Games That Don't Push The Limits of the NES (For Interesting Reasons)

[@Sheevlord]

While the Action 52 games indeed reuse a lot of the code it doesn't save up storage space. To the surprise of no-one that cartridge was released in an unpolished state, and no optimization for size was done. A lot of code duplicates can be found all throughout the ROM without any attempt to consolidate them. This would've probably be done in the later stage of development if the team was given enough time to optimize and polish the game, which obviously didn't happen.

[@chainswordcs]

the youtube channel "Displaced Gamers" has a great video on the topic, though it's not a complete deep dive (like a full TCRF article would be) and more of a vertical slice deep dive into some interesting examples. yeah, lots of copy-pasted code, often with small edits intermixed. if the dev team were given more time they could have done a lot of de-duplication. or hell, if they were given a reasonable amount of time and a reasonable project goal they wouldn't have had to take such quick and dirty shortcuts in the first place.

[@DeadKoby]

Yeah... but it's got a giant cheetah jumping over Saddam Hussain.

[@whatr0]

Action 52 was largely a management problem cause the guy running the project did NOT understand how game development worked in the slightest and gave the small team THREE MONTHS to do the entire thing. They basically had no time for optimization and QA which is why it's such a buggy unoptimized mess. Kind of a similar debacle to the Doom 3DO port where it was spearheaded by someone who had basically no knowledge of game development assuming it was a lot easier and less time consuming than it actually was.

[@KasumiRINA]

Actual multicarts did reuse code? Cause how else you got with 100 variations of Contra hacks...

[@KasumiRINA]

@@whatr0 Doom 3DO programmer was competent and did pretty solid Wolfenstein 3D port before, it was another management disaster where they didn't give her the source code until very late, they didn't know they needed to, expecting it to be coded from scratch for some reason.

[@chrismcovell]

Cheers once again for mentioning Solar Wars! I originally released it in November 1999, not 2001. I did fix a title screen scrolling glitch and controller input bug, and that's the 2001 version that you can find. Oh, and Mouser was by *Tony* Young.

[@releasethedogs]

The myth, the man, the legend.

[@error404m]

It's the guy!!

[@johnlewisbrooks]

What blows my mind is that a few seconds of mp3 music is bigger than nearly 3 dozen of these games memory wise. The technology we have is truly INSANE.

[@seamusoblainn]

Or how impressive it is that code can get so much from so little

[@linhero797]

My personal favorite example is to show people the size diffeeences between SM64 on the original N64 and SM64 DS. And ask how long people think there was between them. Many are usually shocked to find that only 8 years had passed between the releases of the two games. And that while being a hundreth the size SM64 DS looks better, runs faster, and has more content.

[@johnlewisbrooks]

@linhero797 not only that it's still the best Mario game out there by 10 miles lol

[@deceseze]

​@@johnlewisbrooks64DS is a yoshi game

[@HappyBeezerStudios]

Interestingly a 1440k floppy can fit pretty much exactly 1 second of PCM wave. On the other hand, I've pressed Never Gonna Give You Up to fit on a floppy. Not that any system with a floppy drive would be able to decode h.265, but that is an an entirely different problem. Oh, and you can have games that fit into the 512 byte boot sector of a floppy.

[@W3Rn1ckz]

So, galaxian didn’t push the NES’s limits… it defined them.

[@alface935]

Nice Profile Picture

[@SumeaBizarro]

One homebrew game I find impressive is Micro Mages that is modern 40kb constrained NES title that has 4 player multiplayer, cool gameplay loop, enemies, stages and so on. It is definitely "Push some other kinds of limits" game for the library.

[@Nicholas_Steel]

Yeah there's some nice videos on the devs KZbin page explaining a lot of how they managed to pull off the great visuals and large number of levels to play through.

[@HappyBeezerStudios]

Making small games is indeed impressive. People made boot sector versions of Tetris and Flappy bird. That is 512 byte or less.

[@3rdalbum]

Action 52 does not reuse code - by that I mean that every game is self-contained. Although many games have the same poor controls and glitches, they each have a copy of the same code, they don't call a single common version of the code.

[@davidmcgill1000]

Can't imagine them even succeeding making it reuse code. That'd require portable executable code and a linker to build the relocations. Surely they weren't building every game at the same time after all. Just doesn't sound like something you'd see being done on an NES from that particular company.

[@vytah]

​@@davidmcgill1000every bankswappable game was from the viewpoint of the console multiple games reusing code, there's nothing that requires any complicated tools, you just need to assemble each bank to a fixed memory location and that's it.

[@reeyees50]

I thought it recycle assets, sound effects, and game modes

[@allideni836]

@@reeyees50 It does and it doesn't. It reuses duplicates of the same assets.

[@hobbified]

It saves *work*. By 1991, the extra ROM cost absolutely nothing, while paying programmers is expensive.

