A guest appearance from some other closet - this Famicom Family Basic Data Recorder is a new addition to the collection of tech historian Benj Edwards, my frequent co-conspirator on the Retronauts East podcast.
In the days before battery-backed saves or even the Famicom disk system, this gadget could be used to save custom tracks and stages in games like Excitebike and Wrecking Crew. Or it could be paired with the Family Basic Keyboard to write and save your own BASIC programs, just like on the TI-99/4A and other early micro computers over here.
Also it’s just kind of cool to have a cassette recorder in Famicom styling.