NES Cartridge Capacity

[veronica_marsfan]

http://www.neo-geo.com/forums/archiv...p?t-61197.html

That thread states, "I think the capacity on the gamecube disc is around 350 megabytes." "no, gamecube discs are mini cds."

Clearly the people there have NO clue what they are talking about. In contrast, there are a slew of articles about how Resident Evil 2 is the world's largest (and most-expensive) cartridge. Unfortunately I don't have time to look them up right now, but google.com has plenty of links.

If you feel KOF2001 is bigger, just show me a copy of the ROM, which will say how large it is.

[dendawg]

That thread states, "I think the capacity on the gamecube disc is around 350 megabytes." "no, gamecube discs are mini cds."

Clearly the people there have NO clue what they are talking about. In contrast, there are a slew of articles about how Resident Evil 2 is the world's largest (and most-expensive) cartridge. Unfortunately I don't have time to look them up right now, but google.com has plenty of links.

If you feel KOF2001 is bigger, just show me a copy of the ROM, which will say how large it is.

The only thing that thread proves is that every village has an idiot. How can you base the credibility of that community on the basis of a few clueless comments? Those people know their Neo-Geo stuff. Period.

[Mr. Smashy]

If the information in Wikipedia is correct, Resident Evil 2 for the N64 is a 512-megabit cartridge. If the classic style insert for King of Fighters 2003 for the Neo-Geo AES is correct (which it is), it's a 716-megabit cart.

Saying that Resident Evil 2 is the world's largest cartridge is bad enough but saying that it's the most expensive is laughable.

[tom]

so that's KoF 2003 = 89 MB

Wasn't it funny in the early 90s when kids were impressed with Genesis carts boasting 8 Megs, not realising it's only 1 MB....
of course, in my days we were lucky to get a 16KB cart for our C-64 or XL


it's a shame, we never got to see a 100MB cart, as they are not making a comeback, so it seems.

[veronica_marsfan]

When I was college learning to be an engineer, one of the things my profs emphasized was: "Think. Does the answer you found make logical sense?"

In that same matter I ask the question: "Does it make logical sense that a 2D fighter (with no videos) uses more memory than a 3D Resident Evil 2 game with over an hour of MPEG2 video inside the cartridge?"

No.

And yet you claim it's an 89 megabyte cartridge.
Why on earth do they have 89 megabytes?
Are there videos included?

Also why is it 89 megabytes? That's a strange number... I'd expect a computer-compatible number like 96. This is most puzzling. [EDIT] [I just downloaded the KOF2002 rom; it was exactly 64 megabytes. So I suppose it's possible KOF2003 is larger.]

[idrougge]

Why are you using megaBITS instead of megaBYTES? (Megabits is confusing when you're used to talking about megabytes, gigabytes, terabytes, et cetera.)

Because memory traditionally is measured in bits, not bytes. Long ago, computers had 20-bit words, 36-bit words, 16-bit words and so on. There was little concensus on how big a "byte" was, so memory which was offered for several architectures was sold in bits. If you look at old DRAM chips, they will read "256 kbits x 4" or "16 kbits x 1". If you had an 8-bit data bus, you would take two of the former or eight of the latter to have 256 kbytes or 16 kbytes.

And measuring in bits gives larger numbers, so it suits Sega's marketing department.

[CosmicMonkey]

Because SNK didn't beleive in compressing game data. Whereas the all the graphics files and movies on a, for instance, SNES game are generally compressed to fuck to fit on as small cart as possible.

Neo carts have a greater size than any other cart. Ever. Fact.

And I wouldn't go saying that the bods over at Neo-Geo.com are clueless either; there's a few muppets over there and some wonderful people with more console/arcade knowledge than you could ever need.

[Gentlegamer]

Because SNK didn't beleive in compressing game data.

I think it's more like that wasn't supported by the Neo Geo hardware. In contrast, compression was supported by the N64 hardware and allowed for far larger amounts of game data in its carts than Neo Geo.

[RugalSizzler]

Well the thing is all cartrige system games is RAM based or basically an alternative form of FLASH. Just very cheap. However at the time it was expensive.

So the correct answer is that a NES, SNES, Gens, N64, Saturn, or any other cart based system can be as big as they want it to be. I was thinking about taking some mini mini flashes and making a game cart with 100GiG on it. It could even 1000TB if we built it correctly.

That is why carts will allways rule. All this tecnhology we have now has been done allready in the past. Nothing is new just cost effective.

Flash itself is in every computer based system that has a bios. our bios is stored on flash that is no diffrent then your game or flash card for your camera. Not new no limit.

There was also RAM storage or Solid State storage ( simluar to solid state HD ) that was righ beside the Proccessor one time but now they do not build it into computers anymore. It was like TB back then and smaller then the ram we have now in area.

[veronica_marsfan]

Well the thing is all cartrige system games is RAM based or basically an alternative form of FLASH.

ROM not RAM.

So the correct answer is that a NES, SNES, Gens, N64, Saturn, or any other cart based system can be as big as they want it to be.