[@mjdxp5688]

Fun fact, all three of the Galaxian arcade games were officially released on the NES. Galaga had an obscure sequel called "Gaplus" that wasn't very popular and didn't see much success and thus didn't really receive any home ports, but later on as a bonus in Namco Museum Archives, a new official NES port was developed for it which is very well made.

[@Geferulf_TAS]

Never even heard of Gaplus, wow.

[@mage1439]

You know a game's really on cruise-control when they're like, "you know what would be a good enemy for our aerial shooter? A piece of tin that keeps flipping over and over in the wind."

[@fnoigy]

I mean, I'm pretty sure a piece of tin flapping in the wind isn't good for planes

[@mage1439]

@@fnoigy That is a completely fair point.

[@MrMegaManFan]

I wasn't aware there was a "Classic Series" version of Mario Bros. until now and having just fired it up in an emulator I can only say WOW. THIS is the version everybody should have gotten. Thank you sir!

[@toastrave7820]

i swear i''ve seen you on RndStranger

[@KrunchyTheClown78]

If you think that version is good. Someone did a complete remake of Mario Bros on the Atari 7800 that blows away the NES, and even the arcade version.

[@jesusramirezromo2037]

​@@KrunchyTheClown78 well it's a modern remake

[@KrunchyTheClown78]

@@jesusramirezromo2037 it is, but it's arcade perfect, and has better, more colorful graphics. Beautiful for the 7800.

[@aiodensghost8645]

It also got released in every Super Mario Advance game

[@HotelDon000]

Getting drunk and staying up until 4am finally pays off!

[@donpalmera]

you are so kewl dude. I hope your mum doesn't find out you've been drinking her miniatures and putting them back full of water.

[@yasin_GD]

Are you Aussie

[@ZeusTheIrritable]

​@@donpalmera Strong words for someone with that profile picture.

[@gluttonousmaximus9048]

@@yasin_GD Aussie sees this at about 9PM

[@Ty-Jack]

Nope L0L

[@OtakuNoShitpost]

16:15 For anyone confused about how this is possible even in theory: theoretical computer science assumes infinite (or at least, sufficiently arbitrarily large) available memory. To be more self-satisfyingly specific, turing completeness which he mentions here means that a machine can perform any calculation that a turing machine can perform. A turing machine is an abstract model of a computer in which a head moves along an infinite tape divided into cells. At each cell, the machine will read the tape and perform an action based on its current state. The current state will specify what symbol to write back onto the tape, which direction to move, and what the new state will be on the next step. Thanks to some complex math, this machine was proven to be able to compute a solution to any problem that has a computable solution (so no, it can't compute why my wife left me). Because any two processors are both turing complete (or at least, any worth using), then given enough time and memory, both processors will be able to compute solutions to any given problem. Which is all a long winded way of saying, the NES can do this because it has orderds of magnitude more resources available than an intellivision, such that having to split everything into high byte and low byte operations doesn't really make that much of a problem EDIT: woops, I was thinking of the Super Nintendo. NES only has 1KB more than the intellivision (which admittedly is still twice the RAM), so Im actually going to change my answer to be black magic. They're using demons as extra RAM

[@ColasTeam]

I was about to say, the NES is not that much more powerful than the Intellivision. So it's an insane achivement.

[@HappyBeezerStudios]

Could the NES already use cartridge RAM like the SNES?

[@renakunisaki]

In other words, given enough memory, the NES could run GTAV via emulation. But performance would be measured in Frames Per Century.

[@renakunisaki]

​@@HappyBeezerStudiosyes, some games such as Super Mario Bros 3 used it. Any game with saves as well; they just connected a battery to it.

[@Eireman_on_Twitch]

The reason why the 8-bit 6502 in the NES could do so well with Intellivision games is that the GI 1610 CPU was a VERY early venture into 16 bit computing on the micro scale. It was clocked at 2.2Mhz, but was a double cycle clock, meaning it read commands on one cycle, then output the next, and vice verse, meaning an effective 1.1Mhz realistic clock by modern standards. The fast logic of the 6502 (which clock for clock can meet an Intel 8088 in pure computing speed) meant even though 16 bit commands took 2 clocks to process, it was STILL able to hit a neat balance to the GI CPU in overall performance. The 6502 and its 16-bit successor, the 65C816, were amazingly capable processors and sadly saw no more development because the IBM cloning scene grew too quickly as home users wanted something at home that could run the software the IBM on their desk at work could.

[@DuckAlertBeats]

@4:00 Galaxians. Genuinely impressive how many of those shots you managed to squeeze through the small slivers of space *between* the enemies there :)

[@Dwedit]

In Galaxian, the enemy formation stops moving if moving would make them enter the path of your shots. That's why you often shoot right between them.

[@DuckAlertBeats]

@Dwedit Hey speak for yourself :) But yeah that's interesting, it explains a lot

[@jfwfreo]

My guess is that the Intellivision emulator on the NES uses some kind of re-compiler that translates Intellivision CPU instructions to NES CPU instructions.

