Hello, and welcome to another episode of the 8-Bit Guy.
In previous episodes we have discussed floppy disks and tape games.
And today, we’re going to talk about cartridge games!
The very first games were distributed on cartridge format for the Fairchild Channel-F, and soon
after on the Atari 2600.
ROM cartridges were used in all kinds of systems, such as the Speak and Spell, musical keyboards,
and even game systems as new as the Nintendo 64.
I have also invited the Obsolete Geek to come over and show you some of his collection.
[OG] So, I am a huge fan of cartridges and cartridge based systems.
Couple of my favorites, obviously the Neo Geo, an arcade based platform, which has absolutely
massive cartridges.
Which could be a little tricky to plug in.
Also, another one of my favorites, the turboGrafx, also known as the PC Engine in Japan, which
has these really cool credit card-shaped cartridges.
Also very unique.
[8BG] As a kid with my Commodore VIC-20, I was obsessed with trying to copy a game cartridge to tape.
You see, I believed that the game was somehow loaded into the computer's memory much like
a game would be from disk.
And I had noticed that if I pulled out the cartridge game while the computer was on,
most of the time it would lock up.
[buzzing]
I noticed that every now and then when I'd pull the cartridge out, the computer would
return to a READY prompt.
And so then I would attempt to save the game to a tape.
Of course, it never worked.
And the main reason it didn't work is due to my complete mis-understanding of how these
games worked.
So the 6502 processor could only access 64k of memory.
So, for these examples I'm going to be talking mostly about the Commodore VIC-20, because
it has a simple memory map that's really easy to understand.
So you might imagine the memory map looking something like this.
Keep in mind there are two types of computer memory: RAM known as Random Access Memory,
and of course, ROM, known as Read Only Memory.
So, the VIC-20 only had 5K of RAM, and thus the memory map looked more similar to this.
So the Kernel and BASIC ROM were at the top of the memory map and the 5K RAM was at the
bottom.
There was a lot of empty space where if the processor tried to read and write to that
area, there was simply nothing there.
So when you insert a cartridge, it literally adds this additional memory into the main
memory map of the computer, adding to the total amount of memory in the system.
In this case an 8K game cartridge is adding read-only-memory, but you can also add an
8K memory expansion cartridge which will add RAM to the machine instead.
Some cartridges even had 16K of ROM or RAM.
But once the cartridge is removed, the information is no longer visible to the CPU, hence why
I was never able to save those pesky game cartridges to a tape or disk as a kid.
Now on a modern computer, most of us are familiar with what it looks like to add some RAM expansion.
But, aside from the BIOS chip, modern computers really don't have any ROM chips or ROM sockets,
because they pretty much expect all software to be loaded from either disk or USB or something
like that.
So even though the VIC-20 has 5K of RAM, it really can only use about 3.5K because
the rest of that memory is used for screen memory and some other kernel functions.
So if you load a game from tape or disk, the maximum size of that game will be limited
to about 3.5K. And these sort of games loaded into the VIC were usually extremely primitive
games.
But a cartridge game can be as much as 16K.
And so the games can be considerably more complex, with more graphics, etc.
So in the case of the VIC-20, cartridge games were usually better.
[Ms. Pacman music playing]
So that’s the Commodore VIC 20, but a few years later the Commodore 64 came out with
64K of RAM and this changed things up a bit.
You see, a cartridge in the C64 is still limited to 16K.
And the games that were on these cartridges weren't neccessarily bad, but they were limited
mostly to the classic type arcade games.
But when you load a game from disk, suddenly you can use almost all of the machine's 64K
which means the games become even more rich and complex.
The original Atari computers tell a similar story.
The 400 and 800 both shipped with 8K of RAM, so the vast majority of games were released
on cartridge.
These systems were designed with the slot on top much like a game console, which suggests
they expected most games would be on cartridge.
So interestingly enough, the Atari 800 actually has two cartridge slots, one of them is labeled
left cartridge and the other is labeled right cartridge.
Now, all of the cartridges I have are are actually- they say “left cartridge” right
on the ROM cartridge.
Now, I don’t think that the right cartridge was ever really used for much, in fact they
got rid of it on all of the later models of Atari.
But, I think the idea was, back at this time the machines had 16K of RAM and so I think
they were thinking that you could load like a primary cartridge in one socket and the
other socket could be used as some kind of addition.
Let’s say for example you had some kind of music or art program or something, you
could put it in here, and then if you had actual pieces of music or artwork or something,
it might be on a secondary cartridge that would go along with that.
Maybe.
I’m not entirely sure what they were thinking.
Most all of the early classic games are available on cartridge,
but by the time the later systems came out with 64K, most all software was being distributed
on floppy disk, however the cartridge slot was still prominently displayed on top of
the machine, except for the 130XE which was more similar to a Commodore.
