Well that does it. You've entertained me for months on a daily basis with these videos and reignited my passion for retro gaming. I can no longer in good conscious continue to consume without giving back so I joined your Patreon. Thanks and keep it up!
@@TopHatGamingManChannel that means you have at minimum 50 Patreons, which isn't a small number by any means. You know how many people support me financially? Myself.
Nintendo products for Japan only is truly an interesting rabbit hole to go down. Stuff like the satellite add-on for the super famicom, and disk system for the the famicom (and of course the failed DD system for the 64) show just how much effort they put into extending products life there. (and how they pretty much pushed it aside and moved on here in the states) the deeper you look into it the more it's both fascinating and infuriating. When you realize just how much content never made it out and still hasn't to this day made it out of Japan.
Such length of service amidst impracticality is par for course in Japan. I remember a story in which a train service that was supposed to be discontinued kept on because they found out that a student had been using it to go to school in another prefecture. They opted to continue the service until that student's graduation. This is one of the things I like about their culture. Of course, other entities, such as Konami and Sega don't seem to subscribe to this as they're just greedy assholes.
Or you could just save horizontal space and use a super game boy. It's not like Japan has unlimited space for everyone. I wish you thought a bit more about your comment, so vanilla.
Great video -This is one thing Ive never heard of. All those games unique to this and the Satellaview look so interesting. What an amazing idea, and ahead of its time all those things like that (and the disk system writers) were. We never get anything cool like that here in the west. I know, Europe gets even less from Nintendo, or at least did.
When this channel says "**** device that you've probably never heard of", it's likely true, unlike other channels or articles online. Joining patreon. Thanks for all the rare insights.
Man, I bet homebrewers or hardware hackers would love to get their hands on one of those. But I'm guessing very few, if any, still exist in the wild. That seems like the sort of thing that Nintendo would take back once support ended.
you have uploaded this at the perfect time since I just discovered this a month ago and wanted to know move about it. there wasn’t very useful information back then. now I see this in my recommendations, I am more than happy. And I love obscure stuff like this. subbed right away.
This reminds me, a long time ago on the japanese website nicodouga, I saw a series of videos showing the entire catalog of the Super Famicom and always caught my attention some of the games (mostly starting from ~1995) being marked as "NP release". Thanks to this video now I know that "NP" means Nintendo Power (system). Really interesting stuff
I'm just nervously looking over at my n2DS which has its entire library downloaded from the eShop. Well, I keep telling people that the 3DS still has life to it. This, I suppose, is proof I can give.
That's actually a really cool name. Imagine of the N64 had CD games and been called the Nintendo Power System. I always thought the Ultra 64 name sounded like they were compensating for something. At least the NPS would have been a familiar naming convention to people in the west.
I *have* seen the SFC writable carts before, but had no idea they did ones for the Game Boy! Love how nintendo was always trying to do something new and innovative to get games to the fans.
I do recall that Atari had done this almost 30 years prior, with a multi cart demo system for the VCS/2600. Those systems are incredibly hard to come by.
I think i heard of this device when i was looking for info about the game Fire Emblem Tracia 776. I think that was an exclusive game for the Nintendo Power System.
Sega experimented with this for the Genesis in a proposed deal with Blockbuster. It panned out before going past a few demo locations. RetroGamingHistory has a video about it.
Okay, the console logo's text is identical to the magazine's, and in one instance even features an inverse of the stripe pattern from the magazine, *but hear me out* that is Nintendo Power issue #1 Mario in the Wrecking Crew sequel! I'm just curious about the details behind all that. I know it was very common in the early days of game design in Japan for a lot of the people involved to have certain interests in Americana (usually music) and a tendency to reference and homage them in instances where they never expected things to go international. It was probably just another instance of that sort of thing, but I wonder if there ever was a plan to offer one of these to the West through one of the magazine's promotions. Remember, this was back during a time when they had exclusive pre-US-release rentals of imported N64 consoles at Blockbuster. I could easily see NP magazine offering a single NP console with a single cart for each slot, each with a pre-determined roster of games.
