's a it's it's interesting like part of it really bugs my OCD because yes okay so spectrum rainbow cool I got it but that's not how you organize games it got to be alphabetical or chronological

but you know I'm a sick person who does prano gaming stuff and that's not on that it's not healthy so All of my other games are alphabetically arranged every one of them, but I make exceptions for the Famicom games very specifically because I think they display better this way, and I can only read half the titles anyway because my kanji kind of sucks, so coin toss. Like, how would I arrange it by U.S. title or a JP title? So I just stopped worrying about that and decided it looked prettier this way.

Right. And I mostly remember what colors my games. are, so it's really not that hard. What do you do with neutrals, like blacks and silvers? They are grouped, though gold is my bookend, but the black and white ones are just grouped because there's just an abundance of black and white carts. What did ship in gold now that I'm thinking about it?

I can mostly think of a few Namco games, like a Dragon... Buster? Yeah, Dragon Buster. Dragon Buster originally shipped. No, it was Buster. It was Dragon Buster. Once you've said it, I know it. Dragon Buster definitely shipped in gold.

I've seen a couple of other ones. Most of the ones I see end up reading pretty worn, kind of like the Zelda gold carts. Yeah, the back meddling didn't do so great. Everybody loves to call the rare ones. Right, right. Like, the gray ones are actually way more rare. I had this conversation with someone just the other day,

like how Zelda actually shipped in much greater quantities on gold, the gold carts, and then those gray ones came out late, but they're not pretty, so people don't care as much. Right, and that was, like, it's only true that the gold. Gold is limited edition post-N-64. Prior to that, everything was gold, with the exception of the S-N-E-S card that only came in one model. Yeah, that was lame. And Game Boy.

Right. And all of those were gray. The original gold runs of Zelda and Zelda 2 are both way, way more everywhere. Common? Yeah, common. Words. Terrible. But the thing about the Zelda and Zelda 2 carts we got in America

is those were the only, those were the only NES cards that were officially published by Nintendo that were not just gray. Right. Everything else was pretty much gray unless it was third party. But that goes right into how Japan did. When you say third party, you mean pirate, right? Yeah.

Like Color Dreams had that really gross baby blue. Unlicensed third party, yeah. Color Dreams, wisdom tree. Tengen. That's color green, yeah. Tengen had black. Yeah. There were a couple of old ones. I think America, AVS, American Video Systems, was black also.

Yeah. But anyway, the point is, we didn't get many color options, which makes Zelda and Zelda 2 stand out among American collections because they did come in gray, but they also came in gold, and even if those are more common, they're unusual because those are the only two cartridges Nintendo published that were not just the same as every other. Right, and then you go right into the Famicom Carts

who were not required to be purchased through Nintendo like they were in the U.S. That was something they did in the U.S. because they could regulate it, and they knew that bring them more profit. And it also partially because of Atari to kind of avoid that unlicensed flood of games. So they took arguably bad or good,

depending on which way you look at it, steps to prevent that. But even before license happened, early Famicom games, you know, first-party games, came in a variety of different colors. Nintendo started that with its first wave

of Famicom games. Like, all the stuff from 83, 84, even into 85 by Nintendo, comes in a variety of colors. It's not as big a spectrum. Original pulse label is still a rainbow. I mean, they kept the pulse label logos because that was their standard, but they still

had rainbow-colored carts. I mean, that's almost how tell those games apart because the pulse label is just like silver pulse against a solid color field and then you have a colorful cartridge so that helps make them stand out and then it goes into the other ones where developers got more creative with their presentation in order to make themselves stand out so they'd give you extra features because they could add that to a cart when you're adding hardware yeah yeah we talk a lot about you know the specialized chips like namco's mappers sunsauceauce Konami's famous mappers

that's something that comes up every few months on Retronauts just because it's so I guess notorious because even when you're emulating games that's something that comes out whereas the physical carts maybe not so much

but that colorfulness is really a part of the experience if you're shopping through the cheap bins of Famicom games it's just this disarray of colors it's like you said at the beginning skittles it's like someone just dropped a bag of skittles into the racks

