How Oldschool ROM Cartridge Games Worked

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In this episode I take a look at how ROM cartridge games worked, what their advantages and disadvantages were.

[@pentachronic]

I designed the development cartridge for Sega Genesis. It was called the RamCart and used static memory to hold the cartridge image. Data was written to it by access to a couple of phantom registers. Once the final image was confirmed, that image was used in the ROMs for production. I worked on a lot of the early 8 bit and 16 bit games platforms.

[@graxjpg]

Anything a gen z’er would recognize? Besides the genesis, which I own

[@pentachronic]

Probably not. Tech goes obsolete so quickly. This stuff was purely for game developers and not the general public.

[@Phred_Phlintstoner]

@@pentachronic thats awesome! I would love to sit down and pick your brain. The cartridges you mentioned sound a lot like sega channel. But better.

[@pentachronic]

I used to work for Sega.

[@Cuzjudd]

@@pentachronic make a channel!

[@amateurprogrammer25]

Fun fact: The expansion sound on NES cartridges is still there; it's just there's no pin on the cartridge that connects to the speakers. There are ten unused pins on the cartridge that go to a port on the bottom of the console, and the expansion audio in such games is usually connected to pin number 5. There's a gadget you can plug in underneath the console to bridge the expansion audio into the NES's sound output.

[@RetroMaticGamer]

Licensed NES cartridges all looked the same because Nintendo wouldn't let other companies manufacture them - they made the carts themselves, and shipped them in limited quantity to companies that ordered them. This was done to keep them from flooding the market with crappy games, which is what killed Atari in 1983. This is why some bigger game companies made games under multiple brand names (i.e. Konami and Ultra) - to get around the order size limitation and make more money selling more games by pretending to be separate companies.

[@scottythegreat1]

The multiple brand names were created to get around one rule Nintendo had back then, a publishing company could only distribute 5 games a year. That rule changed when game companies cold make their games for more than one console that actually threatened Nintendos position as market leader (ie. the Sega Genesis/Mega Drive).

[@AemVR]

Tengen made their own carts

[@yourick1953]

@@AemVR because they were unlicensed carts because of nintendos rules about publishing games.

[@Lectrikfro]

@@AemVR I remember having one of their games and as a kid always wondered why I had one janky looking cart

[@hoskinsshapter4612]

@@AemVR and wisdom tree too. Was he trolling us?

[@abrandoncadabrandon6326]

I did similar experiments as a kid with my Playstation, but I remember removing a disk would not cause the game to stop unless you navigated a new menu or performed an action that required new content to be read from the disk. Helps explain a lot about how data from physical storage "lives" in computer memory (volatile memory)

[@stephensnell1379]

Only data in RAM is volatile memory whereas hard drives are permanent storage for data as it can retain data even with the power switched off and RAM will lose data completely without power

[@LGR]

Dude yes. I may have a softer spot for floppies, but cartridges are still magical. Especially those like on the TI-99/4A, where they called them Solid State Command Modules. I mean, that still sounds straight from the future, I love it.

[@JohnDoe-qx3zs]

Yes, the TI 99/4A cartridge system was pretty special in terms of memory map etc. Quite a subject onto itself.

[@7cleverboys]

hi clint eastwood or should i say clint woodgrain!!!!!!!!!!!!

[@happmacdonald]

TMS9900 MASTER RACE will riiiise again! xD

[@cbmeeks]

Let's not forget you can add carts to the TI while it's turned on and the system will reboot. Pretty slick.

[@eliel1815shadow]

What the... you are everywhere

[@PScoopYT]

For anyone who wonder why the Famicom that showed up in this video is different from the usual one we've seen, It's because THAT wasn't the original Famicom. It was a Twin Famicom which only released in Japan and can play both Famicom and Famicom Disk System games in one system. Also another point out is that only the Famicom Disk System have an additional sound chip. Since Twin Famicom contain both system you can hear an additional sound. However, I don't think any cartridge games used an additional sound chip because if you don't own a Twin Famicom, You can't use a cartridge games while using Disk System anyway. Only the Disk System games used an additional sound chip. Update : There are some Famicom games that had an additional sound chip! like Castlevania III for example.

[@bagelmaster8]

Cool

[@AmartharDrakestone]

It was also not made by Nintendo, but by Sharp. And it came in two color variations.

[@googleboughtmee]

Some Famicom carts did have an extra sound chip in, like Castlevania III as they showed. But yeah the disk system did also have extra audio functionality of its own.

[@tbb033]

" It was a Twin Famicom which only released in Japan" All Famicoms were only released in Japan. Outside Japan they were NESes.

[@KairuHakubi]

Wait I'm confused, you're saying the red and gold one was the original, right? It's the one ROB matches the colors of, after all. i was also expecting to hear something about that whole legal thing nintendo did with its cartridges and what a butt it was.. and how there were a few unusual ones for patent reasons. also the game genie.

[@javiceres]

Japanese Castlevania III sounds freaking cool!! Chiptune bliss, really well composed

[@AmaroqStarwind]

The second cartridge port was actually intended for the "Monkey Wrench" cartridge, which was made to significantly expand the capabilities of BASIC.

[@ashleyquinn9143]

I just fixed an old saga game after watching this video, I never would have thought vinegar would be safe to use but it worked!