Hey bud, I REALLY loved your Marvel vs Capcom 2 video recently. It introduced me to your channel and I’ve been binge watching your videos. Do you have any plans to cover the SNK vs Capcom series or any of the other Capcom Vs series????
I bought tickets to the Ghibli museum at one of these kiosks in Lawson in 2007. Well, I assumed it was all built in to the same kiosk (it seemed to do several different things), but i can’t say for sure. I guess they just left that part of it in the kiosk even though Lawson wasn’t supporting it anymore?
There were actually around 26 exclusive Super Famicom games for the Nintendo Power system: * Columns * Derby Stallion 98 * Doukyuusei 2 * Dr. Mario (also released on Satellaview, but never on cartridge, same version from the western Tetris & Dr. Mario cartridge) * Famicom Bunko: Hajimari no Mori * Famicom Tantei Club Part II: Ushiro ni Tatsu Shoujo * Genjuu Ryodan * Metal Slader Glory: Director's Cut (the last ever official SFC game) * Oekaki Logic * Oekaki Logic 2 * Picross NP Vol. 1 * Picross NP Vol. 2 * Picross NP Vol. 3 * Picross NP Vol. 4 * Picross NP Vol. 5 * Picross NP Vol. 6 * Picross NP Vol. 7 * Picross NP Vol. 8 * Power Lode Runner * Ring ni Kakero * Super Famicom Wars * Super Family Gelaende * Super Punch-Out!! (only released on Nintendo Power in Japan) * Tamagotch Town * Wizardy I-II-III: Story of Llylgamyn * Zootto Mahjong!
The only video on internet about this that is some great research tophatgamingman is awesome thanks for this really cool and entertaining video so interesting topics and stories superb
Great video, dude. Thanks- I had no idea that this thing existed, and I'm now looking for roms of the exclusive games ... if there's any record of them...
I've seen the SNES cartridges in second hand stores here many times but didn't really know what they were (too lazy to google at the time). I'll pick one up next time and see if any games are still on it.
Super Punch-Out was exclusive to this service and a number of games which were previously exclusive including the fifth mainline Fire Emblem game got full retail releases in 2000.
Very interesting bit of kit. Nice to see an Acetronic make an appearance. I've got one of those. Could you do a video about the Radofin type consoles, please?
I assume you couldn't download ROMs of games that had special hardware/chips in the cartridges (the likes of Starfox and others with the variants of the SuperFX chips etc.)? Still, this seems like a really neat idea that probably could have taken off here in the US had they ever rolled it out here (I could see something like this being a big money maker for places like Blockbuster Video back in the day; they could rent games to people, and when they invariably had people wanting to buy one or more of the games they've rented in the past they could just buy blanks, get them downloaded and purchase them on the spot, assuming the titles they wanted were available through the service). It's like Steam for SNES and Gameboy games. Very cool indeed.
1:08 I had *_FOUR_* of those and they all got broken by a bunch of dumb kids slinging them around like some action movie hero did (I don't recall who they were imitating). I never was able to replace them with the exact same model, nor was I ever able to get another multitap. :( Seven games on one cartridge. Nice. Final Fantasy IV, V, VI, MQ, Mario World, Super Tetris 3, and Mario Paint.
"Reportedly, stores would also give out copies of manuals" That feels a bit ironic considering how Nintendo used this very act against Blockbuster in their quest to twart game rentals some years earlier.
The customers were buying games and not renting them. So giving a copy of the manual of the game they just purchased makes sense. In the States, whether it be renting games or movies, it became a major copyright hoohah which the publishers wanted to get bigger slices of those pies.
They were buying copies of games from Nintendo themselves (not renting), and Nintendo printed (or at least authorized the reproduction of) the manuals. Nintendo went after Blockbuster for photocopying their manuals without permission.
Japanese had and still has this amazing charisma to try so hard to hold on older values,not only on consoles & gaming but to other formats as well.The bad thing though is that not many of us could have the opportunity to see even a freaking glimpse of those quality pieces of technology.We basically learned about them with the power of the web instead.Only in japan you could find stuff like those in public places,or even using simpler stuff like the street pass that believe it or not in my region this is not possible because not many use this feature of 3Ds!
