- SNES / Super Famicon Station Rack, seen here with my custom stitched SNES dust cover.
In November, 2021, my 12-year-old son and I were deep in the throes of playing Donkey Kong Country on my original SNES. We were playing it almost every night and completing about one level per session. We'd played it in the past but decided we wanted to finish it from beginning to end. We became
really wrapped up in the whole experience, and you know a game is a great game when it crosses the generational divide like that one does.
Best part? It has a "co-op" 2-player mode. So if I die, and I'm Donkey Kong, my son can take over as Diddy Kong and try to complete the level. Back and forth like that, it can actually make the game harder as it breaks you out of your rhythm. But it's a ton of fun.
Anyway, during that time somehow I learned of a really interesting contraption that was made and sold in Japan for the Super Famicom, which is just the Japanese name for the SNES. Over in Japan, which is pretty space limited in its major cities they created a Super Famicom Station Rack, or console case. This plastic thing somewhat matched the SNES plastic color and allowed you to put your console on top of the Rack to help keep things tidy when not in use.
Bonuses:
[*] It has wheels, so you could easily move it around.
[*] It has a drawer where you could store a lot of your games and other unsightly doo-dads!
Naturally, I wanted one. And I found a place on Ebay that was selling a bunch of them. To my surprise, the shipping from Japan was free. I couldn't even imagine how they could get any money out of the deal, but I wasn't going to complain about not being charged enough. Maybe, I thought, this is their way of recycling.
Anyway, I placed the order. About a month went by and a large box arrived. I pulled the Station Rack out and noticed a small plastic chip from somewhere fell to the floor.
That's a great sign, I thought.
I immediately set it up to test things out. Looks great!
I finally opened the tray to figure out how I wanted to organize things. And - to my utter astonishment - I discovered 7 Japanese Famicom cartridges had been left inside!
I couldn't believe it!
Chrono Trigger was the only game I recognized at all. The others seem to be about horse racing (2 different titles), bass fishing, baseball, and a couple others I simply couldn't identify (and I still haven't looked them up).
But I really didn't care about that. It was more like finding treasure on the side of the road.
I did quickly discover that my SNES cartridges are slightly too wide for the cartridge stands, though. So I use the left side and just stack them for now along with several Amiibos we've gotten over the years. They can stand up in there and still have clearance (except for Link).
All in all I'm extremely pleased with the addition to the TV/Game room. It's nice to have a place to store the SNES controllers and not be forced to put the console on the floor. And that shelf is a very nice bonus.
I'm going to get one of these
cheap cartridge converters to check out the Japanese games later this month. Domo arigato gozaimasu!
ADDENDUM:
For Christmas, my 14-year-old daughter bought DKC Tropical Freeze for my son and I to play. Seeing how much we enjoyed the original, it was a really wonderful and thoughtful gift. We're playing that game on the Switch. It's gorgeous! I miss the old music - especially the water scenes - but Tropical Freeze is simply off the charts creative, beautiful and fun to play. Really impressive. And the 2-player co-op play is taken to a whole new level. Might be one of the best 2D platformers out there, period.