Hi Everyone! I'm sure we all know that NOA didn't allow game manufactures to use custom chips within their cartridges. But physical cartridge port differences aside, could you still run Famicom games that use a specialised chip provided you used a Honey Bee converter or something similar? Or was the hardware simply not compatible?
It's possible. But then you would not get any audio from the NES. There's the MOD people do on the NES to get sound from the power pack but that's another story. (Yes you can use that mod for this purpose...)
If you mean cartridges like Sunsoft 5B (Gimmick) and VRC7 (Lagrange Point) they will all work on NES if you have a proper adapter and do the mentioned audio mod. The problem is most adapters you would buy are crap and need to be modded for many of these games to work. Also remember that Nintendo did allow non-Nintendo mappers late in its life but the only good example of this is FME7 in Sunsoft's Batman Return of the Joker.
And even the ones with extra sound work with an adapter--you just don't get the extra sound. The only compatibility issues you have using an honeybee with a US system are the fact that things like the zapper gun and US four player adapters aren't compatible with JP games.