THIS is how we should do digital games... so we can have our own copies... go to a store and download games... if we are done with the game we can delete the game (at the store) or copy a game over it.
Christ...these Nintendo rare console and games video's are so painful to watch. Almost brings me to tears because I want them all. I sometimes wish I was born Japanese as it was heaven over there in the good old 16bit era. The west got stiffed big time.
Q. Is the NP SF Memory Cassette region locked? It should work on a North American machine, but would it work on a non-Hong Kong PAL console. In theory it shouldn't, but in practice why would Nintendo region lock it? Western gamers were more interested in the N64, meaning little if any demand for it, and Nintendo clearly had no intention of releasing it in the West. Plus, without the infrastructure outside of Japan to download and delete/overwrite software data, would Nintendo have considered worth any Westerner's time and trouble to even bother importing it anyway?
They actually had a service in the United States where they partnered up with certain cable providers, and pushed games directly to the Genesis console via a special cartridge that you had to connect a coaxial cable to.
Just be honest. You're creating history out of thin air. This console did not exist before your coverage. You sold your soul to the nwo to edit and add to history. I'm on to you.
![[UA] Team Vitality проти NAVI | IEM Cologne 2024](http://i.ytimg.com/vi/wttO1zVRTC0/mqdefault.jpg)
![АЛАУДИНОВ у Скабеевой: эти их ВСУ нас НЕ ДОГОНЯТ 😁 [Пародия]](http://i.ytimg.com/vi/an0anqU4WGQ/mqdefault.jpg)
Well that does it. You've entertained me for months on a daily basis with these videos and reignited my passion for retro gaming. I can no longer in good conscious continue to consume without giving back so I joined your Patreon. Thanks and keep it up!
Wahoo! Welcome to the top 0.1% who have gone the extra mile! Only 1 in every 1000 subscribers support me that way! Thank you very much!
Daniel Dal
Your welcome your videos about concoles are amazing
@@TopHatGamingManChannel will you make a video about Nintendo power systems exclusive download games?
@@TopHatGamingManChannel that means you have at minimum 50 Patreons, which isn't a small number by any means. You know how many people support me financially? Myself.
Nintendo products for Japan only is truly an interesting rabbit hole to go down.
Stuff like the satellite add-on for the super famicom, and disk system for the the famicom (and of course the failed DD system for the 64) show just how much effort they put into extending products life there. (and how they pretty much pushed it aside and moved on here in the states) the deeper you look into it the more it's both fascinating and infuriating.
When you realize just how much content never made it out and still hasn't to this day made it out of Japan.
Such length of service amidst impracticality is par for course in Japan. I remember a story in which a train service that was supposed to be discontinued kept on because they found out that a student had been using it to go to school in another prefecture. They opted to continue the service until that student's graduation. This is one of the things I like about their culture. Of course, other entities, such as Konami and Sega don't seem to subscribe to this as they're just greedy assholes.
When you uploaded a pic of it on Twitter, I literally thought it was a dev kit. I'm glad you upload content like this.
I really miss the "Wild West" nature of the 80's and 90's console gaming.
Japan has the coolest console options. The West is so vanilla.
Or you could just save horizontal space and use a super game boy. It's not like Japan has unlimited space for everyone. I wish you thought a bit more about your comment, so vanilla.
@@soulintake And yet it has all these variations. And amazing ideas. I wish you'd thought a bit more about my comment, so vanilla
@@davidjames579 I wish you had thought a bit more about your own comment
@@soulintake You said that already. But go on, why?
@@soulintake ya muthas bush is on fire
Sorry, I'm just distracted by the awesome Mystical Ninja soundtrack playing in the background
One of the best snes soundtracks
Same! It's gotta be my favorite SNES soundtrack (but I wouldn't say that within earshot of Secret of Mana...).
Dude, I remember one of those things was stuck in a convenience store ATM when I first came to Japan, in about 2006!
I had seen these cartridges on eBay but didn’t know what they were for. Good video!
Great video -This is one thing Ive never heard of. All those games unique to this and the Satellaview look so interesting. What an amazing idea, and ahead of its time all those things like that (and the disk system writers) were. We never get anything cool like that here in the west. I know, Europe gets even less from Nintendo, or at least did.
