How did the Famicom Disk Metroid differ from the NES version?

Same game, two machines: Japan’s disk saves and sings; America’s cartridge remembers passwords.

The first Metroid most of the world played is not the first one Nintendo made. Japan’s original is a Famicom Disk System game, written to a rewritable floppy. The 1987 NES cartridge that followed had to solve the same problems, saving, sound, endings, with different hardware, and the seams are exactly where the two versions part.

Famicom Disk System with a Disk Card inserted — **THE YELLOW DISK**A Famicom Disk Card in the drive: Japan saved its game to disk in 1986, on a medium America never got.

Metroid, two ways

Disk System · 1986 ↔ NES · 1987

Metroid North American NES box — **NES · North America · 1987**The cartridge: no battery inside, so no saved games. In their place, a 24-character password system, new to the industry, that the next page of this archive takes apart.

Metroid II Game Boy box, shown for the save system it carried — **The answer, four years later**Metroid II on Game Boy simply put a battery in the cartridge and saved properly, in every region. The password era lasted exactly one game.

The Disk System original sits on the left of this comparison in spirit: three save files written straight to the disk, like Zelda’s in Japan. The Famicom Disk hardware also gave it a wavetable sound channel the NES lacked, so its title theme, appearance fanfare, item fanfare and ending are richer than the simplified NES arrangements, and its escape countdown is a screeching siren where the NES whoops softly. In exchange, the disk loads between areas, and one thing is missing: there is no suitless Samus in the Disk version. A completed FDS file is marked with a money-bag icon. Samus out of the suit exists only because the password system does.

THE LEDGER

Difference by difference

Saving

FDS: three files on disk. NES: passwords, because Nintendo’s battery budget went to The Legend of Zelda, judged the stronger seller.

Sound

FDS: extra wavetable channel; door sounds and boss grunts with real body. NES: four tracks simplified, effects thinned so speakers would not overload.

Endings

Both grade your clear time. Only the NES passwords let you start again as Samus without the suit.

The disk seeks and loads between regions, and Japanese reviewers noted the wait in 1986. The cartridge is instant.

How did the Famicom Disk Metroid differ from the NES version?

Metroid, two ways

THE LEDGER

THE FIRST WORD