[@HappyBeezerStudios]

Quite possible. The Ricoh 2A07/2A03 in the NES is pretty much a derivative of the MOS 6502, which in turn is simplified from the Motorola 6800, while the CP1600 is related to the PDP-11

[@blakenaftel3637]

15:26 There's a homebrew of Super Mario Bros. for the Intellivision which manages to be, well, literally the best thing anyone has ever created for the platform, far exceeding what I personally thought the Intellivision could even do. I wonder how well that would run in this Intellivision emulator for the NES. The emulator is doing fine with contemporaneous games, which rarely if ever exceeded 20 fps, but the SMB homebrew manages to eke out the 60fps that I used to think the Intellivision was incapable of providing. I have a feeling the emulator is inherently leaning on the low performance of vintage games and would choke if it were fed something that pushes the Intellivision properly.

[@johneygd]

I,ve seen it and it is fantastic. The intelevision definitely needs more games like this😁

[@JH-pe3ro]

My recollection of the Intellivision(from reading developer info, though never going hands-on) is that it provided, essentially, a whole game framework in ROM called "EXEC" (Executive), which dictated some of the look and feel of the games, including framerate. It was a useful framework for the time since it reduced the space requirements and development time for the game carts, and there were plans to expand on it in future revisions of the hardware. Homebrew could ignore this and start from scratch, of course, and I think that's why it runs faster. But it would also mean that a NES emulator is likely to work by translating the CP1610 instruction set to 2A03, and then patching calls to EXEC into its own I/O system, which would also disqualify the homebrew. This strategy wasn't too unusual during the 80's, either - there were many games ported between the various computer platforms with a combination of instruction set compatibility and I/O call patching. It only became a problem if the graphics system was particularly demanding, but for a lot of those quick-and-dirty ports, they dropped framerate on the floor and let it run at whatever speed it would.

[@Dwedit]

Solar Wars wasn't MMC3, it was CNROM (just 8K CHR switching). Easy mistake to make though, "Mapper 3" sounds like MMC3.

[@Sharopolis]

Yes I messed that up, thanks for pointing that out.

[@bmwolgas]

Video suggestion: cut-scenes that push the limits of the NES (or at least look impressive). There's a bunch, for example, in Tecmo Super Bowl.

[@P-_-S]

One theory I had about the use of the VCR7 chip in Tiny Toons 2 Japan (that seems to quickly fall apart under scrutiny), was that as it was released 2 years into Super Famicom's life, Konami had left over boards in inventory with those chips and was just trying to use them up to clear their old stock rather that produce more boards. However, knowing that the only other VCR7 game out there was Lagrange Point, I looked up both carts on NESCartDB, and not only are the boards totally different sizes (Lagrange Point is a tall board with a cart size more typical of an NES game than a Famicom), but the CHR and PRG chips are made by different manufacturers (LSI and Sharp for Lagrange's, and NEC and Ricoh for Tiny Toons 2) . Assuming that the NESCartDB info is accurate and there aren't other hardware variants of either game in production, the only component they share is the VCR7. I guess it is possible that they cancelled/changed platforms on another game in development that was going to use the VCR7 and similar ROM sizes to Tiny Toons 2, but didn't make the change until the carts were already mid-production, so they skipped the soldering step to connect the chip, slapped Tiny Toons 2 on it, and called it a day. Similarly, maybe they had more features initially planned for Tiny Toons 2 (like an enhanced soundtrack) that would use the chip, and they got worried it wasn't going to sell that late in the console's life, so they cut the budget/scope of the game and shifted those resources else even though the carts were already in production. We'll probably never truly know, unless someone who worked on it remembers and is interviewed about it at some point in the future.

[@mickael486]

@5:35 wow. I had no idea that they changed Mario's jump physics in 1993 for the Famicom. I always thought that change only came with the Game Boy Advance Super Mario Advance versions of the Mario Bros. that was included. Unfortunately, the arcade cut scenes were not included on the GBA.

[@unnamedlucario]

the one shown in this video is the "Mario Bros. Classic" for the european nes pal which was made in 1993, there were no US version with fixes in japan theres a fds game called kaettekita mario bros from 1988 where you can play this version with fixed jump physics and sprites with ntsc speed

[@yoymate6316]

**Featured Games** 0:36 Galaxian 4:00 Mario Bros. (Classic Series) 8:05 NESnake 8:29 Pong 1K 8:38 Target Blitz 9:01 Magic Floor 10:34 Star Fight 11:56 Zacner 13:25 Zacner II 14:08 Metal Itou 14:59 Intellivision for NES 17:26 Famiclone-based retro plug-and-play systems 19:38 Super Maruo 21:30 Mouser 22:20 Solar Wars 23:19 Metal Slader Glory 27:41 Tiny Toon Adventures 2

[@3dmarth]

I would have been totally fine with a "games that don't push the limits" video that was played straight, but you managed to subvert expectations and make something more strange and maybe even more interesting!

[@EATABAGOFHELL]

15:24 oh hey I recognize that spaceship sprite; this game was also released as "Astro Blast" for the Atari 2600. Played with the paddle controller if I remember correctly.