I simply admire your channel and attitude. Refined, truthful and passionate for rare retro gaming. Keep it up man!
When this channel says "**** device that you've probably never heard of", it's likely true, unlike other channels or articles online.
Joining patreon. Thanks for all the rare insights.
Thank you!
Man, I bet homebrewers or hardware hackers would love to get their hands on one of those. But I'm guessing very few, if any, still exist in the wild. That seems like the sort of thing that Nintendo would take back once support ended.
you have uploaded this at the perfect time since I just discovered this a month ago and wanted to know move about it. there wasn’t very useful information back then. now I see this in my recommendations, I am more than happy. And I love obscure stuff like this. subbed right away.
Can I just say I love these videos of obscure systems. Thank you THGM!
This reminds me, a long time ago on the japanese website nicodouga, I saw a series of videos showing the entire catalog of the Super Famicom and always caught my attention some of the games (mostly starting from ~1995) being marked as "NP release". Thanks to this video now I know that "NP" means Nintendo Power (system). Really interesting stuff
amazing piece of history! Thank you for bringing this to the youtube community
Thank you sir. Some great knowledge right here. I'll be sure to shout you out in the video I'm making about the complete history of gaming
I'm just nervously looking over at my n2DS which has its entire library downloaded from the eShop.
Well, I keep telling people that the 3DS still has life to it. This, I suppose, is proof I can give.
That's actually a really cool name. Imagine of the N64 had CD games and been called the Nintendo Power System. I always thought the Ultra 64 name sounded like they were compensating for something. At least the NPS would have been a familiar naming convention to people in the west.
I *have* seen the SFC writable carts before, but had no idea they did ones for the Game Boy! Love how nintendo was always trying to do something new and innovative to get games to the fans.
I do recall that Atari had done this almost 30 years prior, with a multi cart demo system for the VCS/2600. Those systems are incredibly hard to come by.
Glad to see you Top Hat Gaming Man!
I think i heard of this device when i was looking for info about the game Fire Emblem Tracia 776. I think that was an exclusive game for the Nintendo Power System.
It was on first release, in Sept 1999. However the game did get a standard release in Jan 2000.
Sega experimented with this for the Genesis in a proposed deal with Blockbuster. It panned out before going past a few demo locations.
RetroGamingHistory has a video about it.
Fantastic, I would definitely been "downloading" games through Nintendo Customer Service into 2007...
I remember reading about this in a Nintendo Power issue.
Nintendo Power talking about the Nintendo Power? That's meta!
Lol
9:45
That beautiful freakin japenese Saturn
Okay, the console logo's text is identical to the magazine's, and in one instance even features an inverse of the stripe pattern from the magazine, *but hear me out* that is Nintendo Power issue #1 Mario in the Wrecking Crew sequel!
I'm just curious about the details behind all that. I know it was very common in the early days of game design in Japan for a lot of the people involved to have certain interests in Americana (usually music) and a tendency to reference and homage them in instances where they never expected things to go international. It was probably just another instance of that sort of thing, but I wonder if there ever was a plan to offer one of these to the West through one of the magazine's promotions. Remember, this was back during a time when they had exclusive pre-US-release rentals of imported N64 consoles at Blockbuster. I could easily see NP magazine offering a single NP console with a single cart for each slot, each with a pre-determined roster of games.
Hey bud, I REALLY loved your Marvel vs Capcom 2 video recently. It introduced me to your channel and I’ve been binge watching your videos. Do you have any plans to cover the SNK vs Capcom series or any of the other Capcom Vs series????
While you where jabbering on about something or the other I was over here dancing to your background music.
I bought tickets to the Ghibli museum at one of these kiosks in Lawson in 2007. Well, I assumed it was all built in to the same kiosk (it seemed to do several different things), but i can’t say for sure. I guess they just left that part of it in the kiosk even though Lawson wasn’t supporting it anymore?
I remember these as a kid. I would love to play Fire Emblem again.
