The World’s BIGGEST Nintendo Game

[@NaoPb]

Don't forget that Metal Slader Glory was a Japanese only release and that visual novels were and still are immensely popular over there. The size of the game and all the graphics combined with the text are quite impressive for an NES game. Just not what some of us might be used to.

[@Alianger]

*Slander 11:15

[@sumo-ninja]

He stated it was Japanese only

[@RobertBoston-n4d]

ok

[@RahanPlays]

@@AliangerSlader, not Slander. The title is even written correctly in Pojr’s chapter titles, he just managed to completely say it wrong twice in a row. The game’s title is even *in English on the box*. It’s actually pretty well-regarded as a visual novel on the Famicom, but I’m not sure if he can read Japanese? which would make the experience he mentioned make a lot more sense, because playing a VN with no language skills is just “look at the pretty pictures and make guesses”.

[@Alianger]

@@RahanPlays Of course, I just found it funny :D

[@MaxOakland]

2:06 Nintendo did *not* purposely design the NES & Famicom to support enhancement chips. Nintendo were taken by surprise when enhancement chips were the future. They thought the way forward was the Famicom Disk System

[@holdingpattern245]

There actually is hardware in there that facilitates mappers, but you're correct that they were taken by surprise when it turned out to be the future.

[@henke37]

A quick check on the cartridge pinouts shows that the only obvious expansion pins are nametable/vram control (debatable), audio mixing (famicom only) and expansion port passthru (unused, nes exclusive).

[@KoopaMedia64]

The Famicom Disk System itself is its own mapper. The RAM adapter has RAM chips, a 2C33 mapper chip and the game data loads from floppy disks. The FDS was only possible because the Famicom (NES) was readily capable of cartridge mapper chips.

[@MaxOakland]

Yeah but that doesn’t mean Nintendo designed the system to support that From what I’ve read, they designed the system the way they did to reduce costs on the hardware and it turned out to be great for mappers

[@argvminusone]

They took the lesson to heart, though, when they designed the SNES. Its max ROM size is a little under 15MB. No game even got close; the largest was Tales of Phantasia and Star Ocean, both of which are only 6MB.

[@sirmiluch6856]

Read what Visual novel is. Why disappointment? This is a big achievement for this console. These animated character sprites on a famicom are insane.

[@rascares2813]

멀리치 경이다

[@Leahi84]

Congrats on getting the braces off!!

[@pojr]

Thank you!

[@Alex_Valentine]

I had mine for 4 and a half years. I feel your pain.

[@arrestedeffort]

Was just about to say the same thing! Congrats, pojr!

[@NaoPb]

​@@pojr just don't stop smiling. I always liked the friendly smile in the beginning.

[@orderofmagnitude-TPATP]

​@@pojryes mate. That smile is iconic and your signature. Best wishes to you

[@starleaf-luna]

0:49 , I know he smiles in every video, but it just looks like he's happy to finally have gotten the braces off hahaha

[@pojr]

Indeed lol. But it's not over, because I still have to wear the retainer.

[@Ryowhosakazaki]

​@@pojrThat smile looks so good.

[@alfredocanas6802]

Currently there's a new NES game in development called "Former Dawn", it seems it will have a massive ROM size, it even has some kind of MODE 7 modes.

[@legbender1584]

yeah but I think homebrew don't count here anyway

[@noxxyy]

@@legbender1584 definitely should've been looked at though, it's cool to see how people push a console to its limits long after it's officially "over"

[@HipsterBlackMetalOfficial]

​@legbender1584 nah I count it. Pushing the console to its limits in 1985 or 2085 is always impressive considering the hardware is almost 40 years old

[@MCastleberry1980]

I was thinking to myself "is it Action 52?" and laughed when that was technically correct, but yeah, it shouldn't count when it's 52 small crappy games.

[@pojr]

You were technically right lol.

[@yukimoe]

Technically it's 2 MB divided by 52, so I guess it's about 40 KB each on average, which is the size of your average game, this checks out

[@yozarian86]

I always wonder. If they’d scaled it down. Maybe make action 22 or something. Focus on making the games decent. I wonder if they even knew how to make better games?

