Description
A famiclone is a type of clone console compatible with Famicom or NES games (or both, which is rare). As Nintendo’s patents on the hardware have expired, it is now legal to sell any famiclone that does not have pirated software built in.
The very earliest famiclones, usually made in Taiwan, were a more or less exact copy of the original hardware, using cloned chips usually manufactured by UMC. However, later famiclones produced since the mid-late 90s usually incorporate the entire system into a single small chip, known as a NES-on-a-chip (NOAC) design, which is much cheaper to produce and much smaller (allowing for more creative and compact console designs) but less faithful recreation of the original console, leading to compatibility problems.
There are also DVD and VCD players, as well as certain portable media players (often marketed as “MP5” players), which can play NES/Famicom games via DVDs, CD-ROMs, or through mass storage media, although they usually contain (often slow) emulators rather than an actual hardware clone. These are more common in the Far East than anywhere else.
*** Cartridge is untested since the only Famiclone I own is not working 🙁 ***
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