There were actually around 26 exclusive Super Famicom games for the Nintendo Power system:
* Columns
* Derby Stallion 98
* Doukyuusei 2
* Dr. Mario (also released on Satellaview, but never on cartridge, same version from the western Tetris & Dr. Mario cartridge)
* Famicom Bunko: Hajimari no Mori
* Famicom Tantei Club Part II: Ushiro ni Tatsu Shoujo
* Genjuu Ryodan
* Metal Slader Glory: Director's Cut (the last ever official SFC game)
* Oekaki Logic
* Oekaki Logic 2
* Picross NP Vol. 1
* Picross NP Vol. 2
* Picross NP Vol. 3
* Picross NP Vol. 4
* Picross NP Vol. 5
* Picross NP Vol. 6
* Picross NP Vol. 7
* Picross NP Vol. 8
* Power Lode Runner
* Ring ni Kakero
* Super Famicom Wars
* Super Family Gelaende
* Super Punch-Out!! (only released on Nintendo Power in Japan)
* Tamagotch Town
* Wizardy I-II-III: Story of Llylgamyn
* Zootto Mahjong!
NP was in fact available in the UK; just costly as hell. £6 or more per issue, IIRC.
I really enjoy this series! Good job Mr. Top Hat sir!!!!
American youtubers only talk about Nintendo, and then TopHatGamingMan brings up a Nintendo product they didn’t know about!
This is Lairds Lair Level niche. Almost......
Nintendo Power magazine was in the UK too (I had a subscription!)
The only video on internet about this that is some great research tophatgamingman is awesome thanks for this really cool and entertaining video so interesting topics and stories superb
i have seen the cartridges on UA-cam before,but the photos they used for kiosks were different
love the legend of the mystical ninja music in the back ground!
I believe one day Top Hat will find a rare Sinclair spectrum from the early 80s that had a disc drive and it can play ps1,2,3 and ps4 games
Great video, dude. Thanks- I had no idea that this thing existed, and I'm now looking for roms of the exclusive games ... if there's any record of them...
I read about it back in the day in a GErman magazine
I've seen the SNES cartridges in second hand stores here many times but didn't really know what they were (too lazy to google at the time). I'll pick one up next time and see if any games are still on it.
Super Punch-Out was exclusive to this service and a number of games which were previously exclusive including the fifth mainline Fire Emblem game got full retail releases in 2000.
Amazing! Never heard of this before. Kudos, great work!
Excellent content - Never seen this console on UA-cam before 👍
Having an eclusive uncovered console review.. again.. Top notch..
Very interesting bit of kit.
Nice to see an Acetronic make an appearance. I've got one of those. Could you do a video about the Radofin type consoles, please?
What’s that Mecha fighting game at 6:44? It looks incredible.
gundam wing
Imagine if one could design a custom Super Famicom with a built-in Super Game Boy unit.
Does it play the games or only write them to the blank cartridges?
I assume you couldn't download ROMs of games that had special hardware/chips in the cartridges (the likes of Starfox and others with the variants of the SuperFX chips etc.)? Still, this seems like a really neat idea that probably could have taken off here in the US had they ever rolled it out here (I could see something like this being a big money maker for places like Blockbuster Video back in the day; they could rent games to people, and when they invariably had people wanting to buy one or more of the games they've rented in the past they could just buy blanks, get them downloaded and purchase them on the spot, assuming the titles they wanted were available through the service). It's like Steam for SNES and Gameboy games. Very cool indeed.
I’ve just subscribed, keep up the good work
0:41 When he @s Nintendrew so hard
1:08 I had *_FOUR_* of those and they all got broken by a bunch of dumb kids slinging them around like some action movie hero did (I don't recall who they were imitating). I never was able to replace them with the exact same model, nor was I ever able to get another multitap. :(
Seven games on one cartridge. Nice. Final Fantasy IV, V, VI, MQ, Mario World, Super Tetris 3, and Mario Paint.
Gaming historian has left the chat
I love Lawson! My fav combini!
A system I never heard of. I owned all consoles since the NES.... This one? Dammit. Thanks. Now I gotta spend about a grand now.
what is the game at 5:42 with the blue link look alike?
Can I come to your gaff for a gaming night please mate? I'll bring an N64 controller :)
"Reportedly, stores would also give out copies of manuals"
That feels a bit ironic considering how Nintendo used this very act against Blockbuster in their quest to twart game rentals some years earlier.