[@yukimoe]

@@yozarian86 well that's the trick, if they sold this the price of a standard game, say $100, they can always argue it's less than $2 a game, that or it's to make the one good game worth it by adding 51 other crappy games with it

[@dumpposterprostudios2856]

@@yukimoe "not only is this game crap, but its crap that comes with a large rom. 2048 kilobytes. thats a lot of space, but, theres 52 games! so let me calculate this: 2 megabytes divided by 52 equals... uh, well you gotta include the music samples, so lets just say 40 kilobytes a game." -angry video game yukimoe

[@bitwize]

Somehow I knew it was gonna be Metal Slader Glory (note: not Slander). Ever since discovering it on Atarihazure's channel I've been fascinated by it. If you were disappointed by it look again, closely at the graphics, the detail and animation. It's close to a playable anime on NES hardware, and was only surpassed like this year, by Former Dawn from Something Nerdy Studios, with an FPGA-based custom mapper that makes it look like a SNES game.

[@NovaSaber]

Yeah, if it's a typical visual novel length with visuals like that the whole way through, I can see how it couldn't be under 1mb.

[@rashidisw]

Fans translation patch also available on RHDN website.

[@repoversemedium]

Metal Slader Glory is one of those obscure NES games that definitely deserves a remake or at least a reboot. If Gimmick got one then so can this.

[@BubbleManmm2]

It got an SNES remake called Metal slader glory directors cut i think?

[@repoversemedium]

@@BubbleManmm2 the SNES remake is cool, but I like me a modernized remake like with the Famicom Detective games

[@JamesTDG]

I feel like if it was offered less as a visual novel but more as like an animated movie, that it would fare pretty well, especially if they maintain the original style/visual medium

[@metalspinda9594]

​@repoversemedium So long as it's not contextually revamped for "Modern audiences"! 😂

[@jmtradbr]

A Visual Novel being the biggest game on NES is kinda funny.

[@pojr]

Indeed. I was a little disappointed lol.

[@diablo.the.cheater]

@@pojr Why? Visual Novels are dope, and it makes sense that they take a lot of storage since they are quite asset heavy for the time.

[@AmyStrikesBack]

Kirby's adventure is so powerfull the remake had to REMOVE the spinning Tower part because aparently the GBA could not handle that

[@joeychipman5352]

Honestly, I prefer Kirby's Adventure over its GBA remake (though I'd be surprised the GBA couldn't handle the towers). Sure, the remake runs better, but I prefer how the NES graphics look (which I'd guess is part of the reason the game is so big), and I prefer how the NES game used Meta Knight. The GBA version left the ambushes but ditched the times Meta Knight tossed lollipops into levels, making him seem more villainous.

[@pojr]

I didn't even realize they removed it from the GBA version. Wow lol.

[@mattb6522]

Yeah, I remember Nightmare in Dream Land removed the rotating tower. I never understood why. The GBA could have easily handled it even if they used the strength of the GBA's sprite scaling.

[@PikangsFutaba]

@@joeychipman5352 Yeah... while I like the Meta Knightmare Unlockable, removing him on those moments where he gives Kirby the Lollipops sucked, still, I like both versions, GBA for said unlockable as it was cool to use Meta Knight even if you had to complete the game on a single sitting... just like on the NES with it's Hard Mode (and of course, with the remake of Kirby Super Star they had to do this mode yet again, and it was cool as well... sadly no option for Arena for Meta Knight, it would have been nice), and the NES... well... it was the 1st Kirby game I played and is just a technical achievement for said console.

[@MaxOakland]

@@mattb6522 Sprite scaling wouldn't help with the rotating tower. All it would require is changing tiles like the NES did. My uneducated guess is maybe something to do with epilepsy? Moving patterns can trigger seizures

[@mikethetowns]

Missed opportunity to add some kind of "Brace yourself...I did" pun at the start haha. Grats on the fancy chompers.

[@alexandreturcotte6411]

The most interesting thing with Metal Slader Glory is that it got a remake of sorts in 2000, on the SNES. It was initially planned for the 64DD (The N64 Disk drive who basically was in devellopement hell, then only got released in Japan), but I guess it got put on SNES for a lesser cost (I don't remember the actual reason tbh, if there was any besides the 64DD having bombed). For reference, 2000 was the year of Majora's Mask and the PS2... Console live cycles can be wild.

[@chrisstone-streetlightinte5629]

One game that gets overlooked in these discussions is Dragon Quest IV which was also a 1MB game.

