Play Family BASIC (Japan) (vA1) Online

Game Overview

Ever wanted to make your own NES games in the '80s? Family BASIC was Japan’s weird little experiment—a Famicom cartridge that came with an actual keyboard and let you code simple games in BASIC. It’s janky, the graphics are basically colored blocks, and typing out commands feels like using a computer from the Stone Age. But there’s something oddly charming about piecing together a crude platformer or a text adventure, knowing you’re basically hacking the console itself.

I spent way too much time as a kid trying to make a spaceship move across the screen without glitching. It’s not exactly user-friendly by today’s standards, but if you’ve ever wondered what game development looked like before Unity or Scratch, this is a fascinating little time capsule. Just don’t expect anything playable unless you’ve got serious patience (and maybe a manual translated from Japanese).