The customers were buying games and not renting them. So giving a copy of the manual of the game they just purchased makes sense. In the States, whether it be renting games or movies, it became a major copyright hoohah which the publishers wanted to get bigger slices of those pies.
They were buying copies of games from Nintendo themselves (not renting), and Nintendo printed (or at least authorized the reproduction of) the manuals. Nintendo went after Blockbuster for photocopying their manuals without permission.
The difference is buying the game vs renting it. Also, game rentals were (and still are) illegal in Japan.
Japanese had and still has this amazing charisma to try so hard to hold on older values,not only on consoles & gaming but to other formats as well.The bad thing though is that not many of us could have the opportunity to see even a freaking glimpse of those quality pieces of technology.We basically learned about them with the power of the web instead.Only in japan you could find stuff like those in public places,or even using simpler stuff like the street pass that believe it or not in my region this is not possible because not many use this feature of 3Ds!
Ashens meets avgn damn bro you got a sub
i thought i knew about every system ever released. cool to see i was wrong
How can you stand your ears been pushed down by the hat. That would drive me crazy
THIS is how we should do digital games... so we can have our own copies... go to a store and download games... if we are done with the game we can delete the game (at the store) or copy a game over it.
What are the connections on the back of the unit
Do you remember "the gaming historian "????me neither....subscription achieved my good sir.
Wow. So this wasn't really a console at all? I was left wondering where you'd plug in controllers this whole time :P
Top Hat Gaming Man? I came here for a video from #BigDaddyTopHat!
Christ...these Nintendo rare console and games video's are so painful to watch. Almost brings me to tears because I want them all. I sometimes wish I was born Japanese as it was heaven over there in the good old 16bit era. The west got stiffed big time.
Awesome video
Q. Is the NP SF Memory Cassette region locked? It should work on a North American machine, but would it work on a non-Hong Kong PAL console. In theory it shouldn't, but in practice why would Nintendo region lock it? Western gamers were more interested in the N64, meaning little if any demand for it, and Nintendo clearly had no intention of releasing it in the West. Plus, without the infrastructure outside of Japan to download and delete/overwrite software data, would Nintendo have considered worth any Westerner's time and trouble to even bother importing it anyway?
Did Sega ever offer a similar service for the Master System, Genesis (sorry a yank here), or Game Gear?
They actually had a service in the United States where they partnered up with certain cable providers, and pushed games directly to the Genesis console via a special cartridge that you had to connect a coaxial cable to.
upvoted because Goemon!
So... they quit the service once they wanted to sell Virtual Console games?
If you don't know top hat gaming man, I'm british too
Hi nice video
you should do a video on the us army macs super Nintendo
system
Anyone know what the tune is that starts around 3:20?
Nice video
What is the game shown at 5:43? The character has blonde hair and is in blue....
Legend od Sugma
@@maxpaxe5677 Thanks - I can't find that anywhere though...
It's Magical Pop'n
Mike H Thanks!!!!
Is THGM single? He’s not bad looking with his his well trimmed beard.
He is married to Lady Decade
Are tophats supposed to fold your ears at 90°?
Any gb play videos
Did you used to have a channel called game hut?
Nope!
Can you look at the first Mario RPG game🍄🐢
Yeah!!! 😜🎮
Wtf was that tv console thing? Make a video on that
Famicom Box
5:43 what is this game?
Just be honest. You're creating history out of thin air. This console did not exist before your coverage. You sold your soul to the nwo to edit and add to history. I'm on to you.
LightBlue2222 never seen this system either until this video
With the rate at which you're going there will be nothing left for the rest of us to talk about!
wow!
What's the game @ 4:56 ?
Peacekeepers for Super Nintendo
@@DennisAlexioAndyHug Thank you so much. Much appreciated.
@@pappagetti there are 2 prequels to this game on the Super Nintendo, Rival Turf is part 1 and Brawl Brothers is part 2
Games at 3:13 and 5:42 are...? Thanks in advance, fam.
Please, can someone tell me whta game is it on 2:59 :)
1:40 ok diddy calm down and put that thing away. Somebody needs a nice cold shower.