NES Works Gaiden #19: Famicom 1984, Pt. 1 (Patreon)
Content
While my focus this year (and probably next...) is on the Sega 8-bit library, I do want to dip a toe into the SG-1000's contemporary competition on Famicom to give a better sense of how the two platforms evolved in comparison to one another. Famicom's ’83 lineup was explored way back in the second episode of NES Works Gaiden, but over the coming months we'll be taking quite a few of these excursions into Nintendo's ’84 and ’85 lineups.
This first episode is more of an overview, given that almost all of these games were covered (in this exact sequence) in episodes 2-7 of NES Works. However, the second half of this episode goes pretty deep into a notable release that shipped at the end of July: Nuts & Milk, which marked the arrival of third-party publishers on Famicom. Here I try my best to explain how that made Famicom a very different platform for both creators and consumers from SG-1000—and, also, why Nuts & Milk is, in fact, a very notable work in this particular incarnation.
I will be largely alternating between Segaiden and NES Works going forward this year... though I do need to wrap up some patron requests soon before I accept the next batch....