[@waltercomunello121]

Also isopropanol works pretty good. I prefer isopropanol to vinegar because the latter reeks for a while. But if you got alkaline corrosion, you have no choice but vinegar. Generally, it depends on the type of corrosion or filth. Sodium bicarbonate might work wonders with everything but alkaline corrosion.

[@cloudstrifeification]

You can use electrical contact cleaner from an electronics store as well.

[@jc.1191]

@@waltercomunello121 try deoxit instead of vinegar. Wipe excess, then wipe with alcohol.

[@amogus7]

Old sAga cartridge

[@0MoTheG]

vinegar might be save but still a bad idea. A mild abrasive like toothpaste is better.

[@SatoshiMatrix1]

Minor correction to "For example all Nintendo [NES] cartridges look more or less exactly the same no matter of what company actually made them". In direct response to the American crash of 1984, all licensed NES games were manufactured solely by Nintendo [and later Konami due to preferential treatment]. This involved a process in which developers would submit their finished game code to Nintendo and then be forced to wait for Nintendo to manufacture the games. This is why all licensed NES games use the exact same gray cartridge shell and mix of pcb designs. Regardless of the developer, all NES games were produced by Nintendo [although later Konami game pcbs were produced by Konami themselves]. THis was NOT the case with the Famicom, the Japanese NES. in Japan, Famicom games were produced by the publisher, of which there were dozens and dozens. This is why Famicom games very greatly in size, shape and color, and what makes Famicom collecting so interesting. Virtually no two Famicom games look alike.

[@KairuHakubi]

licensed being the key word. i remember 'king of kings the early years' (a really good game actually. well, the camel one was good) had a different cartridge.

[@makomk]

Not only that, to ensure compliance the NES has a special lockout chip which checks for the presence of a similar chip in the cartridge and resets the system if the check fails.

[@jjjacer]

same with Tengen Vindicators, while mostly the same it had an angled end, i remember it was sorta weird trying to remove it from my old NES

[@dareelcatskull]

Notably, the Tengen games which were actually made by Atari, and were unlicensed and manufactured by Atari rather than Nintendo. Sega did something similar with the Genesis, but EA wanted to be able to manufacture their own cartridges so that's why all EA games on the system are taller and have that yellow tab.

[@SproutyPottedPlant]

I really like my colourful Japanese cartridges, lots of unlicensed multicarts with no NES10 chip.

[@liquidsofa]

You actually enhance and augment my childhood. You fill in the blanks I had as a child and that enhances my memories of my time with the Atari 2600, C64, NES and so on.

[@joostdriesens3984]

It is almost like he puts a ROM cartridge in your memory slot, expanding your experiences..

[@dmoore0079]

A pencil eraser works well for cleaning cartridge edge contacts also.

[@Christopher-N]

My brother had the official Game Boy Cleaning Kit, which came with a cleaning cartridge (with replaceable pads), and a plastic stick with a bit of white leather on the end-effectively a pencil eraser, but you could use cleaning chemical with it (we used pencil erasers to clean battery and light bulb contacts).

[@Hennrz10]

But your wiping the data

[@Mittens0407]

@@Hennrz10 I don't think that's how it works

[@DrewWalton]

@@Hennrz10 that's.....not how that works.

[@Nanospark0]

A pencil eraser sounds like a good way to rip off the contacts and/or traces as well if you push too hard. I prefer a cotton swab and isopropyl alcohol myself.

[@marscaleb]

Bank switching on the NES was ridiculously effective. Games that employed that could switch banks so rapidly without error that said games could bank-switch in the middle of drawing a frame to extend the game's graphics. A simple example is the status bar in Super Mario Bros 3, which runs on a completely different set of tiles than the rest of the level. The animated tiles in that game were also animated via bank switching. And the way the NES enabled extending its capability through hardware on the cartridge was much different from other gaming consoles. As I understand it, part of the system's PPU was directly connected to the cartridge, and so instead of simply plugging in an array of memory, the cartridge is actually part of the rendering hardware. This allowed the system to have games that expand the capabilities far beyond the original specs than any of the later and more advanced consoles could.

[@mayravixx25]

That famicom castlevania soundtrack was pretty lit, not gonna lie.

[@MonkeyPunchZPoker]

The Master System had some kind of sound card extension port that made some games sound a lot better.

[@Rednax35]

Monkey PunchZ The Japanese Master System had an expansion chip (the YM2414) that gave it an extra FM Soundfont that went along with the built in PSG Soundfont on the Master System. It was only released in Japan and you'd need to mod an American Master System to actually use it.

[@DanielAyy]

It kind of sounds like a PC engine game. Dare I say it sounds even better?

[@knightshousegames]

I heard the only reason we didn't get the VRC6 sound chip in the American release was because Nintendo of America didn't want expansion hardware in NES carts. It seems like they changed their tune by the time of SNES

[@mresturk9336]

@@knightshousegames It was a bit more complicated. The VRC6's sound channels used the same connection pins as the Famicom Disk System's added sound channel did. Problem was the American NES moved those connection pins to the expansion slot on the console's bottom to make it more streamlined (the FDS attached to the Famicom in a rather clunky manner). Thus even if they got Nintendo's blessing in order to fully port the VRC6 chip they would have had to figure out some way to reroute the sound channel's connectors to the bottom of the console. Probably decided it wasn't worth it just for one game (There were other VRC6/VRC7 games, but they were never ported outside Japan).