[@nathanwallace3337]

I Google those games and it said iv was 398 kb

[@pojr]

I think I read somewhere that people thought the game was large, but it was just the uncompressed file, and that it was actually just an average-sized game.

[@zorororonoraroro]

@@pojr It was put on cartridge of that size but the game wasnt this big, like gameboy games look as if they take a lot of space but most of it is blank on the cartridge. When dumping games from them you get whole rom space

[@chrisstone-streetlightinte5629]

@greatusername1668 that is certainly true...I think the entire size of the prg rom was 384k, however the entire rom space provided was 1MB. When you look at most ROMS under a hex editor you're going to see some 0ed out space as not writing the empty space to the cart will throw off the address space. This is true also in the Kirby cart. So the question is do we go by chip size or actually space where data is written?

[@zorororonoraroro]

@@chrisstone-streetlightinte5629 This is exactly what is happening. thats why most games appear to be on fixed size like 128kb 256kb 512kb and 1mb. Its simply from rom dumps. a lot of space is unused

[@G.L.999]

If I'm not mistaken, I think the PAL version of 'Dragon's Lair' was also superior to the North American version too; not just the Japanese version.

[@pojr]

You're correct, they also use the MMC3 mapper in that version too

[@iiiiiifggffggffgfgfg]

Based on the Japanese, Metal Slader is pronounced Slay-Der. Its remake was a very late SNES title released in 2000, even after Fire Emblem 5. Considering the hardware limitations it looks gorgeous even though it was ultimately too ambitious for the 8-bit system.

[@SuperXzm]

The hell is a "slader"?

[@iiiiiifggffggffgfgfg]

@@SuperXzm I think it's explained in the game. Go try it. There's an English version.

[@Luke_Stoltenberg]

You should check out the Kickstarter for Former Dawn. They've developed their own mapper that combines the limits of what was available at the time with modern memory constraints. It has all kinds of features such as dynamic palette swapping for more sprite colors and even FMV, all achieved basically within what COULD have been done back in the day if money were no object. The pixel art is the best I've seen for NES

[@bland9876]

Kirby's Adventure at least the 3DS version It feels so much like if Nintendo had made a system in between the NES and the SNES That's how much more advanced that game feels versus other NES games. I wonder if you could make an NES style game on an SNES like graphics wise because that'd probably be the closest thing to what Kirby's Adventure feels like.

[@Dug88]

There's no technical reasons why you couldn't make a snes game with the colour palette limitations of the nes and the processor used in the snes is essentially an upgraded 16-bit version of the one used in the nes. Not entirely so but you can actually use the snes processor in 6502 mode.

[@Chad_Thundercock]

The MMC5 chip allowed for a 25 fold increase in available rom space. Take a moment and consider that. 25 times the space the famicom was envisioned to use. And while it's not a proud title, Action 52 managed to nearly double that at almost 50 times the space.

[@The-E-Base]

There are a number of NES games that are larger than 1 MB, but they're all unlicensed. (And no, they're not multicarts)

[@FeralInferno]

I was thinking Dragon Warrior IV was up there in size too but it's only half a MB. Which is surprising because it is a massive game for it's time.

[@MrGoombasticveryFantastic]

It still takes me quite some time to complete and Ive been playing it since release

[@Octolicia]

6:46 : I just noticed that... the NES was able to do Mario ridding Yoshi.

[@HeyItIsMichal]

Correct. In fact, Hummer Team (bootleg developer) ported Super Mario World to the NES, and Yoshi is rideable there.

[@jbasher94]

I came here to say something similar. Between it, Little Nemo, and I’m sure many other games (Metroid kinda fits in two ways, one is the morph ball being on the fly sprite/ movement function replacement and the other is how the Metroids themselves work, like how they attach to Samus) and Super Mario World NES by Hummer Team it really makes me wonder what the real reason for omitting Yoshi really was? The best reason I could think of is Nintendo lied about it to generate extra hype about SMW but tbh the graphics and music jump was already that game’s advertisement. So I don’t really see why they’d lie about Yoshi existing before SMW. Maybe it was more like “We didn’t know how to make Yoshi work in game, like what would he do, and how can we use him in this game?” and they weren’t able to make it work until an idea hit them later, around the time of SMW’s development on SNES. Either way, we might actually be able to find the definitive reason, heck we might even have already had a major clue or something in an already existing leak and someone hasn’t figured it out yet. I mean, it took the internet 23 years, but they finally solved the mystery of “the most mysterious song on the internet”. Maybe there’s already more discussion just sitting on some obscure server, who knows? I’d sure be interested in seeing Pojr explore this topic if they want to, and if there’s enough info out there for that to even be enough to not only draw a conclusion but make a video on.

