WI: The SNES/Super Famicom used floppy disks?

Given the history of home console gaming after the start of the '90s, it may be surprising to some people that the company with the earliest history of disc-based console games may be Nintendo. Yes, the company with the last significant cartridge-based console (the N64) was one of the first adopters of the disc (or strictly speaking, 'disk')-based storage medium when it came to games.

For many Japanese people growing up in the '80s, this would be a very familiar chime:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7F_vTOZQLxY

This was the start-up screen of the Famicom Disk System, a peripheral to the hugely successful Family Computer, or NES in the west, that played proprietary floppy disks.

88256-[BIOS]_Nintendo_Famicom_Disk_System_(Japan)-5.jpg


The disk allowed (or seems to allow) more sprites, more/better sound effects, (compare the the title screen of the NES version of the Legend of Zelda to the FDS version) and the ability to save data on the disk itself (only certain NES cartridge games supported save states). The disks used were cheap and easily produced. However, for those very reasons it was notoriously easy to pirate Famicom Disk System games, so much so that the planned NES counterpart was never released, Nintendo instead opting for new cartridge chips to make up for the lack of disks.

Let's say that Nintendo worked out sufficient blocks for pirates, such that they felt the next system, the Super Famicom in Japan and the Super Nintendo in the west, should exclusively use floppies, or a proprietary form of such. This would put it at odds with the more established Sega Mega Drive/Genesis and its cartridges (with an attempt at CDs later on with the Sega CD). What would its general capabilities be, and how would it effect the famous "SNES/Genesis" console war?
 
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That's a new one on me...

I knew about the unreleased disc drive for the SNES but never knew about the floppy drive for the NES. But if Nintendo were to release a floppy peripheral, it would seem dated. Diskettes were the new thing (I know, I was a kid at the time) and parents would balk at the additional cost of a peripheral. Now if you mean what if a floppy were the primary format of games on the new system, I can see the advantages, but the system would still seem dated.
 
I knew about the unreleased disc drive for the SNES but never knew about the floppy drive for the NES. But if Nintendo were to release a floppy peripheral, it would seem dated. Diskettes were the new thing (I know, I was a kid at the time) and parents would balk at the additional cost of a peripheral. Now if you mean what if a floppy were the primary format of games on the new system, I can see the advantages, but the system would still seem dated.

I mean the SNES/Super Famicom having the disk drive at its core, instead of using cartridges (so basically an SNES with a disk drive instead of a cartridge feeder).

Also, what is the difference between diskette and floppy disk aside from terminology?
 
Why not start with CD instead.

The issue is, floppy for famicom drive system was at the time a good idea, several nintendo classics(zelda, metroid, kid icarus) born there thanks the extra ram and space the floppy bring, plus cheaper to produce, but piracy and more important, the use of Memory Managment CHIPS(mapper for those who are in emulator scene) take the advantage of floppy and just nintendo decided to stick to cartidge for snes, but they love how the add-on was useful and sucessful and they keep supporting for a long time(last original game was 1992) and the whole sony deal was thanks to the sucess of famicom disk system.

Let's say Nintendo and sony never got in hot water(read the fricking contract, push sony for CD as early 1990, 1991 at maximum) managed to negotiated wiht motorolla for cheaper 68K(Nintendo was wilingly to used that For snes. one as cpu, other as cd decoder interperter, but the negotiation failed and ricoh promised cheaper cpu who allow to reuse Memory Managment Chips for snes)
 
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The main problem with floppy disks in these situations is latency. Especially then, reads from floppies were atrociously slow (mainly the seeks).

The huge advantage of cartridges is that they have nigh-instant seeks (since they are basically ROM chips), and most of these games made up for the lack of system RAM by streaming the level and game data as they went. Since the cartridges were so fast, this was 'easy'. If you use a floppy, this is going to be far more difficult.

Game developers are not going to like using floppies on a system with such a small amount of RAM.

The Famicom Disk System worked as it had its own CPU (which was the same CPU as the actual NES itself) and had 32 KiB of RAM (and more for sprites), whereas the NES had 2 KiB of RAM. Basically, the Disk System had a ton of RAM available for precaching data from the disks so it could be streamed in fast enough. The Disk System alone was $150, when the NES was $199. This extra RAM would have been necessary for disks to be feasible, so I'd fully expect a $300-$400 NES that allows disks to be a flop for sheer economic reasons.

Cartridges simply made a ton of technical and economic sense at the time. Physical media storage didn't really become practical until the mid-90s on mainstream hardware.

Source: I'm a professional game developer. :|
 
With floppies, you get rampant piracy.

Sure you can copy roms, but much harder.

No way it would be a floppy based system
 
Nobody would have pirated games for a console that would have been too expensive for people to have purchased, as no games would have existed. :)
 
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