Min and Max Cart Sizes

[SoulBlazer]

Got a tough question for all of you -- this seems like one of those things that is available only in bits and pieces not anywhere in a nice central location.

 

I'm working on a project that I want to use for something upcoming and I'm trying to find the following:

 

For each cart based system, from the Channel F up to the current Nintendo 3DS, and ONLY for carts made for the systems back in the day (no homebrews or multicarts) --

 

1) Max size of the cart that the system could handle 'stock'.

2) Smallest game and size of the cart (if more then one, just the name of one game is fine)

2) Largest game and size of the cart (if more then one, just the name of one game is fine)

 

If memory serves me, the cart based systems with official releases in the US were:

 

Channel F

Atari 2600

Atari 5200

Atari 7800

Baily Astrocade

Arcadia

Intelivison

Colecovision

Microvision

Vectrex

RCA System II

NES

SNES

Sega Master System

Genesis

32X

N64

Game Boy

Lynx

Game Gear

Game Boy Color

Game Boy Advance

Game Boy DS

Game Boy 3DS

Game.com

[+thegoldenband]

Sounds like it could be a cool project! But, assuming that a complete list of relevant systems is one of your objectives here, is the omission of the Turbografx-16 (which used HuCards) intentional? You're also missing quite a few others -- the Entex Adventure Vision, the APF MP-1000, the Atari Jaguar, the Odyssey^2, the Virtual Boy, and the Nokia N-Gage all come to mind.

 

And you're deliberately omitting computers that use cartridges, like the Tandy CoCo, C64, TI-99/4A and Atari 8-bits, right? Just wanted to confirm that. Even if so, the XEGS might deserve inclusion.

 

EDIT: And then there's the Neo Geo (plus portables)! There are some ridiculous ROM sizes on that platform. And the Watara Supervision made it stateside, albeit barely.

 

EDIT #2: Apparently the Gamate did too.

[CatPix]

And the Mega Duck/Cougar Boy. Tho it's unclear if it was sold really in the US, or just imported here and there from South America by some shops.

[Seob]

What no love for the Magnavox Odyssey2?

[carlsson]

And if you're making a definitive list, why limit to systems once sold in the United States? The idea is good, and I kind of understand if you want to put some limitations to get started, but once you get the ball rolling, you should consider all types of consoles and ideally also home computers with cartridges even though they usually had optional means of storage as well.

 

Once you're onto it, consider physical dimensions too: width, thickness, height although it can differ. Perhaps width of connector, number of pins. Some of that information certainly is scattered around, but if you're making one source with all info combined, that data should be there too. As late as yesterday, a friend of mine looked at an unknown cartridge trying to figure which system it would go into, and it took us a while to determine it probably was a Colecovision cartridge.

Edited October 26, 2014 by carlsson

[SoulBlazer]

I knew I was going to forget some systems.

 

Yes, I'm limiting myself on purpose, cause the information I am trying to find is daunting enough without making it too complex. I just want to focus on consoles and handhelds, not computers, that have been officialy sold in the US.

[Punisher5.0]

The AES for sure had the largest capacity carts. KOF03 was at 716 mb.

[CatPix]

716Mega bits or Mega Octets?

Even Neo Geo fall guilty of that sneaky cheat of using bits to fool people into thinking they are bytes (octets).

 

The easiest on the list is the Supervision : 64ko carts, with one being 128 Ko

[+thegoldenband]

Intellivision: looks like the smallest are 8KB (various), and the largest appear to be 48KB (Tower of Doom, Hover Force, World Series MLB)

 

ColecoVision: these seem to range from 4KB to 32KB

 

NES: 8KB to 1MB, according to this FAQ

 

Master System: 32KB to 1MB, though the 1MB game I've spotted is a Korean exclusive; Phantasy Star is 512KB

 

Game Boy: I'm seeing a range from 32KB to 1MB

 

Genesis: largest is 40 megabits or 5MB (Super Street Fighter II); I believe the smallest is 1 Mbit or 128KB (Fatal Labyrinth).

 

SNES: largest were 48 Mbits or 6MB (Tales of Phantasia); smallest were 2 Mbits or 256KB (Mr. Do)

 

32X: pretty small range on these -- all the carts I checked are 2, 3, or 4 MB

 

N64: largest was 512 Mbits or 64MB (Resident Evil 2), smallest was 32 Mbits or 4MB (eight games)

[CatPix]

Still about that Bite/byte, you can tell that much Master systems carts were 256Ko carts.

256Ko is 1Mbits... hence the nickname of the cart : the Mega cartridge.

 

 

 

Atari 2600 carts, original and 3rd party, seems to go like this :

Atari :

2Ko to 32Ko;some with up to 256 octets of RAM

Non atari :

4Ko to 64Ko? (carts by Coleco and others, might be that buying larger ROMs was cheaper than getting smaller ones?)

 

Starpath SuperCharger : up to 6 Ko; could be attributed either to the game data or RAM; allow to load multiple time - infinite game data capacity?

[jfmateos]

716Mega bits or Mega Octets?

Even Neo Geo fall guilty of that sneaky cheat of using bits to fool people into thinking they are bytes (octets).

 

The easiest on the list is the Supervision : 64ko carts, with one being 128 Ko

Some Supervision games are 32k.

Which is the 128kB one, Catpix?

[108 Stars]

Basically, I don't think there's a limit for any of the systems. You could use bankswitching and expand indefinitely. That is something they could have handled "stock", no magic involved, neither was it unknown (it was even used sometimes back in the day). So that is not really easy to answer.

[SoulBlazer]

Basically, I don't think there's a limit for any of the systems. You could use bankswitching and expand indefinitely. That is something they could have handled "stock", no magic involved, neither was it unknown (it was even used sometimes back in the day). So that is not really easy to answer.

Good point, I'll remove that from my considerations.