It seems as if Christmas has come early

And a ho ho ho to me.

Well, for me anyway. What you see above is the haul I received yesterday; two Famicoms and a Super Famicom. Total price? Nada. Didn't cost me a cent. So how did I get my grubby hands on these for free you ask? Easy.
I tend to talk about my retro collecting and playing habits to my friends quite a bit whether they like it or not. Some have thought of it as weird at first, but once I invite them over for a few games, they think its fantastic. Since I do talk about games a lot, it means that whenever someone else comes across things like these and doesn't want them themselves, people like me are the first they think of. This is how I scored this bundle, and I hope to get lucky in the future for some more freebies. Other people see it as junk that they want to get rid of, but of course I'll give them a good home so I guess everybody wins.

Lets have a look into the details...

These look so much better than their American counterparts in my opinion.

First off... the Super Famicom!

So the million dollar question is, does it work? The short answer is that it seems to, but I don't have any games to properly test it yet. 

But it did come with a 'Game Partner 2' attached. For those of you who don't know what it that is, I found out after some extensive Googling that is seems to be clone of the SF Doctor. This is a fairly bulky device that plugs into the cartridge loader and has other ports in it and a floppy drive. To my knowledge it's used to dump games to floppy and it can save game states to floppy also. For more information, watch this helpful video I found.

Anyway, this device has a menu. When I plugged everything in and booted it up, the menu for the Game Partner 2 came up.

I don't how to use it, but it makes me feel like a pro.

Everything all connected and running.

This tells me that at least it can power on, the video signal is fine and the cartridge loader is still operational. Of course I can't comment on the sound yet, but I hope to buy a cheap working test game soon so I can verify that it works, and then play it!  

Next off, the Famicoms.

I was extremely lucky here as one of them still came in its box.

First off, I have no idea if they work. I plugged them in and turned them on, but there is no power LED or anything so until I get a game, your guess is as good as mine.
One of them is in great condition cosmetically, the other... not so great. Within the first minute of me having it I pressed the reset button and its been stuck down ever since. It might be a fun restore project though. As the saying goes, there is no such thing as a dead console.

This one seems to be in excellent condition.

This one has a bit more to be desired. But as I said, I'll give it a good home!

Now for the most important challenge that I face with these now... plugging them into my TV.
The SF was easy as that just uses your standard everyday composite cables, but these use an RF switch. First thought, they're just standard coax cables like how I use to plug my VCR in. But no. One side is like that (which plugs into the Famicom) but the output is some weird prong things.

The whole thing.

A close up of the mysterious prong things.

I have no idea how they plug into my tellie, it just makes no sense. I would expect there to be another coaxle looking cable at this end.
Maybe those are common place for Japanese televisions, but they're just plain foreign to me.

Next off, the joystick.

Not a whole lot to say here at this stage of the game as it plugs into Famicoms, but it appears to be in great cosmetic condition anyway. It's also Nintendo branded as well so this raises more hope. You all know the age old rule, never buy after market accessories as they generally suck. 

Stay tuned for the next couple of weeks when I hopefully get a hold of some games to test the machines fully. It will be great to be able to talk about Nintendo a little bit more in this blog, I feel as if Sony and Sega have been getting a bit too much attention lately.