NES/Famicom Chinese Pirate Multi-Cart with two different menu screens???

[treismac]

The other weekend I stumbled across a NES (Famicom-adaptor) Chinese Pirate Multi-Cart. It advertised 42 games on the label, including Milk and Nuts and Chack 'n Pop, so I gladly purchased it. After cleaning the game and powering up my NES, I was disappointed to find only 20 games on the Mappy mascoted menu, but overinflated number of games in Chinese multi-carts is supposed to be par for the course from what I understand so I took the disappointment in stride. Well, tonight I popped the game in and instead of getting the Mappy menu screen with 20 games I got a totally different screen with 22 games, different music, and an unknown mascot. Pleased and a bit confused, I tried to figure out how to switch between the two sets of games, and the best I can figure out is that it has something to do with hitting/holding power or reset, but nothing I try gets consistent results. Does anyone know what the deal is? How can I consistently switch between the two menus? Are separate menu screens a common occurrence for Famicom Pirates?

Here is the cart:



Here is the pcb:



Here are the two menu screens:

[ccovell]

That type of multicart is very common... I have practically the same one in a Famicom shell, and it requires a power cycle to switch to the other menu and set of games.

Multicarts that have 2 layers of mapper (flip-flop + MMC3 clone) are also very common these days.

[Gameguy]

I'm pretty sure I have a similar cart like that, I've seen several that require power cycling to switch between menus or games.

[thom_m]

I have a very similar cart (same menus/games, different case)...sadly, it doesn't work anymore. Have you tried pressing select? IIRC, it's either that, or pressing reset...but I'm almost sure that the select button did the trick.

[Superman]

I have a cart with multi-cart that cycles also. In order to cycle to the next list, you have to reset the system.

I don't get a new screen though, just the next set of games.