[@dan_loup]

"Can it run galaxian" was in the past the "can it run crysis?" and the answer until the famicom was basically "it can try, but.."

[@Roxor128]

"Can it run Crysis?" is the late 2000s' "Can it run Doom?"

[@dan_loup]

@ Yep. Now the answer is yes to many, many, many things that probably shouldn't

[@Roxor128]

@ The sheer number of strange things that _can_ run Doom does make you wonder if we're throwing around the computing power a bit too generously these days, and how many of them would be capable of doing their job with much less of it.

[@dan_loup]

@ Yes we are. it's not very economically viable to make slow CPUs in many cases, so we end up with CPUs using like 1% of it's power level to do the job because it was cheaper than designing a chip with the specific processing requirements.

[@HappyBeezerStudios]

@@dan_loup a bit like how the Z80 is still in production or how Intel's i960, which started out as a 32-bit RISC processor in 1988, but saw use as embedded microcontroller. If a chip works, and has enough performance, you keep using it. And if it's oversized, you still keep using it.

[@reeserivers]

I believe the "Classic Serie" version of Mario Bros. was also released in Italy, not just Germany - still pretty weird it only came out in those two countries though!

[@RawrX32009]

Now that you mention it I wonder what people think of Mario in Italy?

[@goatbone]

It wasn't released in Italy. Only a PAL B version exists. France or Spain or the Netherlands maybe.

[@goatbone]

And Nintendo of Europe was based in Germany which is why Germany specifically got some games that were Japan and Germany only.

[@nodrance]

The 1kb NES game is a lot more impressive when you realize each instruction is 2-4 bytes, giving you 256-512 instructions to work with. And those are super simple ones, usually as simple as "compare this number to this other number" or "move this byte from here to here" I feel like if you threw out all the conveniences and graphics, and made a game of snake that only draws the snake and the fruit, 16x16 grid because there are 256 positions, you have to reset the console when you die, i think you could just barely squeeze it into 512 bytes

[@mrmimeisfunny]

I think the largest instruction is 3 bytes, still pretty impressive

[@HappyBeezerStudios]

512 byte should indeed be possible, considering there are games that work with that much/little space. Not on the NES, but as floppy boot sector game.

[@renakunisaki]

There are plenty of 1-byte instructions.

[@tsm688]

@@HappyBeezerStudios PC instructions are way more verbose than 6500-derived. You get single instructions like "copy this entire RAM block". This was the main innovation of PC over the 6500 and its ilk, and made life immeasurably easier on programmers. 8086 assembly looked almost C-like compared to the chicken scratch seen on other machines. They call this CISC now and it may reduce speed. But the hyperspeed RISC chips they keep insisting are the future continue to be a royal pain for any human or even computer to program.

[@trevorwiant8838]

I love this concept for a video. I hate to break it to you but I think you’re gonna have to do one of these for the Atari 2600 now. I gotta know what the least limit pushing games on the least limit pushing console are like man.

[@juststatedtheobvious9633]

Pong and Combat are the only two games that don't push 2600 limits.

[@everythingisterrible8862]

It doesn't really get lower than Pong and Combat. Since it was a barely an inch better than a pong machine, pretty much EVERYTHING above that had to push the console beyond its design. For the 2600, 'can be considered a game' is like my best praise I can give for the best of them. Enduro, Montezuma's Revenge etc.

[@holdingpattern245]

In a way the Atari is well suited for this since it has almost no native graphics hardware, I believe the programmer even has to code the outgoing video signal, obviously this has allowed for really impressive coding feats like "racing the beam" and pretty much everything that Activision has made, but it's also possible to go the other way and code something impressively half-assed to make the most possible room for other stuff; Adventure for example, which invented the common tactic of making the pixels massive.

[@juststatedtheobvious9633]

@@holdingpattern245 Rampage is a beautiful example of ambitious not giving a damn.

[@tsm688]

@@holdingpattern245 racing the beam surely happens on the NES itself too

[@Larry]

I thought Hydlide was the smallest ever cart on the NES?

[@BainesMkII]

Hydlide is 40KB, with 32KB of PRG ROM and 8KB of CHR ROM.

[@Larry]

@@BainesMkII Jeremy Parish lied to me!!!

[@Dwedit]

Not necessarily the smallest cart on the NES, but it was very unusual to have a Mapper 0 (NROM) game releasing in 1989. Three other mapper 0 games also released in 1989: Dig Dug 2, Bomberman, and Tengen Ms. Pac Man.

[@soundspark]

Running ASM routines in Family Basic probably is a reason Nintendo of America would never let it be imported.

[@tsm688]

They looked at an overcrowded market and said "yeah, fuck that". We already had Apple, Commodore, Spectrum if you wanted a cheap BASIC machine to screw around. And IBM could do all that and more. Compared to any of those the famicom had very little to offer as a familiy computer.