[@StuffWePlay]

Whenever I don't know what to watch, I always find myself coming back to your videos

[@richkim0607]

I do the same thing as you

[@thudtheace]

There was a cart for the Atari 800 called Monkey Wrench, and it was made to be plugged in the right cartridge slot of the atari 800 with basic in the left slot. It would add all sorts of features and function to atari basic. Cheers!

[@luisr6927]

Back in the days when I considered myself a hacker with my Atari 800XL I was able to actually save an image of a ROM cartridge to disk. I wrote a small machine language program in the boot sector of a floppy drive which would stand by for a specific key press. The Atari 800XL was built in such a way that you could insert and remove cartridges without crashing the computer (if the cartridge was not running of course). If you were careful you could insert the cartridge and its content would just show up in their corresponding location in memory (always the same 16K block). My program would wait for the key press and dump a copy of the contents of that memory lock onto disk. Then I booted normally and recovered the image from that disk using another machine language program that would save it to a regular disk file.

[@H33t3Speaks]

Shame you didn't patent it fam...

[@neehgurg2111]

Luis R how old where you? You must be like 60 now

[@missingno2401]

Shit now that’s impressive

[@KickTheBabyKAF]

patenting something like that could land you in a lot of legal trouble with people pirating games using the program

[@americancitizen748]

I learned the trick for doing the same thing with a VIC-20 cartridge. You would cut a trace on the cartridge board and add an on-off switch. You turn the switch off before inserting the cartridge. Then you boot the VIC-20. The computer does not sense a cartridge so it boots to BASIC. Then you flip the switch to on. Now the computer can read the game ROM code. Then you could just write a bit of code in BASIC to copy the game code to floppy.

[@LepricahnsGold]

Most US NES licensed cartridges were the same because, while other companies made the games, they had to buy the cartridges from Nintendo per Nintendo's licensing agreement. Some unlicensed NES carts were different but most were still very similar because they had to fit into and be removed from the front-loading NES.

[@AnthonyFlack]

Too bad really cos Famicom carts show lots of variety. The Irem ones even have a little LED on the top that lights up when the game is on, for some reason.

[@mtunayucer]

Anthony Flack original famicom didnt have a power light. That may be the reason of why some fami carts had a power light.

[@PuppetMaster8707]

Yeah when SNES came out Nintendo really uped their lock out chip game so NO ONE could make an unlicensed game there was only 1 SNES unlicensed game that came out and you had to plug in a regular SNES cart into it for it to even work

[@killerbee2562]

@@PuppetMaster8707 How do the super everdrive and FXPAK Pro?

[@michaelberman4749]

I was this old when I learned the speak and spell had ROMs that my parents were too cheap to buy....

[@Christopher-N]

I had a VTech Learning-Window computer in the 1980s. We got two application packs to go with it (I think spelling, and math), which included a cartridge and an overlay for the keyboard. I wanted the voice synthesizer cartridge, but we never got it.

[@Kairi091]

"All Nintendo cartridges look more or less exactly the same" Except them weirdo Tengen or Color Dreams ones.

[@Appleboy78165]

I guess he should have said "All officially licensed Nintendo cartridges look more or less the same."

[@tenchimod]

They had to buy the cartridges from Nintendo, the unlicensed games made their own I believe.

[@BiffWebster100]

RBI baseball!!

[@birdoffire1549]

I remember a Gold Adventures of Link cartridge.

[@thescott7539]

@@birdoffire1549 Yes, Zelda 1 and 2 had gold carts. But they used the same Nintendo mold.

[@d1o2c3t4o5r]

This is kinda funny, because at 11:16, you can tell that TheObsoleteGeek is spreading his legs to keep his head in frame.

[@obsoletegeek]

The groin muscle pain took a few days to subside.

[@Whelkman]

That's what she said.

[@rihardsrozans6920]

Tall people problems, amirite ?

[@d1o2c3t4o5r]

k

[@yoshipower457]

Just wanted to say you make fantastic content man, it's so interesting learning about this stuff. You also make it easy to understand for people who don't know much about these things. Keep it up man!

[@daaveed1323]

I've been wathching your videos for a bit over a year now, you do a great job at explaining things I've wondered as a young kid. I think it would be a great idea of you could breakdown the difference between today's gamecards and yesteryears cartridges. If you did it would be greatly appreciated.

[@Lovethemusic385]

This guy does such a good job of these videos, that even though I barely understand what he's talking about, I find them very enjoyable to watch. I sure miss my old Commodore Vic 20

[@TopKekbread_is_gay_lol]

Last time I was this early, this channel was called "The Ibook Guy"

[@NLSNMedia]

oh shit what happened my dude

[@tohopes]

you've been late of late

[@TopKekbread_is_gay_lol]

I'm never on time for these videos :(

[@chrizizdaman]

Last time I was this late my D wasn't out for Harambe

[@swat37]

How dare you! It was called "The iBook Guy"

[@Rommager1]

I was hoping you would cover how carts went on to the memory maps of the 64k computers, and also maybe a tidbit about initialization vectors - basically how the computer knew to run the cart rather than going in to BASIC. Still good video to complement the tape and disk videos! :)

[@The8BitGuy]

I thought about going into that.. along with the pin-diagrams and stuff.. but decided it was just too in depth.

