James Channel Unpacks the Cheap Famiclone Sold as the Latest Windows System

James Channel recently got hold of a small box that promised the latest Windows system, complete with a keyboard, mouse, and enough software to turn any living room into a home office. What arrived instead was a Famiclone, one of the countless unauthorized copies of Nintendo’s original Family Computer that flooded markets across Asia and beyond during the late 1980s and 1990s. These machines used a single chip to recreate the hardware that once powered Super Mario Bros., and manufacturers kept producing them long after the patents expired because they were cheap to build and easy to sell to families who could not afford a real computer.

The packaging for this particular machine really pushed Windows, as the box art was a mishmash of screens that looked like classic desktop software if you squinted hard enough, and the text advertising all sorts of features, like a light gun and multitasking, sounded a little suspect. The unit was housed in a plastic shell the size of a decent thick paperback, and if it had been a little more substantial, it might have had a chance, along with two joystick ports that appeared to have been lifted directly from a Commodore 64, some audio and video cables, a power adapter with a load of Japanese text on it, and a pair of cartridges. One of them was this 148-in-1 educational computer label, oh right, and the other boasted an outrageous number of games, which showed out to be approximately 140 with more than a few duplicates. A completely legitimate Indonesian version of a comparable cartridge appeared as well, however it was connected incorrectly and loaded with local language lessons.

The keyboard, however, was a completely different story, since it was the worst piece of equipment he’d ever seen from the era. The keys were somewhat crooked, and the space bar was misspelled; come on, how hard is it to get that right? The membrane underneath seemed as if it would crack at the least provocation, so they had to go ahead and stick the Windows keys on there, but they didn’t work. Out of all of this, the mouse, a classic ball type with a star-shaped roller thingy inside, was a bit of a joke, as the ball kept falling out and the x-axis refused to register until I had to use super glue and a blowtorch to keep everything together. What about the controller that came with the set? Well, the cables were really thin, and everything felt stupidly loose in my palm. Apparently, the gun-shaped peripheral that came with the package was thrown in the dumpster by Australian customs because it looked suspiciously like an airgun, go figure.

The cartridges themselves were jam-packed with a combination of borrowed NES games and simple educational programs for children. GBasic appeared, and it looked strangely like Nintendo’s old Family Basic cartridge, allowing users to enter in small little programs that vanished as soon as you switched it off. Minesweeper and Solitaire ran in a style that recalled Windows 3.1, complete with a chording system that allowed you to click on cells and acquire additional tiles by pressing two mouse buttons at the same time. The typing lessons were also a bit of a joke, with fingers moving along the keyboard at about 30 characters per minute, and the other titles included a basic calculator, a music player that sounded like it had been tuned by a novice, a painter that only responded to keyboard input, and an English-Indonesian dictionary, because all you really need is the ability to look up Bahasa in the middle of a game.

Opening the case revealed how little money was actually invested in this build. There was a tiny little voltage regulator simply chillin’ by the power input, and one solitary transistor attempting to handle the visual amplification, albeit it was probably straining a little, considering that many other components had been left off the board to save money. The RF connector no longer modulated the signal; instead, it was bridged over, allowing audio to pass through without modification. Then there was a separate chip, some DH420D, that accepted keyboard pushes and converted them into the signals that a Famicom expects, all thanks to Sujia, a Chinese manufacturer that also branded a slew of generic boards. Some wires’ insulation had even melted in areas due to their proximity to the shell. To make matters worse, the power switch contacts were so blocked with grime that you had to give them a thorough cleaning and lubricant just to get the device to turn on properly.

Software-wise, it was a bit of a mess, since the restricted memory would load up and then freeze on you, forcing you to reset it and wiping out all of your work in the process. You could miraculously get some NES games to operate after unplugging the knackered old mouse. To be honest, the keyboard controls were somewhat of a joke for platformers. The educational portions of the software served as basic drills, but the music was out of sync, and the frame rate would plummet when things got too difficult. These machines were marketed to households where proper computers were out of reach due to their high cost, therefore they were an acceptable way to gain experience with technology that cost a fraction of the price of a real PC. Even though they don’t quite live up to what the box promised, collectors continue to seek them out because of the unusual combination of a full keyboard, a working mouse, and cartridge-based lessons, which is a fairly uncommon find among Famiclones, even if the end result isn’t exactly smooth.