[@ShanetheFreestyler]

I'm most intrigued by Nice Code's Intelevision and Atari 2600. The whole, "let's use an NES-on-a-chip instead of emulating original hardware" thing is bizarre. I'm not sure if it was even more cost effective since the Atari Flashback 2 was released a year later and used a newly developed VCS-on-a-chip meaning it could run original software and even be modded to accept original cartridges! On top of that, the Flashback 2 retailed at 30 bucks vs 45 of the original; so again I'm scratching my head on whether or not they thought it was cheaper or didn't think to design new hardware or what.

[@juststatedtheobvious9633]

The Flashback 2 was also the last time they used original hardware.

[@ShanetheFreestyler]

@@juststatedtheobvious9633 Which is very unfortunate. They could've used it in the 2600+ to have it boot up faster and be 100% compatible with original cartridges instead of 99%. Of course, 99% is still a high percentage, the emulation is great as it should be, but they could've had 100% easily!

[@renakunisaki]

I assume NES-on-a-chip devices are dirt cheap and they have thousands lying around, since bootlegs still use them.

[@ShanetheFreestyler]

@@renakunisaki That does make sense.

[@KabukeeJo]

Donkey Kong the NES is so sad, it's missing the Cement Factory.

[@GXSCChater]

Nintendo officially fixed it on the 3ds virutal console , rom was extracted as well. It surprising how many official nes roms have been made by official companies, my favorite being Pacman championship by namco.

[@Dwedit]

The expanded version of Donkey Kong uses mapper 3 (CNROM), but it contains bus conflicts when it tries to bankswitch the CHR. Bus Conflicts happen when you try to write to a value in ROM space to perform the bank switch, but the value sitting in ROM does not match. That makes it not properly work on actual hardware or newer emulators which enforce bus conflicts.

[@GXSCChater]

​@@Dwedit thanks for the info, what a messy result to a common solution, I wonder if its been fixed.

[@renakunisaki]

​@@Dwedithuh, I thought most mappers worked like that? Why was it a problem here?

[@Smaxx]

Oh, wow, I never really looked at the Mario Bros release date. I remember seeing it appearing in a local toy catalogue and wished it for Christmas, expecting a new (Super) Mario Bros game. It was even cheaper than other games as far as I remember. I was kind of disappointed at first and the start menu (together with the box art) always gave me the impression it was actually one of the original black box games. It was old, but not in that way, which is something I just learned from this video.🤯 It was still fun, especially with two players, but now I guess I can just appreciate that one odd disappointing German Christmas gift way more, considering it's actually more rare than I thought? Wow… 🙂

[@emmastarr5242]

Hilariously, in modern times, Tiny Toons 2 gets cannibalized a ton to make English-flashed Lagrange Point cartridges. Hell, I'm sure at some point, Tiny Toons 2 will likely become the rarest Famicom cart out there, solely due to Konami's own practices. :P

[@OrangeHarrisonRB3]

Pac-Man was smaller and the Nintendo port was by Namco, but the NES release was delayed until the 90s so people mislabel it as unofficial. It had always exited on Famicom and (actually unofficial) Tengen cartridges.

[@ShenDoodles]

Galaxian is one of my favorite retro games because it’s just Space Invaders but way more fun. There’s no much more to think about since the aliens are actively attacking you instead of just advancing.

[@RabbitEarsCh]

Lots of fun stuff in here, thanks for giving lots of screen time to these pioneers. Especially the Family BASIC games, which are in many respects similar to those in the European microcomputer boom, where the right kind of person could, with few resources, do amazing things.

[@Medniex]

Whoa! I didn't even knew that such sound enhancing chip existed

[@SimPiko]

9:07 ah yes, the "Magic Floor", logic game made by NoCash for NES... but also for PC10(NES based arcade), ZX81, Jupiter Ace, Atari 2600, SNES, Satellaviev BSX, Sony SuperDisc (the playstation prototype), Nintendo Super System Version (SNES based arcade), GBA, e-Reader, NDS and DSi. Oh, and there's also Gameboy port (with custom SuperGameBoy frame) but that one is made by tepples. You can move with D-pad between adjacent tile of either: one brightness level above (you score point/arrow is drawn on floor tile) or same brightness (no points/arrow). Holding A makes your character 'jump' over one square (still, the target square has to be a valid move: either same brightness or one step above(or loop around)) The goal is to find every possible move from darker tile to lighter one (or from brightest to darkest). bare in mind, you can only score once in one direction, (as in, if you already scored the move north arrow, you don't get another point/arrow for 'jumping' from same tile north) The GB port has neat lil' demo mode/tutorial explaining the rules more visually (and it's slight additions to the formula, like you don't need to find all arrows/possible moves and that you need to reach exit)

[@Pirateyware]

Super Mario Bros. is arguably one such interesting non-limit-pusher. In its own way, it does push the limits of the NES, but only the stock NES, as it's easily the most elaborate NES game to not use any memory mappers, and was developed to be Nintendo's "swan song" to the base Famicom hardware before moving on to the Disk System.