No not really. Early CPUs (or buses) had inherent limits. For example Atari could only address 4 kilobytes. NES I think was limited to 64 kilobytes.

Bankswitching provides a solution, but it's a poor solution, because bankswitching slows down the program.

And there's a limit to how many banks a machine can handle. Commodore 64 (and probably NES too) had a limit of 16 banks, so a maximum addressable space of 64x16 = 1 megabyte.

[smork]

That thread shows that the amount of game data in N64 carts dwarfs that of Neo Geo carts.

The amount of game data isn't the issue -- the question at hand is about the size of the carts. And the fact is the capacity of some of the Neo carts is larger than the largest cart for any other system!

[Jorpho]

BTW, not to veer too far OT but was Super Metroid the 1st 24 meg game? I read that somewhere, but cannot confirm. What was the first 32 meg game for SNES? What about 8 and 12 meg?

I remember Super Metroid being the first 24 meg game as well. Donkey Kong Country might have been the first 32 meg game. (Tales of Phantasia for the Super Famicom was 48.)

In that same matter I ask the question: "Does it make logical sense that a 2D fighter (with no videos) uses more memory than a 3D Resident Evil 2 game with over an hour of MPEG2 video inside the cartridge?"

MPEG2 video can come in a wide variety of bitrates.

[RugalSizzler]

ROM not RAM.

I know but the way it is read and stored is simluar to RAM.

In that same matter I ask the question: "Does it make logical sense that a 2D fighter (with no videos) uses more memory than a 3D Resident Evil 2 game with over an hour of MPEG2 video inside the cartridge?"

Yes since Resident Evil use fancy pictures as backgrounds while you explore the invisible 3d world. If it did do all the 3d in real time then you would have ugly grpahics.

MPEG video is just a standard type that was around since Video Discs. That is like 198? or even 197? In 1992 DVD debuted and could be played on computers with DVD drives and Hardware codecs. Play it no diffrent then any other DVD players and maybe even better.

You can even play and run a full MPEG on a GBA using program software.

[djsquarewave]

As I recall, the largest SNES cart matched the size of Mario 64 on the N64 == 8 megabytes (64 megabits).

The largest SNES/SFC games out there are only 6MB (48 megabits). Star Ocean and Tales of Phantasia. From what I've heard, ToP has actual voiceovers, and Star Ocean has a special custom compression processor in it (which was used in a handful of other games)...but I don't play these sorts of games so I wouldn't know firsthand.

I wouldn't be surprised if there were some exceedingly large GBA or DS games out there, but I have no way to easily check this...

Incidentally, the largest Megadrive game was Super Street Fighter II at 40 megabits...supposedly there's special banking hardware in the cart as this is larger than the ROM space in the system's memory map. No 32X games reached this size, though.

[veronica_marsfan]

My Bluray PS3 disc holds 400,000 mega!!! (bits).

Oooo power!

(Sorry not really helpful, but amusing anyway. Makes the 48 megabit Nintendo carts look teeny-tiny.)

[Steven]

I remember Super Metroid being the first 24 meg game as well. Donkey Kong Country might have been the first 32 meg game. (Tales of Phantasia for the Super Famicom was 48.)

Yeah, Super Metroid was the first 24 meg SNES game. ToP was a whoppin' 48 indeed, and don't forget Star Ocean. SFA2 on SNES was originally supposed to be 48 megs too, but they pulled it off in 32.

DKC the first 32-meg game? Actually, the earliest I can think of would be Super SF II. Damn, Capcom had the first 16, 20 and 32 meg games on the SNES market. Unless I'm mistaken.

[Jorpho]

Yeah, Super Metroid was the first 24 meg SNES game. ToP was a whoppin' 48 indeed, and don't forget Star Ocean. SFA2 on SNES was originally supposed to be 48 megs too, but they pulled it off in 32.

Aye, SFA2 used the same compression chip as Star Ocean, the SDD-1.

[jajaja]

I think it's more like that wasn't supported by the Neo Geo hardware. In contrast, compression was supported by the N64 hardware and allowed for far larger amounts of game data in its carts than Neo Geo.

Are you sure? The biggest Neo Geo AES games are nearly 80MB (megabyte) large. What is the biggest N64 game in MB ?

[veronica_marsfan]

In contrast, compression was supported by the N64 hardware and allowed for far larger amounts of game data in its carts than Neo Geo.

Are you sure? The biggest Neo Geo AES games are nearly 80MB (megabyte) large. What is the biggest N64 game in MB ?

Someone arrived late to the party.

The answers to your questions can be found on page 1.

And what Gentlegamer was saying was that, because the N64 uses compression, a NeoGeo game ported to the N64 might shrink in size from 89 megabytes to only 8 megabytes. The N64 (and PS1 and other modern consoles) "squash" images/video using MPEG codecs, whereas the NeoGeo does not.

[jajaja]

This is a party? Where are the partyhats and balloons? :P

Neo Geo games doesnt use pre-rendered movies. I was more interested in knowing the total storage capacity, not how much compression that is used. If the biggest N64 game is 64MB, is this the biggest storage space a N64 cart can hold?