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Thread: Super 4x1 - SNES RPG Multicart I Happened to Run Across

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    ServBot (Level 11) Edmond Dantes's Avatar
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    Default Super 4x1 - SNES RPG Multicart I Happened to Run Across

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    So here's a funny thing I ran across on the Eeb of the Bay. I was searching for Earthbound-related stuff and happened to see this for like thirty bucks. So I thought, "Why not?" So now it's in my hands and I'm giving it a looksee.

    This multicart contains four games: Earthbound, Lufia and the Fortress of Doom, Secret of Evermore, and Harvest Moon.

    Of those four, I already owned Earthbound and Evermore, but not the other two, and I honestly like the thought of having a second copy of Earthbound to loan out or to take to a friend's house, and my mom thinks she might like Harvest Moon since she's into Farmville. I've actually never played Harvest Moon before at all--any of them. The whole series is new to me. So this multicart is my first stab at that series.

    I tested this on a real SNES that I got back when I was in my early teens. I don't own a Retron 5 or any other clone console so I can't say whether or not this would work on those.

    To get the basic questions out of the way:

    1. Does it work on a real SNES? YES!
    2. Does it save games? YES!
    3. Can you have saves for multiple games (for example a save on Earthbound while still having a save file on Lufia)? YES!

    I should note that I only saved in two games--Earthbound and Secret of Evermore--and only used Slot 1 both times. I'm not sure if issues get introduced if you fill up more slots in all four games. I'll bump this topic should any such thing come up.

    When the game boots up it goes directly to a menu which is like a stripped-down version of the one used in Mario All Stars, only displaying title screens instead of box art. It's kinda odd at first--you expect pressing Left to choose whatever's to the left of the current image but it instead makes the current title move off screen to the left, so you're actually scrolling right--but whatever, just keep scrolling until the game you want shows up. You select games by pressing A.

    As far as I know, the only way back to this menu is to reset the console. I am all the way okay with this.

    One thing I noticed is initial load-up. Let's say you've been playing Earthbound, but then decide one day to play Lufia. When you first hit A on Lufia (or whatever game you picked), the menu will seem to have hung--left and right will stop working--but if you wait a moment, the game will boot up. From then on that game will boot up fast each time you pick it, until you decide to play a different game. What I think is going on is that the game is uncompressing/flashing the data to the rom chips on the fly, thus the initial hang, and it has to do this whenever you change games, but its only a minor thing as, these being RPGs, chances are you're gonna be sticking to one game for a long haul anyway, and the games load up much faster once they're already uncompressed.

    So far I only have one real quibble and its a minor one, and it involves Earthbound.

    No, it's not the copy protection--I can't confirm but I'm pretty sure this copy has somehow gotten around Earthbound's infamous anti-piracy measures, but I'll have to beat the game again to be entirely sure.

    No, my issue is this seems to be a slight hack of Earthbound.

    Anyone who has played Earthbound knows that its controls are like the NES Dragon Warrior games--you press the A button and a menu pops up with options like Status, Equip, Goods, and most importantly Talk and Check.

    In this 4x1 Version, Pressing the A button instead automatically talks or checks (depending on context) much like how the L-button originally worked, and to bring up the menu, you have to press X. In other words, it now plays like the SNES-era Final Fantasy games.

    I'm not sure if there are any other changes, but I'll mention it if I find anything.

    Now, some would argue that this is an improvement. Personally though, I prefer for my backup copy of Earthbound to be just like my legit cartridge copy. Besides, this raises the question of whether the other games on this collection have minor changes like this as well. I can't tell whether they do or not (I'll have to play through my legit cart of Secret of Evermore later in order to compare it, but Lufia I have only slight memories of and Harvest Moon I've never played at all before now).

    That said, this is a very minor quibble and if you've never played Earthbound before, you likely won't even realize this. The game is otherwise still completely playable and $30 for Earthbound plus three other good RPGs that you can play on real hardware isn't something to balk at in this day and age.

    Again, I'll bump this topic if I notice anything else I deem to be of interest.

    Matter of Opinion

    Some might ask, "why this instead of an Everdrive or something?" I can't answer that question for anyone but myself--for many, an Everdrive is clearly the higher value. For what it's worth though, whenever I get into emulators I tend to get into this "take a quick look at each game then move on" phenomenon. This actually happens to me even when I get a lot of legit games cheaply (such as what happens when GOG has a sale) and for myself I'm slightly afraid the same thing will happen if I just put a bunch of roms on an Everdrive. For whatever reason, things like this multicart don't set off my psychosis like that.

    People who don't have my psychosis though will likely find Everdrives to be of a higher value, but these multicarts are still fun little oddities and a part of me is gleeful at how resourceful fans of old consoles have gotten. There's just something cool about the fact that I can own all the SNES-era Mega Man games on a single cartridge for realzies.

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    I prefer the value of Everdrive but I absolutely understand the psychology of owning "every" game versus a collection like this. I also believe multicarts are interesting in themselves, namely, who made it and why did they choose these exact games? When was it made, recently or in the SNES era? Very interesting pickup so thank you for sharing. I hope the saves remain stable!

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    ServBot (Level 11) Edmond Dantes's Avatar
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    the ebay seller actually had a ton of different multicarts and had like 20 of this one alone (most of which were sold--there were four left when I bought this and now there aren't any). I'm suspecting he created these himself.

