Lock 'n roll: a tale of three cartridges | Hacker News Reader

Lock 'n roll: a tale of three cartridges

writing.markchristian.org

80 pointsmarkchristian31 comments

Game cartridges are pretty cool. Unlike a modern game download, the cartridges could extend the functionality of the base system, allowing console manufacturers to extend the life of their consoles.

My favorite example is Star Fox for Super Nintendo, a cartridge that came with a GPU, allowing 3D graphics. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Super_FX This was in 1993, five years before GPUs became mainstream on PCs.

Definitely. Cartridges really were amazing; I think that's ultimately going to end up being the organic thesis of my web site.

Something I discovered while researching this post: Sega had their own Super FX-y thing with the Sega Virtua Processor. It was only used in one game (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Virtua_Racing), but the thing I find most fascinating about it is that Sega contemplated releasing just the Virtua Processor itself—you guessed it, as a lock-on cartridge.

(Unfortunately, this fact didn't really fit in anywhere, so I'm just dropping it here.)

Sega did release the 32x which was basically a newer console that was inserted into an existing Genesis / Mega Drive. There were a handful of games released for it, including a better version of virtua racing. Also one or two games required the 32x and the CD attachment.

Not a GPU, but that reminds me a bit of the Camerica Deck Enhancer. Talk about weird stuff...

Yeah! That's on deck (no pun intended) for my April blog post. (I'm trying to do one of these each month for 2019.)

Don’t forget Catapult Entertainment’s X-BAND - a lock-on modem cartridge for Genesis and (later) SNES that added remote multiplayer to games by patching them on-the-fly.

The GPU was actually a RISC CPU, making the Super FX graphics, essentially, software rendering. A planned Super FX game, FX Fighter never made it to the SNES but did see a release on PC using BRender, Argonaut's own software rendering engine.

There was a hobbyist who developed a port of Wolfenstein 3D to the Game Boy Color that worked the aame way: the cartridge embedded an ARM processor that actually ran the game and copied the graphics into the GBC's tile memory for display.

It wasn't really a RISC. It had single address, accumulator style operands, and really high level instructions like "plot pixel".

It looks most like what the parent said, the sort of DSPs in the late 80s and early 90s used as GPUs.

Pitfall II was the first cart I remember having a coprocessor -- the DPC, only used for this game since the 2600 was on the way out: http://atariage.com/forums/topic/144075-how-exactly-does-the...

NES carts actually have an audio pass-through that can replace/remix the built-in APU sound. Atari 2600 does not, but the DPC gave it three-voice music. How? The CPU has to read from the DPC once per scanline, then manually shove that value into the volume register, generating the audio waveform at a 15.7 kHz sample rate.

Wow, TIL. Thank you!

In the extreme case, the cartridge could contain an entire other platform that just uses the console for I/O, as with Super Game Boy (Game Boy games could actually run code on SNES through it, but that was rarely used).

> Unlike a modern game download, the cartridges could extend the functionality of the base system, allowing console manufacturers to extend the life of their consoles.

This... sounds strictly worse than the modern game download. If I have an SNES and everyone has moved to making cartridges with included GPUs, then to play three new games I have to buy three games and three GPUs.

If I have a computer and everyone has moved to making games that require a new GPU, then to play three games I need to buy three games and one GPU.

I agree with you. Remember that this was a time of rapid improvement in computing hardware, and these were devices marketed to kids in family rooms.

That hardware cost inefficiency is a big reason cartridges lost to discs. (and, later, downloads)

Interestingly, modern GPUs are also sold bundled with the games that run best on them!

https://www.amd.com/en/gaming/raise-the-game https://www.geforce.com/whats-new/articles/destiny-2-geforce...

> That hardware cost inefficiency is a big reason cartridges lost to discs. (and, later, downloads)

Yet we're still expected to pay the same prices we were paying back then - even more in some cases.

Inflation adjusted you're paying far less. (NES games went for about $50, which is around $120 now).

Something that cost $50 in 1993 would cost $87.74 now, according to the Consumer Price Index inflation calculators.

NES launched in the US in 1986. Super NES was released in US in 1991.

I remember having another type of cartridge - one that let you plug a UK and a US “shape” cart into so you could play the US cart on your UK machine. Like the “Noah’s Ark” cart it’d use the region code from the UK cart to boot up the US cart on your UK (PAL) machine. IIRC the UK cart had to be the SuperFX type for some reason

I used one to play SFII: Turbo months before it came out over here. Unfortunately it wasn’t very well made and knocking the machine while in use would cause the game to cut out & restart, which happened quite a lot during intensive 2p matches!

There were a few variations.

For the nes you could get an adaptor that took a nes game (for the lockout chip) and a famicom game, allowing you to play famicom games, that didn't have lock out chips. A few pirate/ unlicensed games went this route also.

I've seen a similar thing for the snes. I believe the super famicom had a lock out, so cant remember if this was required for those.

The MSX computers regularly had two cartridge ports. Some cartridge games by Konami had extra features and cheats that could be triggered by inserting certain other cartridges to the secondary port.

Here is a list of them: http://www.msxblue.com/manual/romcombis_c.htm

I don't remember which one I used. As a kid I had one for the gameboy and you could use it to cheat on the old pokemon games.

It was fun to play around with but winning the game by cheating never entertained me that long :p

When I was 10-13 I played most 3D shooters with cheats only, because I found it so entertaining to run around in a 3D world by itself, haha.

Guess if I had Minecraft, I would just player that all the time.

Oh for some games, that's absolutely true! In games that are 'open world' I always enjoyed using cheats. GTA III and Vice City I've played exclusively with Cheats. To this day, I've never finished the story of a GTA game. :P

That was the GameShark.

A quick search on DDG images confirms this :D Thanks!

I had that Sonic & Knuckles cartridge as a child.

Sadly I never had Sonic 3 so I never experienced the "Real" game, but it was fun plugging in Sonic 2 and other games.

I didn't experience the first two, but I remember being amazed by Sonic & Knuckles. I can't imagine the technical wizardry that went into these devices given the constraints at the time.

This You Tube channel details some of the amazing tricks they used to create those seemingly impossible effects. https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLi29TNPrdbwJLiB-VcWSS...

I blame the game genie for killing my nes. I never started getting the flashing grey death screen until I got one.

Then again...it could have been because I was a careless child.

As the other response notes, any kind of flashing screen issues relate to the 10NES lockout chip not communicating properly with the cartridge. Disabling the 10NES would solve the flashing part, but if you're getting it with a solid color screen instead of the opening second of the game you have a few other pins that aren't connecting well either.

The front loader NES has a design flaw that makes the cartridge slot wear out over time and the pins stop making good connections. It wouldn't surprise me to find out that the Game Genie aggravates this flaw because of the way it sits in the slot, but every front-load NES is doomed to eventual failure if it's actually used.

Fortunately there are cheap replacements available and it's a pretty trivial job to install them. It's basically just a C-shaped bit of plastic and metal that connects to an edge connector on the NES motherboard and then loops around to face the cartridge slot.

Take a set of wire cutters to the pin on the 10NES chip that runs to the reset line of the CPU, and you'll be good.

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