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Famicase Exhibition Fuses Yesterday's Famicom Cartridges With Today's Curious Artistic Minds
Posted by Jack Loftus at 11:00 AM on July 21, 2008
Rounding out our Nintendo news trifecta today is the annual Famicase art exhibition. It's like many other art exhibitions from around the world, made infinitely cooler by the fact that the artwork is comprised of imaginary games pasted to old 8-bit Famicom carts. More than 50 designers, illustrators and authors contributed to event this year, which is organised by Super Meteor game shop owner Satoshi Sagagami. Some are crazier than others, but all have a home in this Nintendo lover's heart. Personal favourite? Overly promiscuous R.O.B.--now we know what he's been up to all these years!
What better way to bring your childhood into the present with these Nintendo Famicom business card holders. Your US$8.80 will get you one random cartridge or controller, which may or may not be that really horrible knockoff one made by that one lousy company in the mid '80s. We're looking at you, Ice Climber. If you're lucky, you'll get Zelda, Ballon Fight, or Mario instead. [
While a slew of hotels feature sad, generic video game controllers ready to play whatever crappy IP-streaming games the chain may offer, many Japanese hotels were once stocked with these coin-op Famicom (NES) systems. A 100 yen coin would buy you 10-15 minutes of play, which is a pretty great deal compared to the mini bar or, uhh, "video on demand" services. To check out the Super Famicom (SNES), hit the jump.
The CYBER Familator Lite is an Akihabara-esque gizmo that snaps onto your DS Lite and lets you play old Famicom cartridges on your DS screen (If you can hunt down an adapter, you can play NES games as well). I think we should forget the Familator Lite is bigger than the DS, and that an emulator can do the same thing, because you get real 8-bit goodness on your DS. It's like drinking Coke in a glass bottle – it just tastes better. The CYBER Familator Lite is expected to surface in Japan next month. [
It appears the fat and thin plumbers are taking time out from saving the princess named after a furry fruit, and what better way to relax than with a round of golf? The Mini Golfing Mario & Luigi set includes both Mario & Luigi plastic figures connected to a Famicom controller. The A and B buttons articulate the swinging motion, and the others have no use but to make the controllers look pretty.
For those of you with short memories, Sony and Nintendo were working together in the mid '90s on a CD-based Nintendo console when negotiations fell apart and both Japanese companies went their separate ways. Sony with the PlayStation and Nintendo with the N64—and we all know what happened since.
This console posted on game-rave is supposedly a prototype of the PlayStation/Super Famicom unit. They claim it's real, but whether or not Sony and Nintendo actually got to the point where they made prototypes is unclear. Still, this seems like an interesting box and gives us a chance to stroll down memory lane. Ahh, look, there's the house of noogies to your right. 
Most of you won't be familiar with this 
