Talk:Famiclone

Merger proposal
I propose that the articles about Generation NEX, Playervision, Power Player Super Joy III, Polystation, and PocketFami as well as all similar articles about NES hardware clones is merged into the existing Nintendo Entertainment System hardware clone article. Gamester17 (talk) 13:15, 7 January 2013 (UTC)

I don't like that idea. It's good that every system has its own article. Besides, some clones are better than others (for example the NEX), so… nah, don't do it. — Preceding unsigned comment added by 95.178.13.12 (talk) 15:52, 25 March 2015 (UTC)


 * I'd recomment Merge for those deviced not independently notable; for example, for PocketFami the only reference is a press release, which is not sufficient to establish notability. Klbrain (talk) 16:05, 3 August 2016 (UTC)
 * Having said that ... Power Player Super Joy III is arguably notable because of successful convictions involving its sale in the US (copyright infringement). Given that this is very stale, I'll remove the template from that page (only). Klbrain (talk) 22:38, 5 August 2016 (UTC)

Discussion
Maybe I'm missing something, but what on earth is "The most common software-level incompatibility is the lack of CMOS backup memory, causing the few games that use it to fail when trying to save or load data" about? The NES/Famicom never had any built-in backup, it was strictly on a per-cartridge basis. — Preceding unsigned comment added by 50.33.55.25 (talk) 20:18, 11 September 2011 (UTC)
 * I've clarified it a bit. The issue is that some consoles have built-in games that are capable of saving. However, they don't have any SRAM to store status, so it's impossible to save. Socram8888 (talk) 10:55, 27 July 2013 (UTC)

Patents
It'd be nice if someone included information on some of the higher quality Famiclones, such as Gametech's NeoFami and PokeFami, and the other sought-after handheld clones like the Game Theory Admiral (you gotta love that name! ^_^). I haven't used them and don't know too much about them. Also, did I hear somewhere that it's legal to make Famiclones now, due to the expiry of the original's patents or something? --Zilog Jones 17:54, 1 Apr 2005 (UTC)

The Famicom was introduced in 1983; patents last 17 years from when they were issued (later changed to 20 years from when they were filed). So the patents should have expired.

(I haven't added this to the article because it's always possible there's some weird situation in Japan which may make the 17 year figure wrong, but it's close.) Ken Arromdee 18:41, 19 August 2005 (UTC)

Take a look here:http://www.gamasutra.com/features/20051111/boyd_01.shtml In summary, expired patents don't necessarily make copying the design legal. That article references this wikipedia article as an example. I'm going to edit to reflect the situation more accurately.84.43.1.92 23:33, 11 November 2005 (UTC)

Do not wade into the patent issue unless you practice patent law, or have spent a reasonable amount of time studying it. You cannot determine when a patent expires merely by looking at when a product covered by that patent was introduced. In short, a number of the patents on the NES have not expired, including patents covering the cartridge authentication system, which do not expire until January 24, 2006. Obviously, a truly legal clone would not need a cartridge authentication system, but the patents cited in the Gamasutra article also suggest that there are claims on a controller (the basic controller?) that are still in force. Note: I do not trust the GamaSutra article. It is clearly a P.R. piece that provides nothing of analytical value. What patents are marked on the system? When do those patents expire? Why does the article fail to mention that design patents only protect the ornamental design of a product, and are trivial to design around? DrWitty 00:27, 12 November 2005 (UTC)

Twin Famicom
I've removed the twin famicom from the clone list, as it is a legitimate piece of Nintendo/Sharp hardware. Kufat 18:46, 14 January 2006 (UTC)

Brazil
I added the section Brazil. Here, we never saw a original and genuine NES console, since 1989/1990 we ever played with national manufactured clones with the Nintendo license. I don't know why Gradiente or Dynacom don't embeded the Nintendo Seal of Quality in their cartridges, but only your corporate logos. Thanks

Original content in sections 2 and 4.2
I rewrote sections 2 and 4.2 of the article, following is the original.

S. 2: Since 1989, the Nintendo consoles was manufactured and released in Brazil by national holders with proper cartridges and techinal support. The first NES based system (1989) was Dynavision made by Dynacom and used Japanese slot cartridge. Top Game was manufactured by CCE and released in 1990, using American slot cartridge. BitSystem (with the same American NES design), was manufactured by extinct Cougar. The Phantom System was released by Gradiente in 1991 and the most notable console in the market - and a controversial joystick that was a clone of Mega Drive. In 1993 Nintendo arrives officially in Brazil and launching the official NES with same American design.