No, and it gets great, especially because you'd get carts that are strange shapes, too. Like the Namco ones where they'd have expanded memory, like Wampaka graffiti, which is a Splatterhouse game, unsurprisingly. But it is notably one of the ones with a taller cart than normal, so it could fit the extra RAM storage. I think Konami had a couple of those also. They did. And, you know, there's like little minor features that you'll notice. Konami has a little hole in the corner. of each of its carts. Like, you could make really cool keychains if you don't mind having a giant

cart hanging off your keychain. I have a suspicion as to what those are for, and I think that would be for retailers to allow them to clip it to things for display or testing purposes. So you could easily swap in and out and have some sort of security. Oh, okay. That makes sense. It's weird that no one else did that then. It is weird. It's just my suspicion. I mean, it's completely unfounded. It's just the only reason I could realistically come up with besides aesthetics to put a hole in a car. and that seems silly for aesthetics. But, you know, it was something distinct to their games.

Absolutely. Like, you know a Konami Famicom cartridge, when you look at it, whatever color it is. A lot of them were actually black. They went with a lot of black carts, which is kind of unusual. And then there was Salamander, which was the best cartridge. Which I have, because it's translucent blue, so you can see the board with the totally six salamander slash light force logo. Yep.

And if you look really careful, you can actually see one of those mapper chips. You can see the ones that people are always talking about. The VRC2 is right in there. It's a great cartridge. But, you know, that's one company. You know, even the salamander cartridge has that hole in the corner. But there were lots of other unique cartridges. Iram.

I love Iram carts because they have the LED for power. That's all it is. It's a power LED, but man was at a neat little feature. And it was purely aesthetics, just, hey, this is a cool thing, because there's no power LED on the actual Famicom unit like there is on the NES. so that was a new feature. Yeah, it kind of reminds me of that Pink Floyd album, the live album Pulse, where you'd go,

like when that first came out, you walked into the store and they'd have these in caps and they'd just all be flashing at you. It's a, you know, a little bit of a gimmick and a lot of a gimmick, actually. And it would be boring if everyone did it, but the fact that just IREM did it, and just kind of in the early days, too. It was early on.

So there's no, there's no metal storm that has, has an LED on it. Yeah, Schoon and Spilunker, two that come to mind. I know there's more. I just can't think of them off the top of my head, but. Yeah, I have Spelunker as a Famicom car, but it doesn't have the LED. Really? Yeah, they started manufacturing them without.

They must have, yeah. Like, I'm currently trying to find an affordable copy of Schoon for NES. It's not that expensive? Oh, yes, it is. Oh, you're going complete. That's why, uh-huh. Yeah, but if you look, they have to distinguish with the Famicom cards like which games are which ones have the LEDs and which one don't I don't know which is

rare but I know which one's cooler all I can say is I've seen the LED one a lot more but I can't definitively say that one qualifies more or less rare I mean it doesn't matter really like that's one of those things where you're buying it because of the cool factor right it's schoon it's not the best game in the world it's not a terrible game it's like the rough outline of in the hunt A really, really rough sketch. Like maybe just pencils and maybe drawn with the left hand instead of the right. Galloping Ghost has a really cool. What is Galloping Ghost?

Oh, Galloping Ghost Arcade is an arcade in Brookfield, Illinois, which is not Brookfield, Wisconsin, where we are. But they have, I think, over 500 cabinets now, $15 all day free play 365 days a year until 2 a.m. every night. That's amazing. I need to go there sometime. Yeah. If you want to take a trip about an hour, half south i'll be happy to take you um but they have a in the hunt cabinet which is just in the hunt

but uh doc the owner made a custom marquee for it where he has a little water filter going so it has bubbles and a little floaty submarine in the in the hunt it's adorable that's awesome but anyway back to the the famicom cards um so how many different colors do you think you have on your shelf i'm even within the same color there's still variations because people would use different lots for plastics or they age differently. So, oh gosh, I definitely have a full spectrum. Let's estimate I have about 30 colors. Yeah, I mean, that's what makes it so interesting is those little variations because it's not just like, you know, there are seven colors and that's it. I mean, it really is like these shifts and these kind of subtle tones. So every time I see those

pictures you post, I'm like, that's really cool that, you know, there was a system where you could do that. If I had like a much larger Famicom collection, I would worry more about the logistics behind it, but my Famicom collection is relatively small. It's not that small, but the volume of games on the system is much larger. I mean, did you buy these games for the games or for the colors and aesthetics? Column A, column B. It depends on the game, because I also have not known for my sparkling taste in games.

