This '8-bit Xmas' NES cart makes your heart, NES glow

What was wrong with the top loader? You know that's official hardware, right?

top loader ftfw

Top loader = NES for people who couldn't afford an SNES :P (considering it came out in 1993)

*Real* NES owners blew into our dust-ridden carts to make them work and we liked it!

Yes, Darth, I know it's official hardware. I just think it's ugly as sin and makes no sense from a design perspective to have the giant NES cartridges sticking out of it like that.

And as somone mentioned below me, it was just for those who wanted to *feel* like they had an SNES at home or wanted their two consoles to match.

Good.

Warlock, i've got a front-loader, but I don't have to blow on the carts. Try rebuilding your 72-pin connector.

It makes sense from a design standpoint considering the pins on the original model get bent naturally as a result of the zero insertion force design. It may be ugly (very, very ugly) but the top loader is in all respects a better more long lasting machine.

I think actually the blowing in the cartridge thing is a bit of a misdiagnosis. What I found always worked 100% of the time was gentle wiggling of the cartridge once it had been seated in the NES.

Blowing in the cart thing was a joke. Because that's what everyone did back then, even if it was actually a very bad thing to do. The side-loader version collected dust too easily, which was a frequent cause of games that would not start. This is why blowing in the cart worked much of the time (though the danger of saliva and such getting on the chip was why it was a bad idea).

Of course, the other problem was indeed the poor pin connector which is why they made this and every future system a top-loader (snaps in cleaner). Of course, the easy fix to this was to stick Game Genie in because it had a really good pin connector on it for some reason.

Still, those of us that grew up with the NES grew up with the classic design. It's what we know and love :) Thus, it will always be the superior one (even if technically it wasn't)

The U.S. top loader does suck, there's no A/V, just RF. And the whole point of the redesign (for Japan) was to make a Famicom that had A/V ports!

Are you sure? I'm pretty sure they added A/V to the toploader. The original NES was only RF, as A/V wasn't really that common back then I believe.

Nevermind, my bad. You're right.

i have seen these things years ago

It has been available for a while, just the 'tiq is only writing a story about it now.