[@allluckyseven]

+The 8-Bit Guy For _one_ video, yes.... But maybe not for two? **wink-wink**

[@christianfibich9651]

I only know from the Commodore C64 that the cartridges contain some ASCII characters as a kind of magic word at a specific location. The C64 startup routine reads these bytes and starts to execute the cartridge instead of BASIC if they are there.

[@hikaru-live]

If the bus is properly pulled up (or down) and the first byte of cartridge address space is never 0x00 or 0xFF based on which way the bus is pulled to, the BASIC ROM can start with something like this (described using x86 assembler but you get the idea) cmpb rombase, $0 ; if pulled down, $0xff if pulled up jnz rombase

[@dsrtrdr]

That's actually the stuff I thought you would cover and why I watched the vid.

[@MrV1NC3N7V3G4]

Wow! I remember my father bringing home a PCB loaded with 32 EEPROM's that plugged into our Atari 2600. You would have to flip DIP switches with the power off to select the game you wanted. (The first version was a single flip socket that you had to insert the different EEPROM's into but as you can imagine with children, the pins got bent)

[@ezradekezra]

10:58 That's actually the Sharp Twin Famicom, a two-in-one system that Nintendo licensed Sharp to make. The Twin Famicom can play both Famicom and Famicom Disk System games, unlike Nintendo's first-party Famicom, which requires an additional accessory to play Famicom Disk System games.

[@itsdpr7953]

I was wondering why it looked so different lmao

[@legostar55]

Actually it's the Turbo Twin Famicom. It has a power light, which was the first time the Famicom ever had a power light. Although it still had hardwired controllers the cords were the longest of any original Famicom, even beating the regular Twin Famicom which already had longer cords the the original Famicom. It also came with turbo controllers, the first and only Nintendo console to do so.

[@asolutioncompanylimited9518]

love your cable management in the background awesome 🤤

[@Realmasterorder]

Nice video Cartriges were really awesome and lighting fast with no loading from disks or casettes at the time :)

[@MichaelClark-uw7ex]

Indeed, it is amazing for fast multi gigabyte games load faster today than games for the C-64 using the 1541 floppy drive.

[@danlock1]

That's because they don't have to load from a disk in a 1541.

[@Aresydatch]

The Nintendo Switch has a cartridge slot for games

[@krisizcelja]

@@Aresydatch But it has to load some stuff for whatever reason, even for a cartridge system :I

[@fivesquaredyt2521]

Realmasterorder 69 likes

[@halo368]

This is only my 2nd time watching one of your videos and I'm learning so much, subbed! 😁👍🏻

[@Cuzjudd]

Almost at 1 million subs! Well deserved, I love this channel

[@random_gamer_guy82]

Blowing the cartridges actually makes a little part of your soul go onto the connectors and through the power of love instantly make it work 🥰🥰🥰

[@FiXato]

If you look at the MSX systems, which often had 2 cartridge slots, where both slots were actually used. As cartridges not only were used for games, but also for extension hardware such as soundchips (OPL, OPLL, OPL4, SCC, etc), extra RAM, and even graphics chips (for instance V9990), or in rare cases copy-protection dongles, it isn't uncommon for both slots to be used by these extension cards, to be used by for instance disk-based games. Or, in the case of several Konami games, combining certain game cartridges, would enable hidden cheat modes, replace certain graphics, or even be required for the good ending. It wasn't just limited to 2 carts though; using a slot-expander, even more than 2 carts can be used at the same time. For instance combining 2-3 different sound chips with extra RAM, DOS 2.x support and a better graphics chip. Or, in more recent years, for flash-memory based storage such as CompactFlash or SD cards. :)

[@kenhymes4900]

"If you look at the MSX systems, which often had 2 cartridge slots, where both slots were actually used." If I do this.... what happens? It's okay, when the Times and the Post can't be bothered to check whether sentences are sentences, i'm insane for caring about youtube comments 😊

[@mrkitty777]

Memory expansion was very expensive back then unfortunately.

[@Juan800PimpBot]

My dad had one for his ti-99 and a floppy drive pretty awesome I thought as a kid.

[@deltakid0]

I saw this video back in 2016 but I didn't understand much about it, now that I have knowledge in electronics, Arduino and so the video makes perfectly sense and it's highly valuable even these days. Thank you David.

[@EthanDoezYT]

I rlly liked this video, gave me a better understanding of how these kinds of games I used to play (and still do) worked.

[@javierortiz82]

I'm sorry but a twin famicom is not the "japanese version of the NES", it is a completely different machine and it wasn't even made by Nintendo (it was made by Sharp and it included the famicom disk system built in). While it served the purpose of explaining how Castlevania III had more sound channels and voices than the american version, the way the system was portrayed can lead to confusion.

[@james42519]

yeah that is like jvc x'eye or wondermega is the sega genesis.

