It's like the storeroom for your birthday wishlists.
Nintendo recently uploaded a series of photos to their Japanese website that offer a rare glimpse into the company's fabled hardware vault.
The photos were made available as part of Nintendo's celebration of The Legend of Zelda's 30th anniversary. As such, many of the photos focused on some old Famicom systems that the company keeps around (which, it should be noted, are in flawless mint condition) as well as some Famicom Disk System boxes.
If that last one doesn't ring a bell, it's because there really wasn't a Western equivalent to the Famicom Disk System. It was an expansion to the original Famicom that added a high-tech floppy disk drive to the original model. This add-on greatly expanded the performance capabilities of the Famicom by increasing its available RAM and processing power. Missing from the collection, at least in these shots, is the version of the Famicom Disk released by Sharp which incorporated the disk add-on directly into the base system.
The reason this add-on is so important as it relates to The Legend of Zelda is because that game was one of the first to actually require the use of the expansion due to the game's save features. NES owners, meanwhile, were able to take advantage of that feature thanks to the built-in battery that came with Legend of Zelda cartridges.
Of course, the most impressive part of Nintendo's brief tour is undoubtedly the working Famicom Disk Writer that they still keep around. This obscure piece of gaming history was once available in many Japanese game stores and was designed to copy official Famicom Disks. The idea was that fans would pay a small fee in order to make legal copies of Famicom Disk games. The problem was that those same fans soon found many ways to get around the whole "paying" part of the process and instead turn these official machines into pirating aides.
Unfortunately, Nintendo didn't share any more photos from the vault. This leaves us to only speculate as to what wonders lie within.