Master Malstrom –

It is possible to play any Japanese Famicom game on a regular NES, but it takes a little detective work. When the NES launched, NOA didn’t have enough carts manufactured to go with the systems, so for some of them, they took a shortcut by stuicking a Famicom cartridge board in with another board that converts it from the Famicom’s however-many pins to the NES’s 72 pins.There are a couple of games you can find these in, but Gyromite seems to be the most common one. The link below is for a guide to tell if you have a Gyromite with a Famicom converter in it without opening up the cart:

http://www.vintagecomputing.com/index.php/archives/23

If you find one of those boards, you can mount the guts of any Famicom cartridge in it and supposedly it’ll work on a regular NES. I’m pretty sure I have one of those Gyromite carts, but I lack the tools and fortitude to open it up.

Anyways, if you do manage to dig one up, I’d love to hear if it works.

This is why I love the NES because of crazy stuff like that.

I got a 10 cartridge case today along with Mike Tyson’s Punchout (no Mr. Dream here). There’s still a few priority games I’d like to get such as Ninja Gaiden, Life Force, Ducktales, Arkanoid, Qix, but that is enough for now. I started off with ten games. Now I have Twenty Seven.

I’m really getting pissed off with my NES’s 72 pin alignment. I hear getting a new one might rip out the inside of your cartridges (don’t want that). I might look into getting a third party NES clone just so I can stop messing with the lame ass pin fidgeting.