[@garfieldepicmoments]

yeah tell me about it what a baka gaijin he's not like us nipponese folk **slices the twin famicom in half with the katana my dad bought me at the mall** **naruto runs away**

[@garfieldepicmoments]

you're like this guy chad who used to take my lunch all the time in high school **does a backflip and slices both you and chad's heads off** **bows in the nipponese manner of respect** **steals ur credit card to go and buy more naruto anime books**

[@naota3k]

*runs on tip-toes while leaning forward, with such mighty speed he leaves his arms behind him.*

[@ghoulbuster1]

You done?

[@dboy4ever]

I miss instant-on. Turn on. Play. Now when I try to play my PS4: Turn on TV. Update TV software. Turn on PS4. Update system software. Hit Agree. Restart. Connect to PSN. Update game. Restart. Load game. Play.

[@Galal0110]

First world problems...

[@JustPlayerDE]

this makes the console relatively useless (by useless i mean: you can get a PC and you can play at least as fast as on a console (and have more features))

[@CidSilverWing]

This is why I stopped supporting consoles, they're obsolete and dragging down the industry.

[@DanBowkley]

LoadStation.

[@fastcow7013]

turn on pc. click play. boom ez (assuming you automatically have steam startup and you dont have autoupdates on (which 99.999% of people do)

[@ParaSteve1985]

Awesome that there is such a huge interest in this 8-Bit stuff. Love it!

[@djbassgun]

Awesome episode! As a cartridge lover i remember one cartridge I got for the Commodore 64. It was a cartridge with one button on it and 5 or 6 different operating systems on it. Unfortunately I could not manage to select the other operating systems, but maybe with this episode in my mind and a lot of experience I can give it another shot :-) and yes, I have a couple of old C64... maybe I will make a short footage when I find some time and that weird and fascinating cartridge... LoL

[@pavre69]

omg some sounds are nostalgic.. i want my 80's back!!! ghost busters!! with that reciter voice hahaha omg i was 15 years back then :P I had complete forgotten this hahhaha great Video!

[@yafilmDOTcom]

13:39... "all cartridges of NES looks exactly the same regardless of the company that made them", except if the company in question happens to be Tengen, then it looks black with a curved top.

[@stuartburke2174]

Yes, but I believe Tengen wasn't 'quality' approved by Nintendo either. Wasn't there lawsuits over this?

[@daemonspudguy]

@@stuartburke2174 yep.

[@asteroidrules]

Yeah unlicensed NES cartridges look different, all officially licensed carts were actually made by Nintendo, and they required third party developers buy the carts from them for officially licensed games. This was part of Nintendo's access control scheme for the NES, they wanted a far greater degree of control over what got released on their console than other console producers, and got involved in a few lawsuits against unauthorized game production.

[@hamzamalik7305]

Your Videos and Work is Very appreciateable

[@GfastGao]

I really enjoy the clear declaration about the memory accessing. Fun & logical for me.

[@MrZombieUK]

Having started to learn to dev for the mega drive I can say that having to work with such tiny rom size, I have nothing but respect for game devs back then!!

[@LivingWithTheGuzmans]

Wow you bring back the memories.

[@ambarcraft4476]

Are you memories in RAM or ROM?

[@DrWho2008t101]

sure does.

[@hmwhat9583]

@@Tretheperson what do you mean this is spam? this is a channel that has a lot of subscribers. also they're just people who frequently comment on these videos, and you're gonna call them "spam"?

[@rembramlastname3631]

@@Tretheperson YOUR JUST JEALOUS !!!!!!!!!!!1 PLEAS LOOK FOR A LIVE YOU ARE MAKING EVERYONE UPSET!!!!!

[@aussieausbourne1]

Awesome video very informative and A+ on your t-shirt!!!👍🏼

[@mehrdadjoker]

Thank you for the content you bring us. I like it and I admire your hard work for us.

[@johnsimon8457]

You covered bank switching! 👍

[@dilozva7624]

5:40 totally not a super mario bros copy XD

[@ekomagfed20]

dilozva gameplays I got impressed when I saw that gameplay

[@jazztom86]

Giana Sisters was one of mine and my brothers favorite games on the C64. Was really the poor man's Mario Bros. Great game, I'd take it over Mario every day :D However, we had Giana Sisters on cassette, not on disk.

[@theDubleD]

I was looking for this comment, and wondering if it wasn't mario that was a copy. But wiki says, mario is from 1985 and Giana Sisters from 1987.

[@AgentDanielCross]

I used to play it on a flip phone.

[@Clairemewsic]

This is one of the Best commodore 64 games.

[@waltercomunello121]

11:26 That is friggin SNES-like music, it's awesome. I've watched some videos that demonstrated some incredible capabilities of the NES, like detailed graphics or enhanced sound, playing with code in very interesting ways.

[@aa-au]

My first computer was the Tandy Color Computer which also took cartridges. I think I tried the same trick as you did, but I learnt quickly that the program was stored on the cartridge and not the computer itself. Best computer ever - I learnt so much on it.

[@BluesM18A1]

On the subject of C64 carts, I recall that there were a few games up to 512k were on carts, a game I can name that used more than 16k is Terminator 2 for example.

