I picked up a Famicom controller TV remote while in Tokyo recently. The only problem is, the instructions (unsurprisingly) are in Japanese. Most of the Japanese includes Mandarin though, so my girlfriend has been able to decipher some of the instructions, but we still can’t get it to work.

From what we can tell, the A button should be pressed once, followed by the B button and while keeping the B button held down press and hold the left arrow on the D-pad. The red LED on the controller lights and stays lit, and as far as I know it should turn off when it has the correct frequency for the TV. I’m not sure if it’s the translated instructions, or the rare brand of TV that we’re using that is the problem. I’m posting the Japanese instructions here in the hope that someone can translate them, in the meantime I’ll try and track down some Japanese reading Taiwanese and see if they can help.

Click on the images for full-size versions

Update: I met a Japanese student in language school who translated the instructions for me, so here they are:

• Turn on your TV
• Press the A Button once
• Press and hold the B button
• With the B button pressed, press and hold the ‘Left’ button on the D-Pad
• Keep both of these buttons pressed until LED 1 (the red LED) lights (should be about 3 seconds)
• Let go of all buttons and point LED 2 toward the TV
• You’ll see LED 1 flash intermittently
• When the TV turns off the correct frequency has been found
• Press any button

That’s it, the remote should be tuned for your TV now. The controls for the TV are self explanatory and can be seen in the picture above.