The Famicom's last shooter built to outrun the machine it was born on.
Crisis Force arrived in August 1991, when the Famicom was already yesterday's machine. So Konami, on its way out the door, decided to play one final, difficult note. It barely sold, and it never left Japan. But hold the cartridge in your hands and you realize you're holding the moment an engineer refused to phone in the goodbye.
About this game
Crisis Force reached Famicom shelves on August 27, 1991, nine months after the Super Famicom had arrived. Konami's other teams were already building for the new machine. The credits for Crisis Force list designers, programmers and three composers from Konami's Kukeiha Club, Jun Chuma among them, and it names no director at all. Whoever they were, they spent that time asking the Famicom for things it was never designed to give: scrolling in four directions, backgrounds layered so they drift past one another, bosses wider than the machine is supposed to draw. It was, by most accounts, the last shooting game Konami ever made for the Famicom. Nothing on the screen behaves like a machine being retired.
Gallery
The Story Behind
By the time Crisis Force reached store shelves in August 1991, Konami's development effort had already shifted to the Super Famicom. The game was never released outside Japan. The players most likely to care about what it does to the Famicom were the ones who never got to see it.
Tricks & Tales
Crisis Force runs on a Konami custom chip from the VRC4 family, the same family Konami used for the Famicom port of Gradius II, though a different revision of it. Your ship transforms between three forms, Front, Side and Rear Offense, each with a different attack. Collect five fusion items and it changes into a single giant attack form.
Collector's Guide
Region & Compatibility
Famicom and NES are the same hardware family but use physically incompatible cartridge formats — Famicom carts have a 60-pin connector and a narrower shell, while NES carts use a 72-pin connector with a wider housing. You cannot insert a Famicom cartridge into a North American NES slot without an adapter, and vice versa. The Famicom itself has no lockout chip, so any Famicom cartridge from Japan will run on a Famicom console regardless of origin. If you are buying a Japanese Famicom cart to play on a NES, you will need a 60-to-72-pin physical adapter; if you own a Famicom, Japanese-market software is your native format and no workarounds are needed.
Maintenance Tips
The gold-plated edge connectors on Famicom and NES cartridges pick up skin oils and oxidation over decades — a gentle wipe with a cotton swab dampened in 90% or higher isopropyl alcohol, stroking along the length of the pins rather than across them, is the accepted standard. Let the alcohol fully evaporate before reinserting. The old habit of blowing into a cartridge is folklore: the moisture in breath causes slow corrosion of the contacts over time, and any improvement you felt came from the act of re-seating the cart, not from the breath itself. Nintendo eventually updated its own troubleshooting guidance to say explicitly: do not blow into your Game Paks.
Going deeper
Explore the machine this game ran on, and what to check before you buy or care for one:
What to Watch Out For
Before buying, these are the points worth knowing — from someone who handles original Japanese Crisis Force copies regularly.
Why is Crisis Force so expensive for a Famicom cartridge?
Two reasons stack up: it was Japan-only, and it shipped so late in the Famicom's life that few copies were made. That scarcity pushes loose carts to around $100 and complete-in-box copies past $200 — it's one of the pricier Famicom games out there.
Will it run on a regular NES?
No. It's a Famicom (Japanese) cartridge with a different shape, and it was never released outside Japan. You'll need a Famicom or an adapter/clone system that accepts Famicom carts.
Is a loose cartridge a fair way in?
Yes, if you mainly want to play. Loose carts sit well below complete-in-box prices, and the box/manual premium is steep — so a tested loose copy is the sensible entry point unless you specifically collect CIB.
Before You Buy
Things worth knowing before you buy Crisis Force
A short checklist for buying a used Famicom cartridge wisely — useful with any seller, anywhere.
-
Choose a seller who tests it before shipping
A copy that has actually been powered on and checked is a known quantity. An untested one is a gamble you only settle after it arrives.
Look for a seller who states it was function-tested and says what they confirmed. A serious seller can tell you exactly what was checked.
-
Make sure it fits your console
This is a Japanese Famicom cartridge with a 60-pin connector; a North American NES uses a 72-pin slot, so it will not fit directly.
Play it on a matching Japanese console or a region-free system, and confirm the listing states the region.
-
If this title saves your progress, check the battery
Cartridges that save use a small coin-cell battery that fades over decades — a dead one wipes your save without warning.
Ask the seller whether the save function was tested. Replacing the battery is possible, but doing so erases any existing save.
-
Check that the contacts are clean
Dirty edge contacts are the most common cause of startup and sound trouble in cartridges of this age.
Choose a seller who cleans the contacts before shipping. A note that it was tested and cleaned means the basics were handled.
-
Confirm it is genuine, not a reproduction
Sought-after titles are targets for reproduction boards with replacement labels.
Ask for a photo of the circuit board and look for factory markings. Favour a shop with a licensed second-hand dealer permit (古物商) — by law its stock has a traceable origin, your simplest guard against fakes.
-
Read the seller's reviews and return policy
A 100% positive record across thousands of sales is close to a guarantee — packing, communication and problem-solving all work for everyone. A return policy protects you if something is off.
Read the feedback and confirm a clear return window before you buy.
The last step before buying anywhere is knowing what it's worth.
See what we have in stock →Unexpected Discoveries
Games you weren't looking for — but might be glad you found.
Rooms this game lives in
Wander deeper — explore the themed rooms where Crisis Force sits alongside its kin.
Memories from around the world
This is a young museum, and this page is still waiting for its first voices. The memories people send reach Taisei personally, and the ones that move him find a home here over time — always with the writer's blessing. Yours could be the very first for this game.
Share your memory ↑From the Museum's Screening Room
Crisis Force — Max Explains