[@PontusBerg]

A number of games aren't really possible without being stored on cart. Toki is a notable example of a gamle that does extensive bank switching to flip in graphics. It wouldn't work to have it on disk - both the actual volume of data and the access speed requires a cartridge. There are versions cracked to disk, but they have taken away animations or all audio to fit more into RAM.

[@AshtonCoolman]

It's interesting that we use cartridge consoles today. They're the portable Nintendo 3DS and its predecessors. The rumors are the Nintendo NX will use a small cartridge as well since we can fit 64+GB on one of them with faster access speeds than Blu-ray and most mechanical hard drives. CARTRIDGES RULE!!!

[@BodethIII]

Or, pretty much like SSDs on a PC or installed in a console. Both have no moving parts and instant access like the cartridges of old. the Nintendo NX potential cartridges may be special cheap small SSDs in a specific format.... like a cartridge.

[@blackwing88cyper51]

we use them because thay are a very advanced technology

[@temujin1234]

I wonder why this would be better than putting solid state memory on the device itself. If it's actual ROM you could go back to no loading times, but that sounds expensive.

[@kgoblin5084]

Modern ROM is significantly cheaper & better than it was back in the 1980s. The real reason the games console industry went to CDs was the storage issues at the time... There were quite a few JRPGS that never came over to the USA (or came over butchered) because it was literally impossible to fit the translated text into the cart. Ditto higher quality art & music assets. Cost wise, cartridges were marketing for the same ~$60 you would pay for a modern game. The real driver was the data storage issues.

[@sergiofls7623]

JohnnyNismo the rumors are true. the nintendo switch has a some kind of a "game card" or a cartridge.

[@eletronica1857]

i love this and LGR channel... both excelents ! congratz ! hugs from brazil

[@escaflowne8162]

The video is super! Thank you and your guest! You are super cool retro guys! I liked this format very much. I live in Russia and I am a crazy retro gamer too! I collect retro consoles and cartridges. It is very difficult to find especially such cartridges with a sound chip. Sanctions and regionalism have never happened, but we are gradually looking for and sending friends from Vladivostok-Japan. We also buy on aliexpress and do homemade reconstructions! Good luck and Respect!

[@PrekiFromPoland]

An interesting feature of MSX computers should have been mentioned here. Namely one can combine two cartridges for some special stuff or even advantages, kind of hardware cheat codes. Konami was known for prominently using this technique in their games. For example: inserting a Metal Gear cartridge alongside one containing a game called Usas will reduce received damage by half. Another interesting example is the original 1988 release of Snatcher, which had floppy disks with actual game data on them, and a cartridge containing Konami SCC sound extension chip.

[@moosemaimer]

All the official NES games look the same because no matter which company designed the program they had to buy the carts from Nintendo. Bootleg games look very different because they were just slapping together something that would fit in the slot.

[@MonkeyPunchZPoker]

Tengen, a division of Atari, made their own cartridges. They frivolously sued Nintendo (I don't remember what for, and was probably a subsidiary) and the way the legal system at the time worked at the time Nintendo had to produce the source code for their DRM chip. Years later when Nintendo started getting stingy with their licenses (or maybe a cartridge shortage) Tengen decided to roll their own.

[@knightshousegames]

Nintendo was stingy with their licencing because they were extremely concerned about quality control. Companies were churning out dozens of games per year that were crappy reskins of similar games (think the mobile game market today), so Nintendo had to get picky to keep up their reputation. This was just after the console crash of 1985, so the industry was on really shaky footing at this point, so a reputation for quality was important.

[@AllardRT]

Considering the kinds of games AVGN reviewed over the years, quality control was clearly not a priority.

[@JohnVance]

I love the crappy offbrand unlicensed NES carts you'd find at flea markets and independent video rental shops. Their weird shapes always set them apart.

[@trulahn]

@@knightshousegames quality control was just an excuse. Tons of crappy Nintendo games, original ones and horrible ports.

[@damotoneko1500]

I found this seriously enlightening and educational. Good work! :D Personally i have a preference for cartridges over apps.

[@treysandbothe3748]

While not my favourite to play, I absolutley adore retro consoles as historical pieces for tech and games in general. This channel is super cool!

[@Koubiak]

Hi 8-Bit Guy! Regarding the NES cartridges shape, the Tengen ones are different than any other.

[@audrey9561]

haha true, cartridges are very indestructible. a few of my gameboy games (pokemon red, kirby, some others) went through the washer and dryer because they were in my pockets as a kid and they still work to this day!

[@astrixff]

thanks for the efforts....it was very educational!

[@MasterYota1]

Thumbs up for the 8 bit guy. Our way of showing thanks and extra$$$

[@alaskanhybridgaming]

I like your Mr. Meeseeks Shirt!

[@pacobordercrosser]

LOOK AT MEEEEE!!!

[@Eightballer405]

Existence is pain to a Meseeks!

[@ArifNurRahmann]

Meeseeks and Destroy!

[@JoseSarmientoHinojosa]

YESSSIRREEE, CAN DO!!!!

[@AnudeepDONDONDONRlol]

the shirt tho

[@Vincentoo7]

The Obsolete Geek showin some love for Chicago with that Superdawg shirt!

[@MrJeeoSoft]

Oh man, I had one Commodore 64, you made me remember me when I use to play Nebulus and Giana Sisters hahaha nice video!