[@MateDrinker33]

10:40: The reason that "Metal Slider Glory" very likely didn't get exported over here is due to belonging to the Visual Novel genre, which had virtually zero footprint in the West prior to the "Phoenix Wright: Ace Attorney" series getting introduced over here.

[@Thornbloom]

unless you were some niche gamer who was looking for console smut anyway.

[@toastrave7820]

i reccomed checking out Metal Slader Glory Diector Cut which is on the super famicom & released 1 year before the gamecube launch

[@exidy-yt]

Congrats on the beautiful clear choppers, Pojr! Im actually going to miss that metallic grin, it's become iconic but I bet you are sure happy as hell to leave it behind. ;-) Thanks for the video!

[@pojr]

You're welcome! It's definitely weird not having he braces anymore, but it's nice lol.

[@40088922]

having the biggest NES game be an under-selling VN is like going to a barbecue but the only meat is liver

[@sumo-ninja]

Lmfao!!

[@Iohannis42]

That's disgusting

[@wariodude128]

Maybe the next video could be about speech in cartridge-based games. There's a number of them, including a couple that are Japan-exclusive, and seeing a quick rundown for all of them would be great.

[@pojr]

That would be a cool idea for a video. I did sort of do a video like that back in 2021, where I talk about berserk, the intellivoice and Quadrun, but I think there's a lot more to talk about

[@JeremyLeePotocki]

Yep that one Famicom game was truly a beast there is a Engilsh Translation of the game. Unfortunately the english will cause the cart size to jump up to 1.5MB so putting it into a original cart would be out of the question most likely. As for officially licensed North American games with the largest memory there are two. Kirby which you discussed in the video is the easiest to obtain the other one is the coveted "Nintendo Campus Challenge 1991" both have the same 769KB there are two games that take 641KB D&D Pool of Radiance & Uncharted Waters. There are 24 officially licensed NA games that use the 512KB. For largest game that was on a cart that is not a compilation like Action 52 (regardless of region nor official or unofficial) that title goes to Final Fantasy VII (the demake) it requires the same 2MB sized cart as Action 52 there are 3 other games that are the same size, but I never saw anyone including Chinese cart makers bring them out onto carts. This includes a Chrono Trigger demake, Pokemon Yellow, and The Legend of Zelda꞉ Triforce of the Gods (all are 2MB sized ROMs). Lol those last two would have Nintendo's Ninja Lawyers all over them if they even tried.

[@BURRITO44]

Love your channel. ! Extremely interesting video !

[@yozarian86]

This is something I’ve tried finding out multiple times before, but I could never find a satisfying answer like this video. Which I wasn’t even looking for. This was everything I wanted to know. Thank

[@pojr]

Glad you enjoyed! I did have trouble writing for this episode, but I think it turned out decent

[@striderskorpion]

The largest Famicom/NES "game" is a pirate multicart. I'm not even sure which one holds that title anymore. If we talk about individual games and not multicarts, it might still be a pirate game (an unofficial port, specifically) or possibly an unlicensed/homebrew game.

[@KeithDameo]

I love that you made this video. I love the techniques that went into a lot of these old games to pull off some amazing games (and sometimes not so amazing). I love it.

[@demgreens]

Not to be that guy, but the "HAI" logo that was shown for HAL Laboratory was actually the logo of their US-based publisher, HAL America Inc. They had never used that logo in Japan.

[@lily38942]

watching this whole video just for the ending to be the creator not understanding what a visual novel is was kind of disaspointing

[@BDJPCarr-mu4jc]

To each their own

[@WeirdoError]

Great video! This is an excellent overview of the mapper chips for the NES.

[@tancar2004]

Another game that should be on this list is "Uncharted Waters" by Koei it took up 640kb. 512kb PRG and 128k CHR running on MMC5.

