Famicom Disk System

Summary

The Famicom Disk System is a floppy disk drive for the Famicom. It provides more storage, which was also possible on cartridges in 1986 but expensive. Disks allow games to save progress and are cheaper to manufacture. Players could buy disks at special kiosks, usually in toy shops, have a game written onto them and later overwrite them with another title.

The disk system uses its own floppy format, the imprinted Nintendo lettering acts as a (cautiously effective) protection against pirate copies. Nintendo temporarily sees the future of Famicom in disk format, important games like The Legend of Zelda or Metroid appear first for the disk system.

The already error-prone technology became obsolete in the year after release, as cartridge memory became cheaper and cartridges with battery-backed save functions were developed.