I bought a Super Famicom a few months ago when I was in Japan as a souvenir; and the other day my girlfriend bought some games for it as a present for me. But she bought Famicom games instead of Super Famicom games. Is there an adapter/connector/something I can buy that lets a Super Famicom play Famicom games?

I tried googling, but almost all I found is information about how to play Famicom games on a Nintendo or Super Famicom games on a SNES. I did see a few mentions of a POKEFAMI DX, but I couldn't tell if that's what I wanted or if it was for playing Famicom games on a Nintendo. Anyone heard of it or have something else that works?

@fezrock: as far as I know, the SNES / Super Famicom are not backwards compatible, and there no adapters to make it possible.

There are very old pieces of bootleg technology that I believe accomplish what you're technically looking for, but that sort of unsanctioned hardware emulation in the 90s was always wonky at best and isn't at all worth looking into in this day and age. And even if you did track one of those devices down, the sheer rarity of them at this point would most likely make one a lot more expensive than just buying an actual Famicom console and playing that, which I'd recommend, as long as you're not paying too much for it. (Do some careful window shopping on eBay before committing to any one listing if you go that route, though. A lot of sellers try to jack up the price based on nostalgia value when in Japan, you can get them pretty readily for under $30.) Otherwise, Gaff is right; neither the SNES nor Super Famiom are backwards compatible with NES/Famicom games. (EDIT: Yes, here's that bootleg adapter I'm thinking of: the Tristar. Like I said, it's obscenely expensive now and is only really has any collector's value to a very specific niche. Definitely would advise against picking up one of these or any similar adapters.)

The Pokefami DX is basically just a clone device that emulates the Super Famicom and lets you play Super Famicom cartridges portably. There is a Famicom cartridge adapter for that device specifically, but it almost certainly doesn't work on an actual Super Famicom since I doubt it contains much hardware beyond just connecting cartridge pins so the emulator can detect those cartridges. Don't bother with those sorts of devices, either. Some are okay-ish quality-wise, but they tend to have a dicey history in terms of the legal legitimacy of the emulators powering them (eg: improperly using open source code, etc.).

That Tristar isn't all that expensive if you just get it from the German seller offering it for 165 dollars...

But I feel like there should be a cheaper option available. I mean, you can still get the same type of device for Genesis cartridges off AliExpress for like 25 bucks. There's one for GBA as well. The thing is, these devices have their own composite video-out, thus circumventing most of the SNES's hardware and not being nearly as cool as a result. It also means they're doomed to always give a low quality composite image.

My suggestion would be to just buy another console rather than shoehorn FC support into your SFC. Famiclones are incredibly cheap on AliExpress, and yeah, you can even get them in portable versions. These devices still use the old Famicom-on-a-chip approach rather than the emulation that see you lot these days in your Retrons and whatnot.

Hmm, alright, thanks y'all. Guess I'll look into buying a Famicom off eBay.

What it boils down to is that I haven't told my girlfriend yet that she bought the wrong kind of games, and I don't want her to feel bad about it. So I'm looking for a way to play those specific Famicom cartridges, and not looking into any of the much easier, more modern solutions to play the games. I mean, one of the games is Super Mario Bros 3; there's a million easier, legal ways to play it, but in my situation its using this Famicom cartridge itself that's important.

Dude get a Famicom Twin, they’re rad.