[@sirgouki6207]

That game may have been just a visual novel (that's what we call those, text games have no visuals at all), but look at those animations on it. I'm willing to bet that's what took up all the extra space - all those animations for the blinking and character movements are insane for the NES/Famicom. I haven't even seen stuff move that fluid on the SNES... and the N64 was pretty much a step backwards for frame rates. Also... where the hell do you get hail from HAL? It's pronounced the same as hall, especially given in japanese it'd be pronounced ha-ru.

[@bobstevenson3130]

I think it's worth mentioning that there's a game currently in development by Something Nerdy Studios that uses a new custom mapper chip called the MXM-1, and that game is slated to be over 2GiB in size once it's finished

[@Learnjapanesefromsomeguy]

I think the skateboard in Adventure Island is the first 'power-down' in video game history.

[@pojr]

I see what you mean. It's nice because you can go fast, and it does provide you an extra hit, but sometimes you might fall into a bottomless pit.

[@The_Future_isnt_so_Bright]

As a kid in the 90's, Kirby's Adventure was awesome. Love the boss music and the bosses like the Sun and Moon battle. In fact I love boss themes , Ninja Gaiden had that theme just before the last boss called masked devil. 4 year old me somehow made it to that boss and when that music started, It tripped me out. A quick way to ruin an Nes game was to have a bad boss theme or none at all. The one boss theme that is the theme to my nightmares is from Sonic Spinball on the Sega Genesis/Megadrive. It has such a dark vibe and I love it. POJR, this could make a good video, not sure if anyone really has touched this topic.

[@northleaf1]

Why have I all my life thought the Kirby NES gane was 6MB? I swear I read that in a game mag or somewhere way back when the gane released..

[@GeahkBurchill]

Blaster Master was a fantastic game and it dominated my NES playtime for months when I got it.

[@sumo-ninja]

This was a great video man. Clear, concise and informative!

[@f.k.b.16]

This makes a good point about modern home brews. Most don't try to fit in a size of the cart that would have normally been available during the time frame. However, home brews still rule!

[@pojr]

True. With homebrew and advancing technology, games can be bigger than ever.

[@captainobvious7033]

I remembered a company that released a nes game few years ago Micro Mages. Can't believe those guys were able to make a good game within the basic 40KB limit.

[@nervaaugustus7089]

Awesome, a pojr smile that isn't marred by dental hardware. You look so much better now. Take good care of that smile, dude. Metal Slader: Glory is a genre known today as a Visual Novel - essentially, a choose-your-own-adventure book in digital form. They're actually rather popular today, especially in Japan.

[@pojr]

Thank you so much!

[@LuwiigiMaster]

It's amusing to consider that not only are the two largest games by the same company, they also marked a shift in Hal's future. Hal used to make a variety of games, of different themes and genres, the closest they had to a mascot was Eggerland, or Lolo for westerners. Metal Slader Glory led them to the red, and the company had to massively restructure themselves. They went from being one of the few Japanese studios that had experience with the 6502, to hiring programmers who couldn't program platform physics for Kirby's Dream Land, and made a game that slowed down even worse than Contra Force in Kirby's Adventure. Hal became "The Kirby Company" and made eight Kirby games before they finally made a non-Kirby game - a little game called Super Smash Bros.

[@SquidHominid]

"I wasn't sure what genre to expect, you would think this would be some impressive game that pushes the hardware limits, but it's actually just a text-based game with artwork thrown in. Periodically you're given a menu and select an option. That's the whole game. The 1MB of ROM space is because there's a lot of text and artwork throughout the game. The animation is good, and some of the cutscenes are cool, but I'm actually disappointed. The game honestly gets boring, and there's really nothing else to it besides just selecting options in a menu." Pojr discovers visual novels lmao That's an entire genre you just described. That's just what visual novels are like. You ever heard of Steins;Gate? Or, like, Ace Attorney? Danganronpa? Zero Escape? (I'm not upset it's just really funny to me that you took all those words to say 'it's a visual novel')

[@eunaoseibrother467]

This guy did zero research for this video

[@cube2fox]

Regarding mapper chips: The NES only natively supported horizontal and vertical scrolling; any angles in between (like diagonal) weren't possible. Some later mapper chips then added support for scrolling in arbitrary directions, but I'm not sure which ones did. One data point: SMB2 didn't have diagonal scrolling (even though its large levels would have benefitted from it), so I assume the MMC1 chip used in the game didn't yet enable full scrolling.

