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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.