S. 4.2: will rewrite later due to time constraints.

Family Game
In Argentina, as i recall from my childhood, most kids had what was known as "Family Game", which used some cartridges that as far as i know, weren't compatible with NES games, although what was available was exactly the same you could get in the original NES, only with misleading names, such as "Mario 6" or even ridiculous names as "Mario 14", being a rip-off of looney toons game, with Mario embedded in the game, having awful integration and causing mario to get stuck in different places.

Well... does anybody know anything about this "family game" clone? I'll try and get a snapshot of my long abandoned system.
 * If the cartridges weren't NES-compatible, they probably used the 60-pin Famicom connector. In this case, a simple 60-72 pin adapter would allow you to play these games on a NES, and the opposite adapter would allow the reverse. From the name, I'd guess its design is a copy of the Famicom. It would be good to get a picture of a Famicom-looking clone. boffy_b 13:53, 4 August 2006 (UTC)

A friend of mine has a Family Game, and yes, it's actually a Famicom clone, the design is quite similar to that of a Famicom. Also note that in Argentina, "Family Game" is a synonym for Famiclone, since people keep calling any Famiclone a "Family Game" in Argentina. Japan became a first-world country after a bomb wiped out everyone. We Argentinians only managed to get two dictatorships and 10 million of poor people since WWII. 21:41, 5 January 2007 (UTC)

Famiclones in India
I am adding two of the systems I grew up with in the 90s in India because after reading this article I realised they must have been Famiclones since I played many Nintendo copyrighted games on them available on their own custom cartridges. These two systems are the WizKid and Little Master.

221.135.244.56 22:45, 4 July 2006 (UTC)


 * Are there clones of other consoles (Genesis, PlayStation, SNES, etc.)? If so, can we have articles on these too? --24.154.173.243 16:11, 2 December 2006 (UTC)

Pandamar
i wanna get pandamar, where can u find it? —The preceding unsigned comment was added by 165.173.124.91 (talk) 21:56, 10 January 2007 (UTC).

Compatibility issues
I saw this posted somewhere else and thought it might relevant here as well:

"I'll hold off adding this unless if anyone else confirms the problems, but on my FC Twin, Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles Arcade and Super Punch Out seem to play fine, but L'Empereur, which is good shape and played in a regular NES, doesn't want to play in my FC Twin. If anyone else can verify that this or other games are incompatible, I think we should create an incompatible list. Sincerely, --Le Grand Roi des Citrouilles 21:12, 12 January 2007 (UTC)"

Best. --24.154.173.243 18:51, 13 January 2007 (UTC)


 * It's not our place to create our own list of incompatible games: that's original research. However, if someone else has created a list of incompatible games, we could cite that (although it would probably not be useful to list them all). --Sopoforic 20:33, 18 January 2007 (UTC)


 * There is an incompatibility list for another NES clone at http://www.playmessiah.com/products/nex/compatibilitylist.htm and this list has L'empereur on it, so maybe the clones just don't play that game? Anyway, perhaps this and other lists can be used as a verifiable basis that is not original research of games with combatibility issues on clones.  I also read on another talk page that the BatterUp device doesn't want to play on the FC Twin as well.  Cheers, --164.107.223.217 02:04, 30 January 2007 (UTC)

Notability of particular clones
I think that we ought to merge some of the separate articles on the clones into this one, since they are, many of them, unreferenced, and contain little more than a very brief description and a list of games available on it. I don't doubt that a couple of them are probably notable enough for their own articles but most of them are almost certainly not. I'd recommend merging in any of those systems that have some distinguishing characteristic, and just deleting the rest. Let me know what you think. --Sopoforic 20:39, 18 January 2007 (UTC)

Notable pirated games
These are one of the most famous pirated games widely available in Eastern Europe:


 * Tetris (Tengen version)
 * Battle City (there also known as 'Tank' or 'Tanks') - In some parts of the former Soviet countries, Battle City was as widely known as Super Mario.
 * Lunar Pool

Add more if there are any. --Artman40 17:06, 26 May 2007 (UTC)
 * There's really a whole bunch of them, and most of them are first gen games like Super Mario Bros or a crapton of first-gen footies. Daley Thompson's decathlon is also quite common, also because it's usually split in 6 different "games" thus blowing the game count up with little effort. These things are already mentioned in the main article. EpiVictor 07:22, 11 June 2007 (UTC)

76,000 games clone
There's a controller clone shaped like a Nintendo 64 controller, complete with dummy analog stick that doesn't move. It has a battery box for four AA cells that snaps into where the N64 memory card fits on a real controller. Just behind that is a Famicom slot, but to use it the unit must be opened up and the onboard game ROM disabled. On the front are an AC adaptor jack, power switch, RCA audio (mono) and composite video jacks. There's also a DB-9 port for connecting a second controller, shaped like a SEGA Genesis 6-button model, with a stubby stick to screw into a threaded brass insert in the D-Pad. It also includes a quite realistic looking lightgun, styled like a small 9mm automatic handgun.