[@cyrollan]

i find older hardware to be so much more fascinating than newer stuff. they really had to get creative back then!

[@nboy7]

What a great video ! Loved learning about these chips.

[@captainnintendo]

Crazy how the media was able to grow so much in size from its original intention. Like 20 fold. It's kinda sad how with the Switch, so many developers often opt to not even bother trying to fit their games on appropriately sized cartridges and often go for a cart that is too small to actually fit them and then screw the customer over to save a couple of pennies and then have you download the rest. Nintendo said years ago they were gonna roll out 64GB carts but I guess it just never happened. But seeing as you can basically count every cart that used 32GB carts on one hand, I guess they didn't feel the initiative. It's cool to hear how creative develops back in the 80s and 90s had to get, pushing the hardware to fit their needs I'm personally really curious/excited to see that upcoming game Former Dawn. The developers say that the on-board ROM could be up to 4MB in size But even at that size, that's just the on-board chip stuff. The game will apparently be able to stream even more data into its ram ala how the Famicom Disk system did. And they say the actual final game could be as big as 700MB! That's utterly ridiculous for a NES game. But it IS really pulling of some crazy visuals I would never have thought the NES was capable of. I believe they recently launched a Kickstarter for their game. I'm curious to see if it can really deliver on the tall promises tho.

[@DevanteWeary]

Actually the animation in that game is crazy impressive.

[@spectron24]

Nice video! Btw, what is the music at the end of the video? 12:40

[@TraindudeBB]

Toy Box from Pac-Man Arrangement

[@soli-ethd]

Oh, that's a visual novel. I'm actually kinda not surprised. The sheer amount of high-resolution graphics data needed for a visual novel means that at the time they were incredibly demanding on hardware, especially space-wise. These days your standard visual novel usually doesn't clear 2GB and basically any computer over the past 20 years can run the majority of them, with some exceptions for those that use more than just 2D effects (something like Danganronpa or Steins;Gate, both of which are still far from being considered "demanding" on most hardware).

[@ФёдорБайкальский]

1) Adventure Island is more of a proto-runner than a platformer. 2) There is nothing wrong with visual novels. There are great classical masterpieces among them. Considering how much space the graphics take up, I'm glad that a long visual novel has been released for the NES, which honestly uses large images. nothing disappointing. In a sense, this is an achievement.

[@Felipekimst]

What a pleasant video! What about the snes?

[@pojr]

An SNES video like this would be a good idea. I'll consider this.

[@XyQrTw]

Kirby's Adventure is a game that, unlike others, can be completed 100% without any walkthrough. With the help of the tips provided throughout the adventure and a little backtracking, you will easily be able to uncover all the secrets.

[@garou1911]

Hi pojr, long time subscriber but first time commenter. Just wanted to say I really enjoy how informative and chill your videos are. Thank you for doing what you do ^^

[@massimodambrogio]

Interesting. That tower rotating effect in Kirby Is amazing.

[@FlameRat_YehLon]

I'd argue that having a visual novel being the largest Famicom game is a good thing. At the time that kind of game is probably exclusive to something like PC98 or DOS machine, but they managed to put that many graphics on a Famicom game, which would be a wonder on its own. Plus visual novel is definitely a popular enough genre in Japan.

[@SweetStevieAaron]

I get to watch your new videos just as I’m about to set off for my Wednesday night work. Thanks!

[@pojr]

You're welcome! Glad you're able to enjoy.

[@RetroMaticGamer]

Actually, Dragon Warrior 4 (Dragonquest 4 in Japan) was the same size as Metal Slader Glory - a full megabyte - and did in fact release in America. I'm surprised you overlooked it here.

[@Deliveredmean42]

That is incorrect. It was an improper dump of the game, the real size is just 512KB.

[@ShadowmonkStudios]

You should definitely do a part 2 and talk about the modern homebrew games that can work in the NES!

[@Akira625]

It's truly amazing what people were able to make the NES/Famicom do.

