Been wanting a NES for a minute. Decided on buying myself a toploading unit for my 40th birthday this year. The American NES toploaders were too pricey, but the Famicom AV was much more affordable and with the bonus of AV instead of RF only like the US model. Just by coincidence I bought Mario Bros as my first Famicom game since that was the cheapest, best quality game I could afford and it just seemed right to make it the first Famicom game I owned. But after I purchased it it dawned on me that it was delightfully appropriate to buy Mario Bros on it's 40th anniversary as my 40th birthday present this year :D
Looking forward to grabbing an Everdrive when I have the cash and really getting down and dirty with it. I have a whole bunch of homebrew and hacks I'm itching to play.
At the time, if you bought a new US toploader then complained to Nintendo about the video quality, they would replace it with a revision with no jailbars. There's also a very rare US toploader with the composite AV port and no jailbars!
https://consolemods.org/wiki/NES:NES_Model_Differences
It's baffling to me why the toploader didn't have AV ports in the first place. Hell, the US NES had them, I don't see why they went with RF only on the first release. I wasn't even aware of that fact until I looked into getting one, I always assumed the NES Control Deck had them.
I never even thought to do that. I was angry that their previously-perfect track record for quality hardware hadn’t carried over to that purchase as well. I did exchange my first unit for a second new one, but obviously it was no better.
I still have it. I don’t use it, so I’m going to sell it in the near future.
I've read that it's fairly easy to AV mod those US toploaders. I've seen people mention it online. Although, I know it requires some simple sodering to do. There are also RGB mods out there for it as well.
Remember Craigslist? I got a toploader for $40 with games because it had been stepped on and crushed! Some Bondo, paint, AV mod...
Toploader not recommended if you like to use Game Genie.
RGB mod: It's expensive IIRC because you need to replace the PPU (video chip) entirely with one from an arcade board or a modern FPGA reproduction. Edit: Sweet Jesus, you're looking at about $250 for RGB kit installation...
That's awesome! I'm all about upcycling. It's amazing what people will toss without thinking about repair. Although sometimes it's not worth the headache. I remember flipping my shit when I couldn't figure out how to repair the read error on a PS2 I picked up. Ended up just giving up in the end. Also spent hours through the middle of the night jacked up on energy drinks pulling a laptop apart to fix an issue with the processor running too hot, only to put it back together and still have the same issue.
Ah, what's the issue with the Game Genie? I'm buying an Everdrive, I think I heard that it had built in cheat support.
Yeah, nowadays I shy away from hardmods because of the experiences I listed above. I'd rather buy from someone with the time and experience if I need to go that route. Otherwise I'm completely fine with softmodding or flashcarts for my needs which tend more towards software. I wouldn't mind seeing a RGB mod in person running on something cool like one of those "HD" Trinitrons that were used a video editing monitors back in the day. I hear they look fantastic, the highest fidelity picture you can get for CRT based systems.
Game Genie had a thicker circuit board than a game cart, to get a good connection in the frontloaders. The toploader's cart slot is pretty tight, to get a good connection. Combine these, and it feels like the cart slot is going to pull off of the circuit board before the Game Genie lets loose. Everdrive/Powerpak would work fine.
Galoob offered an adapter for the toploaders but they are extremely rare.
Honestly, even a Trinitron TV with composite looks as good as RGB at the resolution of NES.
Which is what makes it valuable enough to sell. There is an HDMI mod too.
Makes sense. The Famicom AVs on Ebay were anywhere from $95-$125, while the NES toploader was at least $140-160. That's why I opted to get the Famicom AV instead.