[@DarkMoe]

from Argentina here, the market for original NES hardware was almost nonexistent, and there was a semi authorized clone called "Family Game" that was basically a japanese Famicom with some differences (mostly related to how the joysticks were plugged or wired into the console). This console was super popular in the early 90s. The cartridges were not the long grey nes ones, but the smaller famicon ones. About 99% of the cartridges were bootlegs, they came in lots of colors, never a box or a manual. Argentina is one of the most piracy countries in the world, there are so few people who got legit games, and a few big stores that sold them, still to this day. The PS1 and PS2 for example, already came chip modded for directly playing copied games. At one point, there were people in the customs offices that actually installed the chip in the PS1 for directly supporting the pirated games, since no one sold original PS1 games. It's a fascinating country with no laws, I inherited in the 90s a full set of PC games that was actually used in a typical copy store, consisting of around 1000+ floppy disks. You could find a lot of virus, but oddities as W95 in 28 disks, and Alone in the dark 3 somehow ripped and cracked to be in 30 disks, for example

[@HappyBeezerStudios]

Installing Windows from floppy is truly an experience.

[@ProjektBurn]

Tiny Toons Adventures was one of my favorite games as a kid. Never knew there was a 2nd. But the 1st was right there with Duck Tales for able to keep me occupied and give my parents at least a weekend of silence. Then Contra, Legend of Zelda and Final Fantasy were all "look at what I did!" type games before Megaman and Double Dragon were the binding topics of me and new friends who moved in across the street.

[@mrmimeisfunny]

According to a blog post I found they used to sell flashable blank cartridges that you could flash yourself and there were switches on them so you could set the mirroring mode. So the switch was probably just there because they used one of those to manufacture the cartridges. The switch wouldn't even do anything because the game doesn't scroll.

[@CassiusZedaker-pr7kc]

Plot twist: Super Maruo is a crypto-miner.

[@Gabu_]

No, no - it's a crypt miner. An Elder Lich commissioned the carts.

[@joec9958]

When I think about being a youtuber... The challenge of constantly thinking of engaging topics puts me off... Doing the negative of your previous videos - what a great way to double the number of topics 😂

[@striderskorpion]

I wouldn't call that the first bootleg, but rather the first unlicensed game (potentially first homebrew, depending on your definition). Bootleg games are associated with piracy, whether a copy of the original game (see multicarts), hacks of games (like the various "Mario" bootlegs), or pirate ports/demakes (e.g., Super Mario World on the Famicom).

[@Jabjabs]

I will shoot from the hip here and wager that the Intellivision emulator is actually a static recompiler. So the code is technically ported via an automated function on the back end and then written to the cartridge/rom. There is still a lot of re-mapping to get it to match to the NES specs but it would explain how it would be done and run so well. Also the 8bit to 16bit thing isn't a big issue, the 8 bit CPU would just use a carry bit (an additional bit above the 8 bit register) and an additional cycle to handle the difference in the data set. Considering the Intellivision was sub 1Mhz, the NES CPU would probably make up the difference on that. It is the same way any processor can calculate any number, you just keep using carry bits and additional cycles. It is slower but extends functionality. Very neat.

[@xdarkjimmyx]

I’m from Argentina, and I indeed played the legendary Super Maruo when I was a kid 💪🏻

[@kaneda_shotaro]

I was really surprised when in collectors sites said that the Super Maruo cart was really rare, and I found one on a second hand store in Argentina. I guess it was one of this bootlegs.

[@iamdarkyoshi]

The NES on a chip is such a fascinating subject on its own. It's such a shame that it has the same horrible composite video defects of the real NES, plus a faulty sound generator...

[@UltimatePerfection]

Regarding super maruo, that switch might be NTSC/PAL region switch so it works both on the original Famicom (which was NTSC-J) as well as most Famiclones (which were PAL in Europe). The code might be just doubled to handle both PAL and NTSC depending on the position of the switch.

[@mrmimeisfunny]

The PAL NES was also only released in 1986 and even then they probably wouldn't bother rewriting the game

[@billcook4768]

The switch is probably there because they are using a bootleg cart. Some of the methods used to get around Nintendo’s lockout chip were finicky and needed to try different options to work.

[@renakunisaki]

That's what I thought, but this was a Famicom game. There was no lockout on Famicom, only NES and later.

[@Pixiuchu]

8:30 how is it that the animations are so impossibly fluid? It doesnt look right, I find it hard to believe those are NES games. Edit: I did some checking and testing, and I'm just being utterly stupid. lol

[@bland9876]

I heard that some plug and plays use NES on a chip hardware to run Atari or in television games And so that's kind of fascinating even though those definitely don't push the limits of the hardware and oftentimes they aren't as good as the original.

[@mrmimeisfunny]

From what i can find Super Maruo is only 20K. So that implies the game code is only 12K.

[@renakunisaki]

That's still huge for such a simple game.

[@mrmimeisfunny]

@@renakunisaki Bootlegs are not really known for their space efficiency. See Action 52.