[@et9650]

I subbed because it’s a great video and you’ve been at it for years. You definitely deserve more subscribers for the awesome content

[@Infindox]

IIRC Iwata was working at HAL during the time Metal Slater Glory was being made, and he said it was a difficult project and they had a LOT of troubles. The game was decent enough to Japanese audiences but because of its size it was very expensive, and it caused HAL to be in danger of bankruptcy. (Sakurai was also there at the time and he said he never saw Iwata madder then during this period) Nintendo came and saved them, but on the condition that Iwata became the president of HAL. Once he got there he made the team focus on quality first and foremost.

[@DanTurner-x6z]

The largest (illegal) compilation on the NES, is the "Forever Duo Games of NES 852-in-1" multicart, which contains 809 of Nintendo's licensed titles, and rolls in at a massive 128 megabytes!

[@Perfect2ATee]

Mate! If you do truly read every single comment, than thank you for the effort you put into your videos. I stumbled across your content when searching a Mission Cobra review and love your content! Cheers from Australia 🇦🇺

[@pojr]

I appreciate that! I'm glad to see you on here. I do read every comment, although I'm not always the best at replying.

[@otakubullfrog1665]

As someone who generally enjoyed NES/SNES games that fell into what would normally be PC genres like simulation and point and click adventures, I might have actually liked playing a visual novel like Metal Slader Glory had it gotten as US release.

[@redball4funnymoments]

There's an NES game that is released 1 month ago and it's called "Famidash" a demake of Geometry Dash, which has 768KB in ROM space.

[@hepwo91222]

great vid and congrats on being done with braces. Back in the late 80's and 90's, gaming magazines started listing the metric of megabits (not bytes) and NOT kb. SO when the Sega Genesis had a whopping 8 megabit Strider game, people took notice. SNES had SF2 WW which 16 megabits, then Genesis had Streets of Rage 2 which was 16 megabits. Turbografx-16 games usually maxed at 4 megabits, if it was larger, usually went on CD, but PC Engine had a 20 megabit SF2 CE that was thicker hucard. SNES I think peaked at 32 with Chrono Trigger, SSF2 NC and Genesis with SSF2 NC at 40 (not counting modern unofficial releases). Neo Geo marketed their games which much larger memory too, but mostly in megabits.

[@joshuagorecki4743]

Your content is getting better and better. Keep up the good work and congratulations on getting your braces off!

[@pojr]

I really appreciate that, and thank you!!

[@semperconstance]

I was always super impressed by the jump from Tecmo Football to Super Tecmo Bowl on the NES. I wonder how much memory that required?

[@magoid]

AFAIK, the MMC5 mapper is capable of handling 2MB (16mb) ROMs. So any homebrew feeling adventurous, can make a even more impressive game than the listed ones.

[@jansenart0]

10:35 you're damn right we're being technical!

[@mirabilis]

Metal Slader Glory was also ported to the Super Famicom and released in 2000, being the very last game for the console. Seems like they really wanted this game to sell badly.

[@User75-c7p]

I love this channel so much keep it up!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

[@pojr]

Thank you so much!

[@joeboo8626]

Largest cart by system: SNES - Super Street Fighter II N64 - Resident Evil 2 Neo Geo - Garou Mark of the Wolves

[@jsr734]

On SNES (Super Famicom) that would be Tales of Phantasia (6 Mbytes) and Star Ocean, also 6 Mbytes.

[@joeboo8626]

Wow. I stand corrected. I thought SSII was 64 megabits for some reason. It is only 16. Way off. My rotten brain...

[@fade2black001]

@@jsr734 Super Mario RPG is also up there but it was like 4MB

[@jsr734]

@@fade2black001 I think, in America and Europe, the biggest SNES games were 4 Mbytes (32 Mbit). Only Japan saw games surpasing that "limit". Games like Far East of Eden Zero ( 5 Mbytes, 40 Mbit), Tales of Phantasia and Star Ocean ( 6 Mbytes, 48 Mbit).

[@jsr734]

@@joeboo8626 The original SFII The World Warrior was 16 Mbit (2 Mbytes) on SNES, SFII Turbo was 20 Mbit (2.5 Mbytes) and finally SSFII The New Challengers and SFA2 were both 32 Mbit (4 Mbytes).

[@aviadd]

For a long time, I was thinking this channel was AI generated, or the script was chatgpt output. Now I see it is a genuine person running this channel.