I kind of like crap. so sometimes I'm buying them because I find them horribly charming in the actual horrible sense sometimes just because I like the color and it's cheap usually because I actually love the game and having it on an import appeals to me it may be a game I even already have

I just love the aesthetics of the Famicom game so I fell in love with them and they all for the most part have that very consistent size they're very compact compared to NES cartridges are like half the height So they don't really take up that much space It's not like this huge commitment that you're making No, it's much easier to store larger quantities of them

And you can usually get them relatively cheap too Because unless it's something highly desirable Nobody really, really seeks out too many junky import titles You can buy sports games in bulk and horrible mahjong and racing games. You can basically bathe in Moirao pro yaku You totally could, and you could probably do it for like 50 bucks because nobody wants it. But there's plenty of lower end. We're talking between $5 to $10 spectrum games, shipped even,

where you're paying minimal amounts to have something kind of cool, unique. Yeah, FAMMECOM is really one of the few systems where having a display of just the bare carts is something people really desire. Like I've seen a lot of different solutions for displaying FAMECOM cards. Yours is probably the most aesthetically pleasing for sure, but, you know, people come up with, like, shelf solutions and, like, different racks and things like that. So it really just the... You can put them in tape drawers. Yeah.

Well, you know, like people want to show them off because they do have that colorful nature to them. There is something about the lack of uniformity of Famicom carts that I think really lends itself to a different kind of collecting. And it's a really cool unique feature of the system. I can't think of any other console that has that same. effect. There aren't any other consoles I personally collect for where aesthetics are any selling point. It's really only for the Famicom where I go out of my way to find unique looking things. And that's part of the charm of it really.

And I'm a pretty serious collector, not full set collector, because I'm not rich or crazy, but I really love collecting for a large spectrum of systems and it really is the only one where I'm like, that is just beautiful. I want to buy it. All right, awesome. Any final things that you need to add to your system? Like, is there anything that is desperately missing to make your Famicom Rainbow complete, or is it just going to be minor tweaks from now on?

It's mostly minor tweaks, but while we're here, I'm specifically looking for purple cards because I'm missing purple. I don't know mine. What kind of purple do you consider? Like, I know Wild Gunman was kind of like a lavender. Wild Gunman, I have a little bit of. on the lavender side, but I have none on the bright purple side, which would be urban champions, a little like fuchsia, kung fu-fou.

So a lot of early first party. Well, no, Kung-Fu is third-party in Japan. Duck Hunt. Duck-hunt is a purple game. Yep. All those light-gun games. Yeah, strangely. Now that I think about it, maybe purple was a light gun signifier, and I was just never noticing.

Yeah, that's something that I kind of noticed when I was doing photography of Famicom games for a book. Yeah. I was like, oh, hey, purple, light gun. I see. That makes sense. I mean, I don't have a Famicom light gun, but I have plenty of zappers, so we'll work something out.

All right, cool. Well, finally, thanks for coming on to this little mini episode and let people know where they can find you on the Internet. Thanks for having me. My Twitter is S-A-Katelyn, like Something Awful, Sierra Alpha, and my website is Sepater.net, which is c-I-P-A-T-R.net. And, of course, you can find Retronauts at the usual place is Retronauts.com.

Gamer.net, iTunes, other places. I don't know. We're on Twitter and other social networks as Retronauts. We're on Patreon. You should support us on Patreon, Retronauts. And, of course, you can find me on Twitter as GameSpite. And that is it for this micro episode of Retronauts. Thanks again, Caitlin, and we'll be back next week with a full-side episode,

full-sized episode produced by Bob, not me. So there. Thank you.