[@nathanieldanieltomassi7881]

I’m 15 but I still love old hardware and I love how much it appeals to me. You actually itroduced me to old computer and such and I watch your videos everyday. Keep it up

[@SuperJet_Spade]

10:59 oh look! Its a Sharp Twin Famicom. It's a base Famicom and its disk expansion system in one console.

[@herrfriberger5]

8:28 - The Apple II in fact had several ROM-sockets (i.e standard 24/28-pin DIL-sockets on the pcb). You seem to use the term "ROM-sockets" for cartridge slots as well as for general bus-expansion slots, but not for actual ROM-sockets.

[@kenmeade9924]

bbc micro also had them, they were called sideways roms if I recall on the bbc

[@scherge]

Awesome t-shirt mate! I got the same for me and some friends when visiting NYC. Now we can all be Mr. Meseeks at certain events ^^ and the video is also quite interesting btw

[@franciscopena7823]

Excellent video, it brings me good memories of my childhood.

[@bmsfx]

I remember that ghostbuster game from my young days.. those were the good days :D

[@jettaphi1e]

The buttons on the Atari XE remind me of Sweet Tarts candies

[@aaronaddicks3618]

Best thing I have used for cleaning contacts is the auto cotton wading in the can called Never-Dull followed with some alcohol. Works like a charm!

[@shyleshsrinivasan5092]

Very enlightening ! Thanks a lot !

[@obsoletegeek]

I remember some of these scenes

[@benjaminbuljevic7977]

u here? ôó

[@The8BitGuy]

I should hope so. I didn't drug you and force you to say those things!

[@Tyunz]

Wow, that's a pretty specific denial there, Guy.

[@TGAProMKM]

man please do for CDs and these video is amazing i have been waiting for long time finally i got your video.....

[@daliberal]

how long ago did you do them, and was that your IBM?

[@Audiomancer]

I really enjoyed listening to him talk about trying to save cartridge data to tape:) I tried doing weird stuff like that with my c64 as a kid....none of it ever worked:)

[@SpamMeNotEver]

Audiomancer I saved my Omega Race cartridge on my C64 to disk. It loaded into memory just below the lower ROM bank. Just had to load it back into RAM and execute a SYS command to start it - small basic program did the trick.

[@MichaelClark-uw7ex]

There were snapshot programs for the C-64 that copied the entire memory onto the 1541 floppy so you could play cart games without the cart. I had one plus I hacked my Fastload cartridge and installed a warm reboot button, saved a lot of wear and tear when changing games.

[@bjbell52]

My first Atari came with a cassette player that was used to load software. It took a long time to load games because it was so slow. Eventually, some software companies took advantage of a memory location that controlled the speed and were able to cut the loading time down to almost half.

[@bjbell52]

I had a hacked Atari 800 which gave me a built in debugger. Cartridges were easy to copy to disk at first. Later cartridges had software protection schemes that would stop the copy from working. Thanks to my hacked Atari, I could single step through the copied cartridge, find the write protection scheme and remove it. Then I would save it back to disk. And no, I wasn't a pirate. I bought most of my stuff from work, since at the time I worked at a video store that also sold computer software - I got them at cost. I just wanted a backup in case I lost the cartridge.

[@fardnia9434]

I love this video... I used to be mystified as to how cartridges worked but this video is so easy to understand

[@tjhess2]

The cord routings on your wall pleases my OCD. Thank you for that.

[@RosalvoParadella]

Vídeo incrível !! Queria saber se seria possível gravar novos ritmos e músicas num Musical Cartridge Yamaha, ou Roland TN-SC 02.

[@ByronScottJones]

Pro Tip: the best way to clean the contacts in your cartridges is to use a simple pencil eraser. Just rub it up and down until the contact is shiny again.

[@smookerji]

Two things I have noticed in this tutorial! 1. Removing cartridges while game is being played - had done this a tones of time. 2. Blow cartridges quite seldom when a game does not get to load. Not the least - absolute amazed to know the fact that you people also had done these actions back in ‘80 and ‘90’s.

[@Innochamp]

So cool these back to the past items. Love the prestine condition of the devices.

[@cargocultgaming9001]

I played so much Zaxxon on an Apple II when I was a kid.

[@Euquila]

13:39 except, of course, the golden Legend of Zelda cartridge!

[@Rednax35]

Euquila But the shape was the same. The color was different.

[@Lawg202]

what about unlicensed tengen carts

[@zekchard]

Logface 202 Yeah...

[@MannyCAE]

That wasn’t the only golden NES cartridge...

[@MassDivide]

Shinobi. Was different.

[@KnightsDisillusion]

Thanks guys! This was super interesting.

[@CobraBlade]

I was half expecting mention of Codemasters and their cartridges with the extra 2 control ports. Was so cool to play games like Micro Machines on the Mega Drive with 4 players without the need of a 4 player multitap.

[@dylannguyen9452]

Omg he had a Mr.Meeseeks shirt from Rick and Morty!

[@JoRosieQueen68]

I know I love that show.

