Cartridges

NES cartridges are mostly empty inside as the PCBs are similar to those in the smaller rectangular Famicom cartridges. I think a few early NES games (Gyromite?) had FC-to-NES edge connector adapters inside though, filling some of the empty space. Another reason for the size could've been that they wanted to to design a front loaded "Entertainment System", supposedly distancing themselves from "videogame" branding, due to the crash (exclusive to North America I think). Here in Scandinavia we actually had our own contacts in Japan and almost got a Famicom toploader early, but ultimately it didn't happen and we got the NES years later. At any rate, I started thinking about what a toploader NES style cartridge might've looked like. Maybe I should do a NES -> toploader redesign too. Stuff like the Dendy never appeared here to my knowledge, but if we had gotten the Famicom early it might've looked something like that.

The SEGA Master System really has more impressive graphical specs than the NES, but falls behind in sound. And their label & cover design was not very interesting. Psycho Fox was one of the games which almost made me get a unit after playing it at a friend's place.

I remember playing Choplifter on a VIC-20 and a tiny B/W TV with so much ghosting that the little men (bright against space black) looked like they were on fire. It's fairly lowrez and flickers quite a bit. It was one of those games which was fascinating just because it had "little guys". The SMS version has a neat one-man gunship but I never played it.

Random Rygar woman with boob window and nonsense armour. The guy in the arcade version is bare chested, but on the NES it's hard to tell. Could be wearing a white muscle cuirass. Rygar is apparently undead, risen from the grave... reminds be of Altered Beast.

.eof