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Comment by Keyframe | Hacker News Reader

one of the proudest accomplishments I've done is that over the years I've managed to collect all of SNES PAL games, what is considered a full set. (I augmented it with some select NTSC and SFC games as well). What's interesting is the world in those cartridges and how they extend the main console. We don't get to see that in gaming hardware anymore.

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That was the neat thing about cartridge based game consoles, each game was essentially a new piece of hardware.

I think the Game Boy Advance was the last mainstream PCB cartridge game console. The GameCube had moved to discs, Sony and Microsoft never made a cartridge based system, and Sega was on their third such system with the Dreamcast.

But I don't think the GBA or N64 really did things like the SNES or NES did with regards to cartridge hardware. I think by that time, the core hardware was way more powerful than anything that could be attached.

what we have today on switch is essentially memory card, before it was an interface to the bus. You could do anything. It doesn't even have to be performance oriented (or features like sound chips). One example is Boktai for GBA which had a light sensor on it so that actual daylight played into the gameplay, etc.

I know hardware homogeneity across platforms brought peace upon gamedevs who are stressed out as-is, but I think we lost something major along the way.

Neat fact about GBA cartridges. At its start, cartridges used watch batteries to keep save games, but by the end of the console, they had moved to Flash memory.

GBA cartridges used a mix of save chips for the duration of the console's life. Super Mario Advance and Konami Krazy Racers were both launch titles. Super Mario Advance used EEPROM with no battery while Konami Krazy Racers used static RAM with a battery.

Some games even got multiple releases with different save chips. Metroid Fusion originally released with static RAM and a battery, but later cartridges feature ferroelectric RAM and no battery. As far as the software is concerned, these two function the same.

I didn't know that, I thought it changed during the span of its life. Thank you!

The GBA still had some cartridges with enhancement hardware, though a lot less focused on overcoming CPU/memory limitations than on the previous consoles.

My favorite is WarioWare: Twisted [1] including a gyro sensor (+ a rumble pack) to enable gameplay based on turning the whole GBA around. But there were also add-on real time clocks (Pokemon), light sensors, and other things.

It also had the Nintendo e-Reader [2], which technically connected to the cartridge port and loaded like a cartridge, but was its own unique piece of weirdness.

[1]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/WarioWare:_Twisted!

[2]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nintendo_e-Reader

https://www.theverge.com/circuitbreaker/2017/9/21/16339122/e...

GBA medical device.

GameBoy vehicle diagnostics tool https://www.motor1.com/news/701772/game-boy-diagnostic-cartr...

I had forgotten about the eReader. I had gotten Excitebike on the eReader card because I was curious. I was planning on getting an eReader at some point, but never got around to it.

I like the Play-Yan adapter. It's an official media player which includes its own DAC and headphone jack, avoiding the GBA's own disappointing audio DAC. It also adds hardware decoding[1] - the GBA's CPU is a little too puny to handle media playback by itself.

[1] https://shonumi.github.io/articles/art32.html

I remember there being a DS flashcart that had an additional CPU. Probably more towards the end of the DS's life.

SuperCard DSTwo. I remember it being described as having the power of a PSP inside (unsure if true), and it could do GBA and SNES emulation. It heavily impacted battery life, making it less popular in later years, though. Plus we've recently gained the ability to use the native GBA compatibility in the DS via DS flashcarts (or DSi/3DS homebrew) running TwiLightMenu, so now the $5 R4 clones on aliexpress can allow you to play GBA decently on a DS Lite.

Also, a new DS flashcart just came out, from the same makers of the popular EZ-Flash Junior for GB(C) and EZ-Flash Omega for GBA. It's called the Parallel. It costs considerably more than other DS flash carts, but is still cheaper than flashcarts for GBA or anything older (NES, SNES, and N64 flashcarts are insanely expensive).

MachoNachoProductions on YouTube has a video on the Parallel.

That is impressive, any chance you’ve documented your journey and collection anywhere? I’d love to learn more.

I believe it was also done for higan (bsnes) in order to support enhancement chipped games: the enhancement chips had to be collected, decapped, and decoded in order to correctly (= fully accurately, rather than approximately via hacks to try and fit observations) run the game dumps. I think at least part of the process was documented at the time.

I don't know if all the enhancement chips were collected and decoded, as IIRC a pair of them are literally used for a single japanese-only game.

Although for IP reasons the enhancement chip firmwares can't be distributed with higan, so you have to "dump them yourself".

bsnes' creator collected all the NTSC cartridges, I believe (USA and Japan, even the rare ones that were Japan-only special editions) but I don't think they managed to get a full PAL set.

All the enhancement chips used in officially licensed games were collected, decapped, and dumped via an electron microscope. Yes, even the ones only used by a single Shougi game each. :)

bsnes' creator...

I still can't get over the tragedy of what happened to them. That shouldn't have happened under any circumstance.

If it makes you feel better, Byuu faked his death at least once before and there's still no hard evidence he's dead.

> Wayne Beckett, founder of Hong-Kong-based Datapower Development, said Near, whose full name was David Kirk Ginder, was an employee and confirmed Ginder's death to USA TODAY.

from https://eu.usatoday.com/story/tech/2021/07/23/how-toxic-onli...

That's hard enough for me to think it's legit, though I'd agree that it's not conclusive.

there are so many holes in even THAT story it's not even funny.

I'd love to learn more if you had a reference

I sincerely hope there's hope for it. Even so, such behavior towards an individual who brought nothing but joy to a common shared passion of many is beyond sad and evil.

Byuu tried to extort the owner of kiwifarms and "killed" himself when the owner refused. I encourage you to read Byuu's thread yourself instead of news articles that drastically misrepresent what happened.

Hmm, not to pollute thread anymore, I'll see what I can find and read. I remember marcan of Asahi confirmed it as well?

Some more evidence seems to have come forward, via a FOIA request by Null: https://twitter.com/TheRalphRetort/status/177609783413719452...

One of those shogi chips was actually a 32 bit ARM processor:

https://snescentral.com/chips.php?chiptype=ST018

not documentation you'd like.. I can only had a sheet, at first excel and then google sheets, which I made to make it easy for me to track it all. I did travel a lot due to business etc and over time it all fell into place. Here's what they look like stored now, waiting for a move soon and for a more permanent setting: https://twitter.com/Keyframe/status/1550975562742644736?t=0N...

I'm also close to finishing N64 and maybe halfway there for NES (which I have no illusions on completing ever).

That’s amazing! Thank you for sharing it, good luck on completing the other collections.

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