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Accessories & Add-ons
Way back in 1996 I stumbled upon a japanese webpage about the Family Basic released in Japan, a device that would let you make your own mini games for the Famicom, and you were even able to store your work on a cassette tape, oh my! This is an english tra
On February 21 - 1986, after two major delays, Nintendo was ready to launch a new product in Japan, an add-on piece of hardware for their extremely successful Family Computer, better known as Famicom. The new product was called Famicom Disk System, and wo
a very nice gimmick, the Famicom Gameboy Adapter, but it's not really much more than that. Today we have so many options to play Gameboy games on the big screen, being emulators, various aftermarket consoles with Gameboy support and so on.
The Datach Joint Rom System is an accessory for the Famicom released in its late years. The gadget was released with a game pack-in, a game spin off from the popular Dragon Ball Z series, and that choice was most likely made to make the Datach attractive.
Released by Fukutake Publishing, now known as Benesse Corporation, a company that specializes in educational material for schools and such. The device sits on top of the Famicom unit and is pretty much a cassette tape player, meaning it reads the Famicom
The Aladdin Deck Enhancer is basicly a cartridge split in two where all the generic components in one part and another smaller part, called Aladdin Compact Cartridge, contains only the ROM chip - but really nothing more than a marketing gimmick.
Codemasters and Camerica were quite a team back in the day, while Codemasters was cranking out hardware and accessory oddity after oddity mixed with games, Camerica was first in line to announce that they would be distributing Codies work...
A finnish guy by the name of Arto Hatanpää had the very same idea of building a flash cartridge for the Nintendo Entertainment System. The result of his hard work became the NESFunkyFlash cart and while the idea basicly was the same as Parker's PowerPak,
The Game Action Replay, a save state for the Nintendo Entertainment System with one major flaw, it didn't fit!
The GameKey was packed with a UK or American game and was sold for 200 Dkr, which is around US$25.
Quite an odd name for a company, oh well. Actually I'm not sure if this is the first or second version of the GameKey, but an alternate version of the adaptor is available, looking quite different.
This device would allow players to aqquire all sorts of cheats before playing a game, like invulnerbility, infinite lives, infinite energy, maybe even a level select or maybe even access to levels that wasn't supposed to exist.
Around 1995 a Danish postal order company called "CAT Computer", later Scandinavian Computer Club, was unloading American NES games in special lots they called "NES Happy Packs". To be able to play the games, this adapter was included with every purchase.
The very first NES flash cart to hit the market. At the time it was an impressive achievement and it still deserves some recognition to this day.
While both American and Europe already had seen the release of the GameGenie, with fairly great success too, Datel wanted a piece of the action too..
The Teleplay System was invented by Baton Technologies back in 1992 both for the NES and Sega Genesis (Megadrive), but released in August 1993. An SNES version was set to be available in December 1993
This adapter does wonders, that is if you want to play American N64 games on a Japanese console or vice versa. What this basicly does is bypass a couple of tabs at the bottom of the cartridge slot in the N64 console.
Datel managed to make a 4mbit memory pak which would increase the storage 16 times compared to the original Nintendo64 Controller Pak.
So this is a trainer cartridge of some sort that most likeyly requires a special PC program to function, search for Trainable objects within the game attached to the backside of the orange thing.
Game Killer was going to offer a unique use of "Smart Cards" with updates and it would offer built-in cheats that would enable for levels to be skipped, highscores to be reached easily, assists in finding hidden characters and so on.
What the GameBooster is that it allows you to play Gameboy games on your Nintendo. Cool! you might say, this is a Super Gameboy for the N64. Well that is partly true, the gadget does indeed play Gameboy games, but only the old, so forget all about the GBC
It seems that EMS in Hong Kong sub-licensed the Game Booster and rebranded it as the GB Hunter. This device is basicly the NTSC variant of the Game Booster as it's only available with NTSC video mode.
The N64 had quite a few cheat/converter devices made for it and one was the N64 Action Replay. But even though it's using the Action Replay name, it actually has no relation to Datel who owns the Action Replay brand, instead this thing was the work of EMS
The Peerless system was capable of being adapted to pretty much anything, and as such Iomega had made an N64 version that, beside the "we did it because we could" factor, didn't really serve any purpose.
Anyway the N64 Passport was born and as an improvement to the existing product, the Passport was capable of region conversion, meaning that American/Japanese games would run on a European Nintendo 64 and vice versa.
Yet again the Action Replay/Passport received a revision, now to be called N64 Passport Plus. Most noticeably is the return of the Controller Pak manager from the initial release as an "Action Replay".
What we have is a cheat device for the Asian market, basicly called "Video Game Enhancer" unless the chinese writing (I'm guessing) on the box says something else.
The SharkByte Keycards were yet another batch of products made by InterAct Accessories, using the GameShark brand to promote a range of controllerpaks with game saves preloaded.
The SharkWire was a device developed by UK based Datel, mostly known for their Action Replay brand. But the SharkWire was only sold in America, by Interact Accessories.
Here's another adapter, or converter if you wish, which will allow you to play American N64 games on a European N64 console, or vice versa.
The Ultimate Cheat Cartridge, is now available for the N64. Preloaded with the hottest cheats, the Xplorer 64 brings new life to old games. Contains all the cheat codes you have come to expect from us such as slide-codes, super-codes, skip codes and maste
The Advanced Game Port from Datel is an updated version of the Gamebooster device, which previously graced the Nintendo 64 and Playstation. While the Nintendo GameBoy Player actually contained the important hardware of a GBA for the best compatibility
The device sits, in this case, between the Gameboy and the Game cartridge, allowing you to modify the data flowing between the cartridge and the handheld as mentioned. It allows you to enter up to 4 codes.