Famicom Disk System or FDS for short was an addon for the Famicom and was launched in 1986. It was bought out to lower the price of games and open up a new world for young kids that didn't have much money. Quite a few of the NES and Famicom's biggest titles first came out on the FDS such as Super Mario Bros 2 (Doki Doki Panic) The Legend of Zelda 1, 2 and even Metroid.
Like most of Nintendo's wacky inversions they unfortunately chose to only release the FDS in Japan, I guess making a NES RAM adaptor would be quite tricky?. Even though the FDS was a hit and selling well piracy was a huge problem for the system.
Things like the Hacker disk came along which allowed people to copy games needing nothing more than a Disk System a game and a blank disk. It proved very easy to pirate the games even on their non standard 2.8" disks. Nintendo tried to stop FDS piracy by releasing new disk drives in the FDS which stopped the Hacker from working. However this didn't stop pirates from using other methods of copying the disks such as connecting two systems together using the RAM adaptor port. Pirates also took it to another level by porting and selling Disk only games on cartridges.
Without piracy the Famicom Disk System could still only go so far, the disks were pretty limiting with only 64k of space on each side of the disc, swapping and switching disks can get very annoying. The disks are also very fragile and can get erased easily if not looked after.
Another problem with the FDS which is a lot more well known now due to the age of the system. Is the rubber band or belt as some people call it inside the disk drive. Without it the disks cannot be read disks making it completely useless. The belt over time either dries up and breaks or turns into a black tar like mess.
The FDS managed to survive for six years the last official game was released in 1992 I doubt this stopped the pirates from releasing new stuff though.
The Disk Writer, found in most shopping centers back in the day in Japan. There are even still a few around and in use to this day. I think the main selling point of the Disk System was that you could get new games written to your old disks very cheaply.
The Twin Famicom released by Sharp nearing the end of the life of the Famicom Disk System. A nice system as it has the regular Famicom and Disk system built into one unit, it was available in black and red. My main gripe with the system is the built in controllers, just like the original Famicom the cable is far too short making it very unpractical.