    One he had that I wish I had picked up was one that had all the SNES Mega Man games. However he also has a bunch of 20-in-1 or 188-in-1s that might contain the same games plus extras.

    I'm kinda curious about this hack of Earthbound that changes the menus to open with the X Button. I can't imagine this dude made that hack himself just for this repro, so I'm wondering who did. I'm curious to see if anything else is different. I've heard on Gamefaqs that someone made a 10th Anniversary Hack which made some changes (such as making rare item drops more frequent) so I'm wondering if this guy used that one by mistake, like how a lot of copies of NES Earthbound are actually the 20th Anniversary fanhack which has similar "improvements."

    EDIT: I haven't named the ebay seller... truth is I'm not sure if I should since I'm afraid someone here might consider reporting him/otherwise bring him the kind of attention he might not want. I'm also not sure if doing so would technically be breaking the rules.

    Also.... speaking as someone who never played Harvest Moon before, I do wonder how I wound up caring about damn crops for six hours of real time... (I got bored and switched over to Lufia soon tho).

    More Opinion - At this point I sound like I'm compensating for something, but one of my interests was having backup/shareable copies of expensive games, but Everdrives and such are actually quickly becoming expensive in and of themselves. So I wouldn't want to loan those out to friends or anything either. (Tho now that I think about it I could make the argument in reverse, IE keep the multicart, let the friend borrow the real cartridge...)
    Last edited by Edmond Dantes; 02-12-2018 at 12:42 PM.

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    Quote Originally Posted by Edmond Dantes View Post
    One he had that I wish I had picked up was one that had all the SNES Mega Man games.
    Even X2 and X3? If so I wonder if he cannibalized an existing cart with the CX4, or hacked those games to remove the usage of the CX4 (which is rumored to be more about copy protection, and a couple flashy wireframes in the title sequence, than anything needed by the game).

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    I was going to ask the same for X2 and X3. Has anyone attempted to do a hack like that before? I would be highly interested in that.

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    I appear to have been mistaken, as I looked thru his completed listings and didn't see a Mega Man SNES cart. I could swear I saw one that did have all of them, yes including X2 and X3.

    Just looking thru ebay in general I see several repros and multicarts featuring Mega Man 7, X1, or Soccer but I can't find any with X2 or X3. So I guess if I ever want those I'm paying hundreds of dollars or parting with my Dairugger XV DVDs...

    Incidentally, I asked on an Earthbound reddit about the changed controls and there is in fact a fan-hack that changes the controls. So I guess at the very least its a good way to tell legit sellers from scammers pretending a repro is real (which sadly is a thing that happens with EB).

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    Quote Originally Posted by goldenband View Post
    Even X2 and X3? If so I wonder if he cannibalized an existing cart with the CX4, or hacked those games to remove the usage of the CX4 (which is rumored to be more about copy protection, and a couple flashy wireframes in the title sequence, than anything needed by the game).
    It does a bit more than that, the CX4 handles sprite manipulation and there are a few enemies throughout both games that make use of wireframe animations.

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    So I picked up more multicarts. These ones are for NES, both have blue shells and came in ziplocs that actually had green labels talking about technical info and the save battery printed on said ziplocs.

    These blue carts didn't come from the same guy as the Super 4x1... and in fact, both were ones I've even seen sold here on DP a few times.

    One of them is called "Dragon Warrior Remix" and is basically a compilation of all four Dragon Warrior games (both English and Japanese) on one cart, plus a ninth game which was... I forget what.

    The other was simply labeled "Mega Man" and it has all six Mega Man games... from US, JPN, and PAL regions, plus the Roll-Chan hacks, and, in fact, a ton of hacks in general. Seriously it had like six pages of content and most of those pages were fan hacks.

    These blue carts say on the menu that they're made by someone named SuperUFO. The Dragon Warrior one's listing outright said that it can only hold save data for one game at a time (so for my purposes its basically a cheap copy of DW4, which was the only one NES-wise that I didn't have a legit cart of). The Mega Man one apparently features precisely one game with saves (and its one of the hacks, as of course the real games all use passwords).

    For awhile I was concerned, as I was playing Mega Man 2 and the controls felt weird. But it might've been my controller--a lot of my NES controllers just suck and I've been trying to fix that. But I don't have a real copy of Mega Man 2 to compare it against (I used to have almost the whole series, but I got stupid and sold them except for 3). I own real copies of 3 and 6 and for those, I see no difference in gameplay between the real cart and this multicart, so I'm tempted to say MM2's oddities were my imagination or it just being an older, less refined game.

    (Random, but apparently there was once a project to port Mega Mans 9 and 10 to the NES, but apparently its not actually possible for some reason? I would admittedly be fine with them being ported to the SNES or Turbo CD but still with NES graphics and sound... or even Wily Wars-esque graphics or sound...)

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    great find! I enjoy looking at the wacy combinations for multicarts on ebay also for snes and nes. Found some fun ones. Only multis i have for nes is a 191-in-1 (which is actually 100, other 91 are special versions letting you choose lives/levels) and the famous red 150-in-1 i got from aliexpress.
    My Gaming Collection (Now at Google Drive!)

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