[@liminalnithing2]

if a splatterhouse arcade port would be on the NES, it would really benefit from 1MB of space

[@Sly88Frye]

At least Hal Laboratories is around though. Making those great Kirby games and being the original makers of the Super Smash Bros games. Maybe perhaps instead of trying to maximize the size of an NES game it would have just been better to just make a game for the SNES because I'm assuming that last game you mentioned probably was released when the SNES was on the market

[@Thornbloom]

This is all well and good but it's making me remember how we used to fit entire games in 1.44 megabytes. Sometimes you had to use an extra diskette but man. We did so much with so little back then.

[@Ixia.]

Your grin has become iconic for your channel!

[@cyrollan]

when i first got into emulation, some 25+ years ago, i was absolutely floored to find that i could download the entire NES library and the ZIP file was soooooooooo smol

[@Unowdvalco]

​@Lee-wk3cb Man it's not that serious. Nintendo isn't about to barge into your house and threaten you and your family because you own some digital files of 40+ year old games on your PC

[@TheRetroGuy83]

Remember 1 MegaByte (What we are talking here) = 8 Megabit (What we usually used for cartridge sizes on times).

[@three-quartersbadger2929]

A very interesting video. If you had asked me which was the biggest NES game, I would have said Kirby's Adventure, personally speaking. Interesting note about Kirby's Adventure... it is one of only two games, the other being Link to the Past from the SNES two years prior, to have had a release in French specifically for Canada. Both games had a French version for France, but this was the days of PAL vs NTSC and European games would not work in North American consoles and vice-versa.

[@momosgarage]

If both 1mb an 2mb carts were possible, all this makes me wonder if the NES could have been expanded, using only increased sized cartridges, to perform at a level on par with the PC Engine/TurboGrafx

[@RoryCrossin]

Thanks for the video. Any chance you could also create videos for the biggest SNES and Sega Genesis games released in North America?

[@pojr]

I like that idea. A video on the biggest Genesis or biggest SNES game would make a good video. I'll consider this.

[@fattomandeibu]

Reason they didn't use bigger ROMs was purely cost, on a technical level, 4MBs would probably be the feasible upper limit, I mean theoretically, bigger would be doable, but not sure how usable that would be with the limitations of CPU and RAM. You'd effectively be making the same games you could in say, 512KB, just with more stages, and with that you better have battery back-up RAM. Keep in mind, a decent size NES character is 6 sprites(2x3) with each sprite being 16 bytes, or one frame of a character being 96 bytes. Even an entire screen using a different tile for each square will only equal 90KB. With the simple CPU, code has to be kept compact and sounds simple. Or basically, you got your work cut out filling 4MB of ROM with data for one game.

[@m0nst3r_m1k3]

GG's on the chompers, my friend. Looking slick! 😎

[@1mariomaniac]

It's really interesting seeing a visual novel running on NES hardware.

[@TheDeelunatic]

Wasn't Dragon Warrior 4 a megabyte in size too? It just had a lot of story.

[@Firecracker511]

5:01 the metroid theme was literally playing in my head before you said this

[@skylinefever]

I think the Justbreed Famicom was 768 KB. It was also MMC5. I played the translation patch and loved it.

[@RobotacularRoBob]

I wonder now what homebrew and Retro styled modern games developed on or near NES hardware could make use of such space. Retro City Rampage originally began as an NES demake of GTA 3 for instance. Must have been massive before being converted to modern platforms.

[@SMC614]

COOL TRANSITION DUDE 8:01

[@JoeStuffzAlt]

An issue is that the NES extended ROM was paged. This means only a certain amount of ROM was accessible at a time, maybe 32-48k. You can easily hit a wall with how much extra cartridge ROM storage will affect a game. One crazy thing I have seen for homebrew is using something like a Raspberry Pi inside an NES cart. Metal Slader looks like it would have been better on PC. PCs back then were limited on how fast they could do graphics, but the graphics can have higher fidelity

[@JoeStuffzAlt]

Of course, a major coprocessor on the card and the programming would have been incredibly intricate

[@toastrave7820]

check out the super famicom director's cut it looks way better

[@mchenrynick]

It takes tricky programming to deal with bank switching.

[@donstarlancer]

Here I was convinced Kirby’s Adventure was the largest NES game for half my life.

[@robertdanker6193]

Looking good my man!!👍