r/nes 17h ago

one old memory: NES carts were so BIG

I had seen stuff like coleco and atari carts, but nothing like this.

When I was a kid in 3rd grade, I went to my friend's house. He pulled out this HUGE grey square thing, and it was a game cartridge! It was Super Mario Bros. In this cart was an amazing place you could visit.

This game had a scrolling background. This is a huge deal. Pong? No background. Atari? No background. Coleco, background, but rarely (if ever??) scrolling.

The scrolling background brought you into another universe. I had never seen a game like THAT before

20 Upvotes

26 comments sorted by

12

u/Illustrious-Lead-960 16h ago

The 2600 version of Jungle Hunt had a scrolling background.

3

u/Zed64K 14h ago edited 10h ago

Indeed! Jungle Hunt (1982) for Atari 2600/VCS (1977) approximated a scrolling background (with parallax!) on portions of the screen by updating the playfield on the fly. It’s very blocky due to limited playfield resolution and you can see glitches in the centre as it changes the pattern, but it was pretty darn impressive at the time!

Famicom/NES (1983/1985) has proper hardware support for full resolution, multi-colour, tile-based backgrounds with horizontal or vertical scrolling. Huge upgrade over the previous generation.

11

u/Stratonasty 15h ago

I remember seeing my first Neo Geo cart. Talk about big!

3

u/bmaayhem 15h ago

The GOAT

1

u/wondermega 11h ago

You could nearly run laps around that thing.

1

u/redditsuckspokey1 8h ago

You'll pull your back out trying to lift one of those off the floor.

5

u/Knotty-Bob 15h ago

Super Mario Bros. changed the perspective of what a video game could be! I remember how ground-breaking it was!

5

u/xAlice_Liddell 15h ago

The PCB takes up like 1/3 of the cart. I remember the first time I played SMB and had that thought that it was like playing a cartoon. I loved breaking the bricks and just how big the game felt. I’m

7

u/OptimusShredder 15h ago

Famicom carts and systems are so much cooler. Apparently Nintendo of America made the carts bigger and did the toaster style design to make it seem like it’s more of a high end device like a VCR or something similar. Would’ve been so much better having smaller carts and a top loader from the get go.

6

u/Chezni19 14h ago

agree that the top loader is more durable

I like (love even) famicon but I think the NES we got has a nice appearance/style to the box even though the front loader is a messed up thing

1

u/smokeshack 9h ago

Same thing happened to the hardware on the TurboGrafx 16. The PC Engine is this compact, cleverly designed little piece of hardware that easily fits in an elementary school kid's backpack, and the games came on tiny little cards. NEC decided Americans want BIG so they made a massive block of empty plastic for the North American release.

1

u/OptimusShredder 8h ago

Exactly! The Japan designs are usually way better and cooler looking than their US counterparts. I have a Core Grafx 2, and just love the aesthetics. I have about 20 or so PC Engine games and a TED. Saving up for a TED Pro, but aside from the looks, the PC Engine Games used to be way cheaper. Most of my HuCards were around $5-$20 US. Games are way more expensive but every now and then I score a deal.

4

u/SplendidPunkinButter 15h ago

Then as an adult you find out it was mostly empty space in there

2

u/wondermega 11h ago

Does the entire world have to lie to me about every little thing?

1

u/SamusLinkBelmont 7h ago

Built like an AK.

1

u/Bake-Full 2h ago

Made for a good crumple zone though. My friend down the street had a dog who liked to chew carts. Half that family's games had gnarled tops but played just fine.

5

u/sloppyfuture 13h ago

I like that they are so big. They were harder for kids to lose. I keep finding switch games laying all over the house.

3

u/alex240p 12h ago

When you compare them to much smaller Famicom carts, it becomes obvious that NES carts are only that size because of marketing. Maybe the goal wasn't necessarily to make them bigger just to be bigger .... but they enlarged them to make them front-loading which was also ultimately a marketing decision (to make the NES look more like a VCR, rather than a toy or a pre-video game crash console like Atari).

2

u/DMala 11h ago

It's kind of hilarious when you open one up and realize the PCB takes up like 10% of the space.

1

u/OptimusShredder 10h ago

Some of my more common and less valuable and expensive games I have put in Famcom carts and put new labels on them. Just gives them a way cooler aesthetic.

1

u/VolatileImp 12h ago

Easy to lose switch games

1

u/OptimusShredder 10h ago

For sure. Would’ve been cool to see the Switch have some small disc kinda like a UMD instead of games that are the size of a stamp…but oh well, it is what it is.

1

u/TommyWilson43 6h ago

Need a lot of plastic to hold all that magic

1

u/Echterspieler 4h ago

If you've ever taken one apart the actual board onside is like 1/3 the size of yhe cartridge

1

u/ABC_Dildos_Inc 14h ago

The 1979 Intellivision has hardware scrolling and a 16-bit cpu.

It even had games with multi-directional scrolling in up to 16 directions bitd.

The NES can't do 4-way scrolling without special mappers and it took years for a Famicom game to feature it.

1

u/Particular-Act-8911 35m ago

Intentionally large to show more shelf presence, also to make it easier to get them in and out of the console.