The NES has a powerful voltage regulator and it's power supply very unusually works on AC voltage, which is usually inhospitable to consoles and other electronics in general.

As a direct result, you can use almost any power supply you want between 7-12 volts with as little as 300mA. The voltage regulator only needs 7v (5v in reality, but it regulates it to 7v) and so anything over that is just wasted as excess heat.

Since it was built to accept AC current directly, polarity is not a factor when powering an NES. You can use DC power supplies of either center pin negative or outer barrel negative polarity.

You could use a model 1 MegaDrive power supply, or any generic one. The NES is a beast that does not care.


However, this ONLY applies to the NES-001 (the 'toaster') and NES-101 (the "top loader"). This does NOT apply to any version of the Famicom, or any other console. Only the NES.