Only first-party titles were available upon launch, but Nintendo started a licensing program the following year that allowed third-party companies such as Namco, Hudson Soft, Taito, Konami, Bandai, and Capcom to create titles and produce their own cartridges for the Famicom in exchange for royalty payments;[1][2] Nintendo later revised the program to mandate itself as the producer of all cartridges while carrying it with the console outside Japan.
[3][4] The launch games for North America were: 10-Yard Fight, Baseball, Clu Clu Land, Duck Hunt, Excitebike, Golf, Gyromite, Hogan's Alley, Ice Climber, Kung Fu, Pinball, Soccer, Stack-Up, Super Mario Bros., Tennis, Wild Gunman, and Wrecking Crew.
[8][9] For the console's North American release in 1985 as the Nintendo Entertainment System, Nintendo redesigned the cartridge to accommodate the console's front-loading, videocassette recorder-derived socket by nearly doubling its height and increasing its width by one centimeter (0.39 in), resulting in a measurement of 13.3 cm (5.2 in) high by 12 cm (4.7 in) wide.
[10]: 367 However, the two pins for external sound were removed and relocated to the expansion port instead; any Famicom game using them would have its soundtrack recomposed for releases on NES cartridges.
[10]: 108 [13] Nintendo later released the Famicom Disk System (FDS) in Japan in 1986, intending to have developers distribute all future games on proprietary 2.8-inch (7.1 cm) floppy disks to avoid the cost and size limitations of cartridges; however, developers began re-releasing FDS games on cartridges as advancements in cartridge technology made them feasible again with the limitations of the floppy disks and their ecosystem apparent, pulling support for the FDS by the 1990s.