Super Famicom

Connecting to a TV/monitor

The Super Famicom is compatible with the N64/Gamecube A/V lead but make sure your TV/monitor/capture card supports NTSC-J signal.

Accessories

Nintendo Power Cartridge

Cartridge games at the time of the Super Famicom were very expensive so Nintendo sought to make games available to customers at a lower price which they had already been successful with back in the Famicom days with the Famicom Disk System. But rather than go down the disk route again, Nintendo devised a flash based cartridge and associated service known as Nintendo Power which began in late 1996 (some sites list the start date as September 30, 1997 others December 1997) and kept going until 28th February 2007, only available in Japan. A similar service was also provided for the Game Boy, the Game Boy Nintendo Power, and was available from March 2000.

Although the service was released late in the Super Famicom’s life (and is also true for the Game Boy version) you have to consider that many people at the time would still have the old consoles and would continue to buy games for it especially with the appeal of cheaper games. By providing the service Nintendo could keep its customers happy while preparing to bring in the new generation of Nintendo consoles.

A Power Cartridge (a.k.a. SF Memory Cassette) could be purchased from select convenience stores and then games could be downloaded to it using a Nintendo Power writer machine also available at the store and a printed copy of each game manual were also provided. This approach saved money compared to the cost of a typical standard game cartridge of the time with even more savings on the older titles which were the cheapest. In total there were 150 games available for the Power cartridge, 20 of which were exclusive to the service and 130 which you could also buy in normal cartridge form (at higher cost, of course) but there was no support for games that used enhancement chips such as the Super FX.

It looks like there was also a service to send off a blank cart to Nintendo and inform them what game(s) you wanted by filling in a form:

https://web.archive.org/web/20070224182402/http://www.nintendo.co.jp/n03/riyou/index.html

From that page you can find an online form to select games and make the application form to then be printed off:

https://web.archive.org/web/20070223022928/http://www.nintendo.co.jp/n03/riyou/mosikomi/sf.html

The Nintendo website also has a listing of the games that were available for the Nintendo Power service with the original prices and the number of 'F' and 'B' blocks each game takes up. You can click on the game title links to be taken to a page where you can read a brief summary of the game and PDF link with more information about the game. The link:

https://web.archive.org/web/20070128115746/http://www.nintendo.co.jp/n03/sf/index.html

A Power cartridge writer, supporting both the Super Famicom and Game Boy versions can be seen at:

https://consolevariations.com/variation/kiosk/nintendo-power-writer-kiosk

A downside of the Nintendo Power is that due to the limited capacity of the flash cartridge you could easily run out of space and be forced to overwrite a game you had already paid for should you want more games.

You may want to check out the video I did on the Power Cartridge before reading further:

As seen in the above video stickers are included for writing the name of the games you have purchased and can then be placed on the seven spaces on the front of the cartridge; there are 6 large stickers (takes up two spaces horizontally on the cart) and 8 smaller stickers (each takes up 1 space). Additionally, you get an AC adapter warning leaflet, which may seem an odd inclusion but perhaps it wasn't originally given with Super Famicom consoles and now was a good opportunity since anyone buying the Power Cartridge would have the console. Another item in the box is what appears to be a receipt that shows the cost of the 2 purchased games (2,000 yen) so possibly it's a printout from a Power Cartridge Writer and an instruction manual. The instruction manual lists the controls for operating the game select menu whether using a controller or a mouse (as mouse games are supported) and amongst other details confirms that you must power the console off and on again to select a different game as reset will only start you back at the beginning of the game you selected rather than back to the game select screen.

When the cartridge boots we are greeted with a start-up screen (see below) and we hear the familiar Mario coin collect sound, which is a nice touch.

You are then taken to the game select screen (your screen may vary depending what games you have) where you can select a game using controller d-pad up/down (or mouse up/down) and start it by pressing the A or Start button (or mouse left-click):

At the bottom of the screen green text scrolls instructing the user to select a game using the d-pad and start it by pressing the A button.