[@wayneljm]

I remember renting a Genesis game and it wasn't the one inside, someone swapped the internals and that gave me a bad idea as a pre teen

[@theLuigiFan0007Productions]

What game was it, and what game was it supposed to be? I'm curious. XD

[@smd-tech]

That happened to me as well. There was a video rental van that came round the schemes that also rented games. Someone swapped the internals of an et cartridge into a gorf cartridge.

[@omegarugal9283]

who didnt that as a kid? .... no one? just me?

[@TheFr0z3nF0x]

Love the robotron noise at the start of the video. That takes me back.

[@zodiacfml]

Thanks for the nostalgia. I was a kid when I saw these Atari machines. Don't have much experience with them but brought back some memories especially that sophisticated Atari with keyboard.

[@oldgoodrandomroutine]

6:53 Those are RAM slots, you could add up to 48k RAM, but then THEY removed it as memory became cheap so they all were released with 48k

[@KneelB4Bacon]

12:11 Wow. The worlds first plug in graphics card.

[@TylerSteven9]

No.

[@qwertzy121212]

Not by far. As one example, the IBM PC had interchangeable graphics cards in 1982.

[@Whelkman]

Even older: the Altair 8800, basically the first personal computer, shipped with a handful of LEDs to function as a "display". Later on MITS, the company behind the Altair, manufactured video cards.

[@Optimus6128]

Unless he means it was the first GPU in the sense of modern 3d accelerators, where the programmer just sends polygon data and it does the rendering for you. Which might yet not be the case. I used to think it was (because it is presented as a chipset for 3d and all games had the same flat polygon rendering). But I read somewhere that even the SuperFX is not GPU like, the programmer is not sending polygons. It's still a quite more powerful general purpose CPU where the programmer has to write his own software renderer to render polygons or any other thing he desires.

[@GGigabiteM]

+Optimus6128 >SuperFX is not GPU like, the programmer is not sending polygons. Correct, the SuperFX is more of a DSP than a GPU. It uses a custom RISC architecture tailored to primitive 3D and advanced 2D workloads, but the programmer is still responsible for creating the rendering engine that runs on it. Back in the bad old days, there was no off the shelf code libraries or engines, everything had to be made from scratch. This is why there was such a disparity in quality between games on a console. You needed a really skilled programmer to squeeze every last ounce of performance out of such limited hardware in those times.

[@johnny555]

OMG that drone sound when you pulled the cart, I swear I could smell the way the vic 20 and office smelled the memory triggered was so strong..

[@ManuelBilderbeek]

Also on the MSX system, there were many cartridges which were much larger than what the normal Z80 address space would support (also 64kB). And the most famous MSX games from Konami had an SCC (Sound Custom Chip - first time shown in 1987) for 5 extra sound channels built right into the cartridge, so quite similar to what you showed for NES and SNES. For MSX there have been cartridges up to 1MB and several mapper systems were used (with both 8kB and 16kB block sizes). Another extra on the cartridge is a battery powered SRAM to save games on, which was also seen in several MSX games and of course was also common on other systems like SNES. On the MSX system cartridges were also quite expensive, but I think they were mostly used indeed for quick loading. Probably also partly as a copy protection. However, the games could still be read from the ROM cartridge when inserting the cartridge while the computer was already on, at a small risk of damaging the hardware. Still, in that situation, the cartridge ROM could be fully dumped. What also happened is that the MSX was reset and the cartridge removed when it was showing nice graphics. In many cases, the graphics were still in the video RAM and could then simply be saved to disk - very similar to what you tried with the program :) (The MSX system has a separate video RAM, so the graphics were copied from the ROM to the video RAM by the software in the ROM.)

[@raafmaat]

RICK N MORTY shirt is epic!

[@The8BitGuy]

I wondered who would be the first to catch that.

[@pellaken]

This is gettin weird

[@JeremyMalineOfficial]

Oh, we're welllll past that!

[@MrKubahades]

Best show ever

[@raafmaat]

when will the rick n morty series continue? i really miss it to bits :(

[@AlbertGriffiths]

@ 11:00 No, that is NOT the Japanese Version of the Nintendo Entertainment System...!!! That is a Sharp Twin Famicom AN-505-BK...!! The Japanese Version is called: Nintendo Family Computer, commonly known as the "Nintendo Famicom" or just "Famicom". The Sharp Twin Famicom AN-505-BK was made by a collaboration between them with a licence from Nintendo to Sharp to manufacture... I think it is cool though, because it also contains the Nintendo Disk System, that was an add-on to the Nintendo's "Famicom"

[@CZ350tuner]

The British designed Radofin 1290 cartridge computer console carried all the RAM and/or ROM in the cartridges that plugged into it. It had 40 x 40 graphics and 16 Colours plus sound plus keypad controllers with DAC sticks. However a programmable cartridge was available for budding programmers that included 6.5 K.Bytes of RAM, a tape cassette recorder interface and a Signetics 2650 assembly language interpreter / compiler. The Signetics 2650 processor only addresses 32 K.Bytes of memory and has some unusual programming quirks such as what is normally a 0000 Hex NO OP instruction on every other processor translating into "Branch Immediate to ". This was the first computer I learn to programme. By comparison the ZX81 that I bought later ran rings around it on processor, memory and versatility. I built a 32 K.Byte RAM pack for mine.

[@MarshmallowMadnesss]

Great tip for restoring the contacts on cartridges!