Interestingly enough, Atari took one last shot at cartridges with the release of the
XE game system, which was fully compatible with all previous Atari computers, but seemed
to emphasize the game console aspect since it could be used with or without the keyboard
attached, and the games were expected to be loaded by cartridge.
However, very few new games were released for it on cartridge.
So, it was technically possible to put more than 16K in a game cartridge for these systems.
But since the memory window given to these cartridges was only 16k wide, the only way
to accomplish that was to add additional hardware into the cartridge that would allow bank switching
so that only 16K is visible to the computer, and the game software can switch around which
sections need to be used at different parts during the game.
Many Nintendo cartridges did this, with many games including as much as 1 MB of ROM, which
was a substantial amount of data for the time.
However, this technique was rarely used on cartridges for computer systems, because ultimately,
it was just cheaper to put the software on a floppy disk.
Another interesting note is that not all computer systems even had ROM sockets.
For example, the Apple II series never included games on ROM cartridges.
Although technically speaking it has the equivalent of 8 ROM sockets inside, which were used for
expansion.
Technically you could have designed a game to work in one of these, but in practice it
was never done.
The same can be said for the IBM PC, although the PC-Junior did have cartridge sockets.
So a common thing to see back in the 1980s was someone blowing inside of a Nintendo ROM
cartridge.
Now, honestly, I’ve never actually seen that that does any good unless there’s visible
like dust bunnies or hair or something in there that you’re trying to blow out.
For the most part, It’s just corroded contacts.
I think it’s more of a placebo effect to blow into it.
I think what’s really helping is just the removal of the cartridge and putting it back
in, which is helping to scrape a little bit of the corrosion off of the copper contacts.
But honestly, once a game gets old you really need to give the contacts a proper cleaning.
The internet is full of solutions to this, but my preferred solution is to let the contacts
sit in vinegar for a few hours to eat away the corrosion.
However, sometimes I've had luck using baking soda since it acts like an abrasive.
So, cartridge games were a lot more difficult to pirate, but on the bright side at least
there wasn’t all that much need to make backup copies, because these darned things
were practically indestructible.
So, cartridges have two advantages over other types of media such as floppy disk or even
CDROM.
The first is, of course, they’re instant on.
There’s no wait time in order to load the information.
But the second thing, and this is something a lot of people don’t realize
is that cartridges can contain other things besides just information.
They can actually contain extra hardware to make the console more capable.
I’m going to let The Obsolete Geek explain it further.
[OG] Pitfall II, which was released on the Atari 2600 was revolutionary for the console.
The game play was considerably more complex than other games, as well as it included a
sound track that played throughout the game, a first for the platform.
It achieved this by adding a specialized chip known as a DSP chip inside of the game cartridge
that gave the system more capabilities than the Atari 2600 was ever designed to do.
This practice was also used in other systems.
The Nintendo, for example, contains 2 KB of onboard RAM, but a game cartridge may contain
additional RAM to increase this amount if needed.
This is the Japanese version of the Nintendo Entertainment System, also known as the Famicom
in Japan.
While the electrical components are very similar to the NES, and the cartridges in Japan are
a little bit smaller, there was one key difference that some games such as Castlevania 3 had.
In which case, this game has an additional sound chip which adds a couple of extra voices
to the NES’s original sound chip.
You can clearly hear the differences between the two.
In fact, while the cartridges might be shaped differently, you can buy an adapter, which
will allow you to plug this into an NES, although because of the way the console is wired, you
will not get the additional sound without a couple of easy modifications.
The Super Nintendo was actually designed to take advantage of additional hardware in the
cartridges as needed.
So, let’s take a look at these two games, for example.
Stunt Race FX contains a co-processor called the Super FX, which assists the SNES with
3D polygon rendering.
Have you ever played the original StarFox?
It also uses the Super FX chip.
Super Mario RPG used a chip called the SA-1, which actually contains a CPU core similar
to the one that’s in the Super Nintendo but is operating at a much faster speed.
Hardware addons were very common in Super Nintendo games.
So the Atari 7800 was considerably more advanced than the 2600,
but they kept the same primitive 2-voice sound hardware from the 2600.
However, some games actually added the POKEY sound chip from the Atari computer line into
the actual game cartridges.
This is one example, Ballblazer.
You can hear that it actually has a far more sophisticated soundtrack than most 7800 games.
[8BG] So, one interesting thing about cartridges is that each manufacturer had their own design
or particular appearance to their cartridges.
All that mattered is that it could fit into the machine, but they were free to shape the
rest of it however they wanted.
So, take a look at all of these cartridges for the Atari 8-bit computer line.
All of the Atari branded ones have this same design.
Admittedly, I sort of like the appearance and especially the metal plate covering the
back and top.
But Activision, for example, used an entirely different shape to their cartridges on the
same platform.
However, the story is not always the same from one platform to the next.
For example, all Nintendo cartridges look more or less exactly the same, no matter what
company made them.
Well guys, I hope you enjoyed this and I’ll see you next time!