The games memu has 76,000 games listed but in actuality it only has 76 games with 1,000 minor variations of each one.
 * 76 built-in distinct games is actually quite a good count: finding anything with over 50 distinct games is rare, nowadays. The most common thing is finding some "20 in 1"s where 6 of the games are Daley Thompsons Decathlon Events, Three of them are "Duck Hunt 1", "Duck Hunt 2", and "Clay Shooting", "Hogan's alley" and some other such random crap. At least there are cartridges which have e.g. Contra 1 and Contra 2. EpiVictor 07:24, 11 June 2007 (UTC)

I know this. It is called Power Player Super Joy III. —Preceding unsigned comment added by Junkcops (talk • contribs) 23:42, 13 November 2008 (UTC)

Labeling
Would Labeling the clones with types using letters for each type of clone and have an abrev. key? Or Sorting them into different sections please? (e.g. CNS, HH, COM, CNTR) —Preceding unsigned comment added by 172.133.130.7 (talk) 14:35, 8 September 2007 (UTC)

Fair use rationale for Image:Pocket-famicom.jpg
Image:Pocket-famicom.jpg is being used on this article. I notice the image page specifies that the image is being used under fair use but there is no explanation or rationale as to why its use in this Wikipedia article constitutes fair use. In addition to the boilerplate fair use template, you must also write out on the image description page a specific explanation or rationale for why using this image in each article is consistent with fair use.

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BetacommandBot (talk) 05:18, 21 January 2008 (UTC)

Original Research
Lots of missing soures here ... I suspect some of this is original research (I love NES as much as the next guy, but we need some source citations here!) Splat215 (talk) 03:03, 17 August 2008 (UTC)

This might help a little bit... http://ultimateconsoledatabase.com/famiclones.htm —Preceding unsigned comment added by 69.145.252.149 (talk) 12:57, 18 April 2011 (UTC)

Sales
I would like to expand the article with sales information - maybe someone has a suggestion for references?--Kozuch (talk) 20:53, 10 February 2009 (UTC)

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Requested move 16 August 2021

 * The following is a closed discussion of a requested move. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made in a new section on the talk page. Editors desiring to contest the closing decision should consider a move review after discussing it on the closer's talk page. No further edits should be made to this section. 

Nintendo Entertainment System hardware clone → Famiclone – These are widely known as "Famiclones" given the fact, that if not all, then most are Famicom hardware clones. I have seen no one name them "NES hardware clones" just because that's what the "western world" calls its equivalent. The current title is also unnecessarily long. Vipz (talk) 01:31, 16 August 2021 (UTC)

The discussion above is closed. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made on the appropriate discussion page. No further edits should be made to this discussion.
 * Support per nominator's argument. LK (talk) 08:27, 16 August 2021 (UTC)
 * Support per nom, per WP:COMMONNAME.ZXCVBNM (TALK) 10:48, 16 August 2021 (UTC)
 * Support per nom. PolarManne (talk) 16:55, 18 August 2021 (UTC)

Playpower
The picture for the Playpower is actually a Chinese Bootleg Console/Educational computer, the Subor SB-978. It baffles me how this went unnoticed, having it literally printed on the thing, with chinese text all over the thing when the Playpower was supposed to release in India according to its article.

After looking into it for a while, I noticed that they were "not trying to design a new computer. We're trying to maximize the educational value of what's already available in the market." (http://playpower.pbworks.com/w/page/17230477/About%20the%20$10%20Computer%20and%20Playpower) Hoever, all the playpower pictures I could find are different models of Subor machines. So I'd argue to go with the actual name of the machine instead of the name of the orginazation that reused those famiclones for educational purposes.

For reference check https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Subor and/or look for Subor (or 小霸王 as the brand was called in China before they went defunct) on the net in general. Jackie Chan even did commercials for another variation of the thing for a while. 2A02:8108:16C0:2B11:607E:9F82:59D5:E0C2 (talk) 17:36, 19 July 2023 (UTC)