[@anactualmotherbear]

I believe the reason Konami used their VRC chips in various late-era famicom games because they just happened to have them around. There have been plenty of times where a Famicom game is actually made from old parts (even ending up with a two-color shell.) Konami definitely had spare parts left over from unsold games. Bio Miracle uses the VRC IV despite being a port of a Famicom disk game. Not even the late Castlevania rerelease cartridge used this chip.

[@SockyNoob]

Had no idea the Intellivision Flashback was just a Famiclone in disguise. That's awful!

[@xyklapse]

Didn't Metal Slader Glory later get a port to the Super Famicom? Maybe someone insane could try to 'update' the game to use all of the MMC5's capabilities by using the Super Famicom version as a reference point...

[@jong2359]

19:03 - COULD have been a legit release, except that Konami is/was absolutely... mind-blowingly stupid as a company.

[@notkobun42]

17:50 I need to make a correction on this point. These poor quality NES Intellivision conversions were not done for the Intellivision Flashback as that uses software emulation (and as such runs the original game code). These were done for the Techno Source Intellivision 10-in-1 and 25-in-1 Plug and Plays which were frankly crap. I believe the Intellivision on NES Emulator showcased earlier was actually pitched to the Plug and Play manufacturers to see if it was possible to have a more "faithful" experience but it never went anywhere.

[@Slotmassacre]

So glad action 52 wasn’t $60. They would have sold the heck of them sub $60.

[@FlergerBergitydersh]

I don't know what I was expecting when I tried this video. There are a lot of bad channels in this style grasping at straws for content, regurgitating wrong versions of more widely known info, but this video had genuinely interesting info presented in a way that I find hard to immediately dispute. I very much enjoyed this and will be subscribing.

[@ashen-one--x]

16kb! great idea for a video :) i think those homebrews look amazing honestly. the really big sprites for boss enemies look so cool.

[@UltimatePerfection]

Regarding the Galaxian, I always liked the hack often known as "Speed Galx" on various multicarts that let you fire two bullets at a time and made player bullets much faster.

[@jeromeellsworth1320]

I always like your videos but this one is especially interesting. Nice work, and I look forward to watching similar videos for other consoles if you choose to make them.

[@Sharopolis]

Yes I think I will

[@rafaelgadret]

Congratulations on the excellent video. I love the amount of technical details you bring to us. Thank you very much.

[@SockyNoob]

If this were for the Dreamcast it'd be an easy list: Any PS1 or N64 port.

[@KasumiRINA]

It makes sense using extremely cheap and available Famiclone chips for plug-and-plays, the clones were EVERYWHERE. do you have a video on how multicarts worked? I don't mean simple 4-in-1 ones, but those that had a list of maybe 12 games reused 100 times each and with different hacks on each selection, i.e. Contra starting from level 2, 3, 4 etc, then the same variations but with unlimited spread gun, or 30 lives etc. They surely reused code then appended the hacks or what?

[@KennytheHedgehog619]

had to do a double take on the title lol, interesting idea

[@KrunchyTheClown78]

I hope you do another limit pushing video for the Atari 7800. The console with the most untapped power!

[@KizulEmeraldfire]

The last Mapper 0 game released during the NESes' and Famicom's lifespans may have been the Classic Series Mario Bros. game - but there HAVE been some Mapper 0 games released since then; the most-recent release I know about being Micro Mages, released in 2019 by Morphcat Games. :)

[@AndrewAmbrose]

The Astrosmash port was done for the Intellivision 10 and Intellivision 25 plug & plays released by TV Play Power in 2003, not the Intellivision Flashback.

[@theyamo7219]

Action 52 = The NES version of Cascade Cassette 50. LOL

[@HelpTheWretched]

That mysterious switch on the Super Maruo cartridge might be something to do with bypassing the NES lockout protection. I watched a video recently on some unlicensed peripheral, I forget which one, but it had a switch just like that with "Use position B only if position A does not work" or whatever printed on the cart.

[@Tolbat]

Wow I thought this channel went poof. Glad it's back on my feed

[@AcornElectron]

Any chance of a video about the new stuff still being developed for these older systems? I saw Skate Cat at the last Play Expo and a few others that looked worth covering or investigation.

[@headbangersworld]

:D "Games That Don't Push The Limits" Great idea! :D

[@noveltyman6723]

What's baffling me is that these NES ports of Atari 2600 games are made for the MMC3 mapper, despite not making use of any of its advanced capabilities. Or at least the rom inspection tool I used said they use MMC3.

[@juststatedtheobvious9633]

The first Flashback also had 7800 ports. The stock NES needs that boost.

[@iocat]

i didn't honestly think there was anythig else I could learn about the NES, but this video proved me wrong! Thanks for a great video. My guess is the Intellivision emuator uses the same type of offline emulation used for the Phantasy Star Collection on GBA.

[@michaelcalvin42]

I remember playing Mouser back on early NES emulators! Man, I had completely forgotten about it.

