Famicom Dojo

Howard Phillips visited Milwaukee, WI for Midwest Gaming Classic 2019 as part of his project with Frank Cifaldi to help preserve Nintendo's history with the Video Game History Foundation. Hopefully-soon-to-be-infamous packrat Phillips is bringing a wealth of physical documents to Cifaldi's project, which they will work together to compile and digitize over the next five years. In this clip, Howard Phillips discusses his impressions of the Family Computer (AKA Famicom), The 1984 attempt to bring it to the US as the Nintendo Advanced Video System (AVS), and his impressions unboxing one of the first NES consoles shipped to America in 1985.

For the first time ever, you can import Japanese Famicom games to play on a non-Japanese Nintendo home console, and it's absolutely free*! (*Well, you need an active Nintendo Switch Online membership... but who's counting?) We show you how to set up a My Nintendo profile to access the Japanese eShop so you can download the Family Computer Nintendo Switch Online channel tany Switch in the world!

While working on another video, Sean thought he'd try out something on the Retron 5 that didn't occur to him when we did our Keep or Heap review; controller adapters like the NES Satellite and NES Four Score probably don't work with the Retron (and can't even be plugged in unmodified), but one of the console's built-in features SHOULD make that unnecessary. But is he right?

What kind of free-to-play game doesn't let you buy your way out level grinding? The kind that connects with another game on the Nintendo Switch!

We review the miniature emulation box inspired by the Family Computer 34 years after the console's original release. Also, surprise! There's something here for the Famicom Disk System too. Sort of...