New Famicom: the one that reaches a modern television

In December 1993, ten years after the original Famicom, Nintendo released a machine almost nobody had asked for: the same 8-bit hardware, rebuilt in grey, at ¥6,800 before tax — less than half the ¥14,800 the original had cost. It was not a new console. It was a repair for a problem the world had created around the old one. Televisions had stopped coming with the RF sockets the 1983 machine needed, and a decade of cartridges was quietly becoming unplayable.

That is why the HVC-101 is the one collectors outside Japan tend to end up wanting. It is the Famicom you can connect to a modern set without opening anything up. But easy to use is not the same as easy to buy well.

With most consoles you ask what condition it is in. With this one you ask, first, what is actually in the box.

It shipped without a power supply and without a video cable

This is not damage or loss over time. When the New Famicom went on sale, neither the AC adapter nor the AV cable was included — both were sold separately, because buyers were expected to already own a Famicom and to already have the parts. Thirty years later that assumption has become the single most common disappointment in the used market: a listing says "New Famicom," the photograph shows a console, and what arrives is a console and nothing else.

So the first question is not about condition at all. It is inventory. Read the listing for the two words that decide whether the machine works the day it lands — adapter and cable — and if neither appears, assume neither is there. A "console only" unit is a perfectly reasonable thing to buy, as long as the price reflects it and you have already worked out where the other two pieces are coming from.

The wrong adapter does not fail politely — it destroys the console

The New Famicom takes the HVC-002 adapter: DC 10V, 850mA, centre-negative. That is the same supply the Super Famicom uses, which is convenient, and it is not the supply the original 1983 Famicom used — that machine took the HVC-010, a 9V unit.

The dangerous one is the North American NES adapter, the NES-002. It looks like it belongs. It outputs alternating current, and the New Famicom expects direct current. Connecting the two can kill it instantly. If you own an NES and are tempted to reach for the adapter already on your desk, stop and read the label.

There is a second, quieter voltage question that catches importers. A genuine HVC-002 is built for Japan's 100V mains. In a 120V or 230–240V country you want either a step-down transformer or a correctly specified replacement — DC 10V, 850mA, centre-negative, rated for your own supply. Replacements are inexpensive and, given that any surviving original is now past thirty years old and may have drifted out of tolerance, often the better choice anyway.

One Super Famicom cable and you are on a modern TV

The New Famicom carries the same Multi-Out connector as the Super Famicom and the Nintendo 64, so an ordinary Super Famicom AV cable fits and works. What comes out is composite video — the yellow plug — which almost any television made in the last thirty years accepts directly, and which a cheap composite-to-HDMI converter will feed into a set that has no analogue inputs left at all. That single connector is the entire reason this model exists, and the entire reason it is sought after abroad.

Know its ceiling before you buy, though. The output is composite only — there is no S-Video and no RGB without internal modification — and the audio is mono. The red and white plugs carry the same signal; a second channel is not hiding in there. For most people this is more than enough. For anyone hoping to feed a scaler with a clean RGB signal, it is a modification project, not a purchase decision.

Sixty pins, not seventy-two

The controller ports look like an NES. The cartridge slot does not behave like one. The New Famicom takes 60-pin Japanese Famicom cartridges, and North American 72-pin NES cartridges will not physically fit. The redesign borrowed the American machine's silhouette, not its library.

Which way that cuts depends on what is already on your shelf. If you own Famicom games, this is their native home and the most pleasant one they have. If you own NES games, this is not the machine that plays them.

What the redesign quietly took away — and what it kept

A cost-reduced redesign removes things, and it is worth knowing which of them you would miss. The cartridge ejector is gone. The controllers are now detachable (model HVC-102, the rounded "dogbone" pads), which is a genuine improvement — on the original, both pads were hardwired, so a frayed cable meant a dead console. And the microphone built into the original's Player 2 controller is gone, which affects the handful of games that used it.

Two things are widely misunderstood, and both matter if you are buying with accessories in mind:

• The expansion port was not deleted — it moved. Adding two front controller ports took the space the original's front expansion connector occupied, so the 15-pin port was relocated to the right side of the case. Peripherals that connect through it, such as the Family BASIC keyboard, still work.
• The Disk System still works. You will read otherwise. The area around the cartridge slot was deliberately flattened on this model precisely so the RAM Adapter would seat properly, where the original's raised housing had made it awkward. If a Disk System is part of your plan, the machine is not the obstacle — the thirty-year-old magnetic disks are.

One real incompatibility does exist, and it is easy to miss because it is invisible from outside: although NES controllers plug in and work, the New Famicom's controller ports omit two pins (D3 and D4), so NES peripherals that depend on those lines will not function — the Zapper light gun, the Power Pad, and the Arkanoid VAUS controller among them. Famicom-side peripherals, routed through the expansion port, are unaffected.

What thirty years does to the parts

The internals are the same durable, simple design as the original — the Ricoh 2A03 and 2C02 — and the top-loading slot is mechanically straightforward. Age shows in predictable places rather than dramatic ones:

• The cartridge connector oxidises. This is far and away the most common reason a game will not load, and it is the least alarming — a cotton swab and 91%-or-higher isopropyl alcohol along the contacts usually settles it.
• The electrolytic capacitors are past their design life. The symptoms arrive slowly: a little audio distortion, some video noise, an occasional reset. Recapping is preventive maintenance here, not an emergency.
• The grey shell yellows. Every console of the era does this. It tells you about sunlight, not about function.

None of this is visible in a photograph. Someone who has opened the case, seen the board, and cleaned what needed cleaning will say so plainly — and that is difficult to fake convincingly.

Getting one out of Japan

This is an international parcel, so a few practical points are worth settling before you commit rather than after:

• Duty and tax change, so check yours rather than trust a figure. What your own country charges on used electronics arriving from Japan has moved more than once recently. Any percentage quoted on a page like this risks being out of date by the time you read it — look up your current national rules and budget for the answer you find.
• Ask what "tested" covered. The word does a lot of unearned work in listings. A meaningful test means a cartridge was actually loaded, a picture appeared on a screen, every button was pressed, and the machine ran long enough for an intermittent fault to show itself. Oxidation and tired capacitors rarely reveal themselves in five minutes.
• A declared value should be the real one. Under-declaring moves the risk onto you if the parcel is lost or inspected.
• Allow for the transit. EMS from Japan typically runs one to two weeks, with air parcel a sensible middle path.
• Photographs should be of the actual unit. A stock image tells you nothing about the machine you will receive.

The five minutes that decide it

Almost everything above collapses into a short sequence. Is the adapter included, and is it the HVC-002 rather than anything borrowed from an NES? Is there an AV cable, or do you have a Super Famicom one already? Does your television take composite, or will you need the small converter? Are both controllers present? And has the seller actually run a cartridge in it, or only confirmed that a light comes on?

Five questions, and a good seller has already answered every one of them for themselves before you asked. That is really what you are buying: not a grey box, which is common enough, but somebody's honest account of a thirty-year-old machine.