A memory: Years ago my parents took me over the niagara falls Ontario to niagara falls new York border and at some place bought is a 72-in-1 cart for the nintendo. It was in retrospect a pretty great buy compared to the crap I see now. It's games were mostly real titles with some strange ones like Lunar Pool and the tengen tetris as well as the complete donkey kong trilogy. But does anyone remember how the big n used their magazine nintendo power to create fear of these carts? I can remember in the back a small 2inch x 3 inch blurb that warned that these carts would damage the nes control deck and they actually went far enough to claim that the flashing light error was due to these unauthorized carts somehow damaging the console. Makes me wonder how much my parents paid for the cart and how much it must have been hurting nintendo at the time to publish these articles in their propaganda magazine. I never bought it and played my 72-in-1 all the time. I loved nintendo all the way up to the gamecube (bought it on day one!) but after my xbox and halo started to get more attention, I had graduated from Nintendo and unfortunately have not really gone back since. Like david Bowie once sang... "golden years, golden..."
I know! There were AWESOME multicarts back in the day. I had a 720 in one that had at least 60 different games. Lunar Pool, Contra, Mario, Donkey Kong, DK Jr, DK 3, Popeye, Galaga, B-Wings, Star Force, Exerion, and that one with the tanks. I also had a 42 in one that had NO REPEATS. And there was one that was very common here, at least three or four friends and I had a copy, called "Mario Party" (and this was in 1991 or 1992) - that had all three Mario games and "Golden Mario". Once again, no hacks. I wish I still had my multicarts and famiclone stuff. Never lend out your stuff, kids. Now, all multicarts are awful crap, and horrible hacks - and these good ones are impossible to find. That makes me sad.
"Graduated from Nintendo"? Perhaps saying that your interests merely became more violent would be less inflammatory.
It really is a shame that multicarts are so shitty but then again what do you want out of chinese pirates? Originality? Ha. Pride in their work? Ha. They all just shovel the same shit with a different minor detail. With some effort you could make probably the most amazing multicarts these days. Well technically they already exist and are called things like PowerPak and EverDrive. But you could make a Multicart in the old sense that would kick ass. But there is no money in it. So no one that could do it will do so.
Honestly what really happened... I looked at my options and put my limited resources into the console I didn't have to wait for awesome first party games to use. For some strange reason I never went ps2 though... I loved fps and halo "had me at hello" so to speak.
I understand the "graduated from nintendo" statement. When N64 hit, games were few and far between, even if most first party ones were excellent. I still swear by Starfox 64. If you were a teen in the Snes era, you grew up on awesome, innovative games, and had jewels like Super Metroid, Final Fantasy IV and VI, Chrono Trigger, and a lot of other games that required actual thinking. When the PSX and N64 appeared, that demographic had to make a decision whether to stagnate with N64 (and also, those carts were fucking expensive) or get all the new RPGs and more mature software choices on PSX. As pretty as Super Mario 64 was, we had already seen great storylines and complexity were possible out of games, and no N64 cart had them. Then FFVII and SOTN came out. (Mind you, FFVI was better, but still, in the day, VII was glorious) I didn't get a new Nintendo machine until the DS. About that other comment, Multicarts USED TO be made with a bit more quality back in the day. Most of the good ones were actually heavier - and they, at least, had many of the Famicom's good launch games and many classics in them. Untouched classics - no "Mario in Joe and Mac" shit. Hell, I'd pay for a quality NOAC with one of those better Multicarts built in. Now, it's all hackery, and shitty Chinese Originals.
It really depends on the manufacture. I have a 245 in 1 cartridge which contains non to little (if any) repeats. Has a huge catalogue of first generation games, as well as lots of later generation games too. Like Batman, Mighty Final Fight, Milons Secret Castle, Robocop 2, Golden Axe, Ninja Gaiden 2, etc.
This is correct. There were really good, really well put together multicarts with no repeats, and they were interesting too, in the "How'd that all fit in there?" kind of sense. Plus, you really didn't feel ripped off, because you'd get many good games. Maybe the new, shittier ones were easier or cheaper to make? Or why else did this change? Is there like a History of Multicarts document?
I would imagine that now with the ease of technology many clones are the same cart with re-arranged game orders and menus. I think the older carts were also much more expensive compared to the ones out now.
As far as I recall, multicarts were about as expensive as an original game - or perhaps a bit less, so that might be an issue, yes. I clearly recall that some of the better multicarts were heavier, so there might be something there.
Well, it's easier to make a multicart if all the games use simplistic mappers, and if you reuse games in the menu you save memory. Sort of like Ryu and Ken in Street Fighter 2 reuse a large portion of graphics. For example it seems to me the most common thing to do would be to have a UNROM setup with a master mapper. For any NROM games you just load the CHR-RAM with the CHR-ROM that would exist and then set the master mapper to lock into a particular 32kb PRG segment. For UNROM games (Contra is the most common pirate multicart I think) you just lock in on a particular 128Kb segment with the master mapper and have a UNROM submapper that the game actually uses. It gets alot more complicated if you mix MMC1 and MMC3 mapper games. So if you see a multicart with a mix of those then they went to some effort to design their setup to have totally different mappers implemented in one multicart. It's also possible a multicart might use a MMC3 style mapper with a master mapper and just have hacks of games that use different mappers to get them all running on the one MMC3. On another note, I do like the NeoGeo MultiCarts that you find for the MVS these days. I picked up some 150-in-1 cartridge recently which I picked through the list and determined of the entire official MVS library it is only missing something like 59 games, 10 of which seem interesting, 1 of which was a big name which was Metal Slug 5. There are a number of hacks padding it up to 150 ofcourse but it's still a solid collection on one cart and seems to work well though I've had some odd glitches.
lol, I remember that nintendo oversea also propagandised that the JPN to US/PAL converter could damage your NES to death, because at that time, Japanese games still were considered as evil.
Club Nintendo magazine, in Mexico, would regularly print these letters of kids whose original Nintendo machines would be destroyed for using adapters and pirated goods that friends had lent them - or how pirated machines given on Christmas or whatnot would stop working after a week, or wreck cartridges. Pitiful propaganda. Even I, who was like 12 at the time, could tell they were pure bullshit.
I remember reading copier ads in game magazines. Kind of a slap in the face for the developers trying to sell games on the next page.
Wait... Isn't that: PURO MIERDA? funny since of the thre major north American markets, Mexico has always been the most prone to pirate carts. Guess NOJ knew that and tried to brainwash the kiddies early on.
Hah, indeed. You aren't a Mexican gamer if you didn't have a multicart, or at least one pirate game + adapter, for your NES.
some multicarts turned out pretty decent. I've got a '41 in 1' gameboy with Zelda Oracle of Ages, Zelda Oracle of Seasons, and an engrish port of pokemon green, plus battery backed saving and yeah, the MVS carts are pretty nice, much cheaper than buying the real neo carts
What model MVS board are you using? If you don't know, describe it. I have a feeling that might have something to do with it. Another possibility though for your problem might be if your power supply is insufficient as the bootleg multi carts draw more current on +5v than an average MVS cart would.
