The NES expansion port. Why is it even there?

The NES expansion port

If you turn your NES upside down, you'll see a cover in the middle that can be removed and underneath it a piece of plastic that covers a 48 pin port known as the NES expansion port.

This port was never used, although two peripherals were made for it, both of them being modems, but were never released. 

The expansion port with covers on

The first one was the Minnesota Lottery Modem, a piece of hardware that connected to NES expansion port and allowed, using the appropriate software (cartridge), people to connect to the Minnesota Lottery and place their bets online. Players would create an account and then select their numbers. The information would be stored in the Minnesota Lottery computer and to the NES Lottery cartridge.

This peripheral never saw the light of day, because Minnesota Attorney General criticized this system as it might lead to children gambling, despite the security codes embedded in the software.

If you have the time, here's an old New York Times article about the system: 

http://www.nytimes.com/1991/09/27/business/nintendo-and-minnesota-set-a-living-room-lottery-test.html?src=pm

Here are some photos of the peripheral, cartridge and some screenshots:

The NES with the modem hooked up

The modem itself

The password screen

The gambling cartridge

Calling host computer... Wow, what a message to see on a NES

Fishing gambling? Eh, why not?

The number games screen with various options

The main menu

The second peripheral almost released was the NES Teleplay Modem, which allowed online gaming for the NES users, providing also compatibility with the Sega Mega Drive (Genesis in US) and the Super Nintendo. Wow... Cross platform compatibility in early 1990's. It's 2013 and still we haven't seen this on newer systems.

The first prototype, called the Ayota Modem, had a maximum speed of only 300 bit/s, too slow to render normal NES quality graphics. It was unveiled at the 1992 consumer electronics show in Las Vegas, where it received a fairly good reception.

On further development, the name was changed to Teleplay Modem and the speed was increased to 2400 bit/s and supported Sega Genesis and Super Nintendo system compatibility. The modem would also allow cross-platform play between Nintendo and Sega with properly coded games. Three games were developed internally (Battle Storm, Terran Wars and Sea Battle) but never released. Both Nintendo and Sega refused to license the Teleplay Modem or the games developed for it.

I found some old photos, to give you a taste of what the modem looked like:

There is also some homebrew hardware made for the expansion port with the most weird one being ENIO (Extended NES I/O) which adds to the NES Ethernet, USB ports and a microSD card.

For more information on ENIO visit http://enio.chykn.com/wiki/index.php/Main_Page

Conclusion: That's all about the NES expansion port. Nintendo made it because they wanted to expand their console's capabilities, but it just stayed there, with no peripherals just for everyone to ask what is this for. I hope I shed some light on the mystery port of the NES and who knows? There might be some other prototype peripheral out there, that utilizes the port. If I find any, you'll be the first to know. Thanks for reading.

-NES Cat