As I bought my Nintendo Power cartridge second hand from ebay I found that it has Super Mario Collection (known as Super Mario All-Stars outside Japan) and Super Mario World on it and included in the box was what appears to be a receipt which, with a bit of Google translating, shows that it's for the purchase of the two games previously mentioned. As there were a number of games exclusive to the Nintendo Power service the cartridge can demand a high price second hand should it contain a rare game.

At the bottom of the screen there are 8 'F' blocks (1 block is 512KB) which are the total number of available game blocks (games are rounded up in capacity) as well as 16 'B' blocks which are the blocks that the loaded games can use for saving game progress (1 block occupies 2KB), and the remaining 'F' and 'B' blocks are highlighted. The game select screen uses a game block (the rightmost block) and there can be a maximum of 7 games including the menu or 1 very high capacity game without the menu, in which case booting the cart causes the game to load immediately. If you select a game and press and hold controller X (or mouse right-click), a number of 'F' and 'B' blocks flash, indicating how many the selected games uses.

As Super Mario Collection uses 4 'F' blocks and 4 'B' blocks, Super Mario World uses 1 'F' block and 1 'B block', as well as the menu using 1 'F' block that is why in the screenshot above there are 2 'F' blocks and 11 'B' blocks remaining.

For reference, here is the title screen for Super Mario Collection:

And the Super Mario World title screen:

Somewhat annoyingly, when you are playing a game, pressing reset on the Super Famicom returns you to the game you selected rather than to the game select screen which requires you to power off the Super Famicom and on again.

Although there is no longer an official service to write games to the Power Cartridge there is still the possibility to do the same thing with modern equipment. The following site discusses how it could be done:

https://forums.nesdev.org/viewtopic.php?f=12&t=11453

The second page shows the internals of the cart from which we can see two versions, one with a PCB labelled as SHVC-MMS-02 and the other SHVC-MMS-X1 but both have the same main components which include:

MX29F1601MC-11C3 16Mb parallel flash memory x2 (space for additional flash chip) forming the total 32Mb.

Nintendo F411B CIC lockout chip.

MegaChips MX15001TFC Unknown, possibly handles communication with the cart writer.

710134B Labelled as MM1134 on the board. Battery controller.

SEC KM62256CLG-7L 32KB SRAM.

CR2032 battery for SRAM game saves.

There are also various test points.

The thread I previously linked to started in 2014 and hasn't been updated since 2020 but during that time a program and interface was created for both the Game Boy and Super Famicom versions of the Power Cartridge to read and write to them. For convenience, here is the link to the SF Power Cart writer:

https://github.com/moldov31337/SF-Memory-Binary-Maker

More technical information about the Power cart:

http://problemkaputt.de/fullsnes.htm#snescartnintendopowerflashcard

At the time of writing this article I could only find 2 other videos on the Nintendo Power Cartridge, which are as follows:

SuFami Turbo

The SuFami Turbo is a Super Famicom accessory from Bandai released in 1996 that allowed for cheaper and quicker means to produce cartridge games by use of an adapter.

Now to have a look at an example game for the SuFami Turbo: SD Gundam Generation: Babylonia Kenkoku Senki (a.k.a. SD Gundam: Generations Part 4 or SD Gundam: Generations Part D), released August 23, 1996 in Japan only. It is a one player game that is part of six games in the series, featuring Super Deformed (SD) Gundam in a turn-based strategy game.

The title screen:

Other screens:

For a playthrough of this game why not check out this video:

If you are interested in having a look at the other games available for the SuFami Turbo then this video has them all:

Successor

The Nintendo 64, released in 1996 in Japan and North America, and 1997 in Europe and Australia, succeeded the Super Famicom and SNES. You can read more about it on my page Nintendo 64.

All content of this and related pages is copyright (c) James S. 2021-2022