[@BurnRoddy]

At least Galaxian had Nausicaa's Requiem. It must've been a neat way yo experiment with the sound chip capabilities.

[@0xPRIMEgs]

20:50 so... link to the "content"?

[@S0ULESSB0NES]

Ive never even heard of the Family Basic games. Is there a good place to get the roms for those?

[@mavadelo]

Lol,I saw Galaga and immidiatly heard the theme in my head.

[@orderofmagnitude-TPATP]

Something very ghostly about that little ditty on galaga

[@returnofmerenguespersempre]

Wow that LagrangePoint really impressed me, never heard of it! Could you at some point make a list of (excellent) NES games that never made it to EU for one reason or another? Im thinking Sweet Home but that's only one on top of my head. Or maybe you already made one but I never found it? :D

[@Jerkwad152]

WILL YOU JUST *CATCH* HER ALREADY?!?

[@Dwedit]

"One Chip" cartridge still needs a lockout chip as well.

[@bitcores]

Not on the Famicom.

[@cube2fox]

Never knew about the enhanced version of Mario Bros. Was it perhaps the base for the versions included in the Super Mario Advance games? I remember they had improved controls as well.

[@andrewwelch5017]

7:17 Not sure if you misspoke but the cartrige was 2 megabits (256 kilobytes), not 2 megabytes.

[@Sharopolis]

No it's definitely 2 megabytes or 8 megabits.

[@andrewwelch5017]

@@Sharopolis I stand corrected, you are absolutely right!

[@MrSkinnedpuppy]

I seem to recall Nintendo placing limits on the number of games a company was allowed to release with special chips outside Japan which might explain that one.

[@Nicholas_Steel]

No mention of Micro Mages? One of the goals was to fit in the original cartridge capacity, unsure if they restricted themselves to original cartridge hardware though. The game looks fantastic for such little data. They've got some great videos detailing the intricacies of designing the game on the deveoper's KZbin page. Also how did Solar Wars inspire Team17? Worms, Worms 2 and Worms: Armageddon were games made throughout the 90's while Solar Wars released in 1999. Afaik the FM Synthesizer found in the VRC6 and VRC7 chips are variants of the chip found in the Sega Genesis, allowing Nintendo to do what Sega does.

[@juiceweezer]

Fascinating video! Subscribed

[@SigSantilio]

Marvellous content, thanks

[@thezood]

I can almost smell melting, smoking, intellivision when I see Astro smash

[@henke37]

Switches on bootlegs are for tuning the lockout chip zapping circuit.

[@mrmimeisfunny]

The Famicom didn't have a lockout chip

[@googleboughtmee]

14:58 people never link below when they say they're going to link below

[@Sharopolis]

Oops, sorted now, thanks!

[@clefairyfan333]

YARRRRGH that be William Afton in the thumbnail

[@PortgazHyde]

Time to test these game out. I was searching for list of nes action games with no to minimal flicker somewhere online but I can't find any.

[@The_Conspiracy_Analyst]

16:10 Well, a guy fully emulated an IBM "quantum computer" on a Commodore 64. Go look it up, I'm not joking

[@bensilva4762]

What version o mario bros is that? I dont remember the graphics be that good, the koopas models also differente, everything looks less clunky and sharp than i remember of the NES port

[@Macronaso]

Perhaps Konami had a bunch of VCR7s in stock and with the 16-bit era approaching they decided to use them in whatever was available.

[@volo870]

Galaxian arcade machine has NOTHING incommon with NES: - Galaxian is z80 machine with 224 color RGB pallet. - NES is MOS6502 machine with custom 56 color prebaked NTSC pallet. If there are similarities of Galaxian with a game console - those would be with the Sega Master System. Did ChatGPT hallucinate this silly mistake into your script?

[@just_add_a_3]

He's not talking about the exact chips inside the console. He's talking about the rendering paradigm of having most of the graphics made up of discrete tiles and a tilemap to save on VRAM, which Galaxian is the first instance of.

[@Sharopolis]

They swapped the Z80 for a 6502, but it's well documented that Nintendo took a lot of inspiration from the Galaxian based machines of the time.

[@volo870]

@@Sharopolis Why do you keep deleting my replies? We cannot have a respectful argument, if I am being muted.

[@Sharopolis]

@@volo870 I've not deleted anything, I'm not even sure I could if I wanted to. No hard feelings at all from me, I welcome any comments!

[@volo870]

​@@Sharopolis I wanted to say that Nintendo indeed copied Galaxian, when making Galaxian clones (Space Firebird, Space Demon and Radar Scope). They accidentally made Donkey Kong based on that, but only to get rid of unsold cabinets. When designing NES graphics they had to start from TMS9918 specification and develop it into something more capable. Similar approach was taken by competitors with Master System and MSX2. NES has no Galaxian architecture whatsoever.

[@VyxiMainchannel35]

0:43 Japanese exclusive? I thought it was released in the US too (It did in Europe, but unofficially)