Family Basic V3 is a game creation cartridge for the Nintendo Family Computer / Nintendo Entertainment System.

Family BASIC is an accessory for the Family Computer (Famicom) created by Hudson Soft, Nintendo, and Sharp Corporation. It allowed users to create programs in the BASIC programming language, more specifically the NS-HuBASIC language which stands for Nintendo, Sharp, and Hudson Soft respectively. This accessory came with a specially designed cartridge and keyboard, similar in function to that of a Commodore computer of that era. There was also the Data Recorder peripheral which was sold separately. It was preceded by the nearly identical Playbox BASIC for the Sharp C1 Famicom TV. Family BASIC V3 was released on February 21, 1985 as a stand-alone cartridge.


The Playbox BASIC and Family BASIC were both released in 1984 and came with NS-HuBASIC v1.0. Their initial retail price was the same as the Family Computer. V1.0 cartridges are now rare and Playbox BASIC ones are extremely rare as the only people who bought it were owners of the expensive C1 TV sets.

Family BASIC V3 was sold as a separate title with NS-HuBASIC v3.0 in red cartridges. It was marketed to people who already owned a previous version so it did not come with a keyboard and its manual served as an addendum to the previous v2.x manual. As a result of its narrow market, it sold poorly and is now rare. Unlike the previous versions, it did away with the message, calculator, and music boards to concentrate solely on programming. It had double the RAM capacity and came with pre-programmed mini-games.

Many of the sprites and tilesets were taken directly from the Arcade Classics Series version of the Donkey Kong, Donkey Kong Jr., and Mario Bros. There are 16 animated sprites built-in. There are four sample games and instructions on making others.

This is a demo by programmer "Masando Vision" which attempts to remake Tetris on the Nintendo Entertainment System / Famicom using Family Basic V2.

Family Basic V2 was only available in Japan, and allowed for minigames to be programmed in Basic, within 2k RAM space and using default graphics. Family Basic V3 (1985) has 4k RAM but is still limited. (This ROM uses V3.)

No sprites are used, and so the playfield updates more slowly using background nametables. It's a little sluggish at first, and may need to be sped up in emulation, but is otherwise playable.

In this hack, a background graphic of St. Basil's Cathedral in Russia was added by Garrett Gilchrist, replacing Japanese text in the ROM. A cultural landmark of Russia, the cathedral commonly appears in versions of Tetris.

Tetris (Russian: Тетрис) is a puzzle video game created by Soviet software engineer Alexey Pajitnov in 1984. Bullet-Proof Software and Atari/Tengen published versions for the Nintendo Entertainment System which are now rare, compared to Nintendo's own widely-released version.

Database match: Family BASIC V3 (Japan)
Database: No-Intro: Nintendo Entertainment System (v. 20210216-231042)
File SHA-1: 018ABD50D60EDD8DF30D9F8894F94FB3FCE95A4A
File CRC32: 55211022
ROM SHA-1: E232C621BFEDBFC6B100677BFBFC50B910248282
ROM CRC32: B2530AFC