What about R.O.B.? - The NES's First Mascot

R.O.B. with all Gyromite Accessories (missing Cartridge)

Nintendo originally released R.O.B. as the Family Computer Robot for the Famicom in Japan on July 26, 1985.  In this form, the Family Computer Robot uses off-white plastic for its body and red plastic for its arms and the bottom half of his hexagonal base.  This corresponds to the colors of the Famicom.  The Robot had to be purchased separately, it did not come bundled with games.  It cost 9,800 Yen.  In 1985, $1 USD was worth an average of 238 Yen.

The first game for it, released alongside the Robot itself, was called Robot Block and retailed for 4,800 Yen.  This game came with five different Colored Blocks (white, red, yellow, green and blue), five Block Trays for the Blocks to be stacked onto and a pair of Block Hands for the Robot with rubber ends.  Robot Block directs the Robot to move and stack the Colored Blocks onto the various stands while the player usually hops around.  It relies on the honor system.  Interestingly, it is one of the few Nintendo games from the pre-Disk System and "black box" eras that reproduces something like recognizable human speech.

Robot Block Box

The second game, Robot Gyro, followed on August 13, 1985 and retailed for 5,800 Yen.  This game came with larger pieces, two Gyros, a Gyro Spinner, a Gyro Holder and a Gyro Tray for the Controller.  It also has a pair of Gyro Hands to grab the Gyros.  Oddly enough, the box for Robot Gyro shows a different type of spinner that is taller.  Robot Gyro requires both controllers and the second controller sits in the Gyro Tray.  The Gyros, when sitting on the red and blue platforms, depress the buttons on the second controller.  A player can still play Gryomite without R.O.B., but most of the challenge is lost.

Robot Gyro Box

Nintendo introduced the NES in the United States in New York City as a test market on October 18, 1985. The console originally retailed for $249.00 and came with the Control Deck, two Controllers, the Zapper Light Gun, the R.O.B. (Robotic Operating Buddy), and the games Gyromite and Duck Hunt, fully boxed. When introduced nationally, Nintendo also released the Control Deck and two Controllers as the Basic Set with ($99.99) and without Super Mario Bros. ($89.99) as a more budget friendly option.  The set with R.O.B. was now called the Deluxe Set.  By 1988, Nintendo was pretty much just selling the Action Set with a Super Mario Bros./Duck Hunt cartridge and a Zapper for $149.99.  Eventually, the Power Pad would replace R.O.B. in the Power Set as the fad peripheral of choice.

R.O.B. was available for purchase separately, as was Gyromite with a large box that came with its accessories.  Both are rare to find today.  Gyromite was the same exact game as Robot Gyro.  Stack-Up was the same exact game as Robot Block and was available to purchase at the initial launch.  In fact, Nintendo did not even bother to change the title screens for these games, because the Gyromite and Stack-Up cartridges boot up as Robot Gyro and Robot Block, respectively.  Also, some Gyromite and all Stack-Up cartridges use Famicom PCBs and a converter that converts the 60 pins of a Famicom connector to the 72 pins of a NES connector.  This extra converter board also adds the lockout chip for the NES.  While not the only games that have these converters, they are often sought after for them.

Stack-Up was never bundled with a console and could only be purchased separately.  On account of this, it is far rarer than Robot Block.  More Japanese consumers bought Robot Block because it was cheaper than Robot Gyro.  Of course, Nintendo bundled R.O.B. with Gyromite with each Deluxe Set sold, and the Deluxe Set probably sold at least a million units, so Gyromite and its parts are far more common than Robot Gyro or anything else.

Physically and functionally, the parts for Robot Block and Stack-Up are identical.  Cosmetically, the Block Hands for Robot Block are red and the Block Hands for Stack-Up are dark gray.  The Block Trays are off-white for Robot Block and light gray for Stack-Up.  Many times on auctions for Stack-Up you will see white Block Trays and red Block Hands, and they came from Robot Block.  

Stack-Up Box

Physically and functionally, the parts for Robot Gyro and Gyromite are identical, with one exception.  That exception is the Gyro Tray.  The Gyro Tray for Robot Gyro is shaped for the rounder, smaller Famicom Controller with the bump in the middle of the edges.  The Gyro Tray for Gyromite is larger and squarer, shaped for the NES Controller.  Here is another example of region locking :)  Cosmetically, all parts use off-white plastic for Robot Gyro and the Gyro Hands, the base of the Gyro Spinner and the top rails of the Gyro Tray are red.  Gyromite uses light gray plastic for its parts except the Gyro Hands, Gryo Spinner base and top Gyro Tray rails, which are dark gray.  The off-white plastic of the Robot and its peripherals are much more prone to yellowing than the light gray plastic of R.O.B. and its peripherals.

R.O.B. works similarly to a Zapper light gun in that it receives information from the TV screen.  The TV screen will strobe green light when it wants to issue a command to R.O.B.  The photo-receptors inside R.O.B.'s head will receive the light stream and send it to a microcontroller for processing.  R.O.B. can accept six commands : Move Torso Up, Move Torso Down, Rotate Shaft Left, Rotate Shaft Right, Open Arms and Close Arms.  The microcontroller sends electricity to motors in R.O.B's Torso and Base which control the movement via gears and grooved tracks.

R.O.B. moves his Torso Up and Down in a shorter distance for Stack-Up than Gyromite because of the way the blocks stack. Stack-Up allows you to stack blocks up to five blocks high, so R.O.B. will move five times up or down the shaft from his head to his base.  Gyromite will only allow you to move three times up or down the shaft, and you really only need to move him up or down one position.  He has five positions to move left or right and his arms either are fully open or fully closed.  He has five numbered slots to insert the accessories for each game which correspond to the positions he can move.

Family Computer Robot box, hands not included

Unfortunately, R.O.B. relies on the speed and intensity of the light being pulsed by the TV screen and will not respond to the strobing on an LCD TV.  In fact, Nintendo included a filter strip for R.O.B.'s eyes should the light of the screen or the ambient light be so intense that R.O.B. would not function correctly.  R.O.B. was later released in the PAL territories.  Because PAL screens refresh slower than NTSC screens, the microcontroller in R.O.B. may have had to be adjusted.  The ROMs for Gyromite and Stack-Up are identical around the world.  The early Zapper and R.O.B. games use the same ROMs regardless of region.  The European R.O.B. and Zappers may not compatible with NTSC TVs.

R.O.B.'s communicates with the robot via a pattern of alternating green and black screens.  When the game issues a command to R.O.B., it always turns the screen black for three frames.  Then comes a green frame followed by a black frame and followed by a green frame.  For every command, this sequence is the same.  Then the sequence of green and black screens alternates in a different pattern for seven frames.  Here is how the commands are encoded :

Up (Short)	Down (Short)	Left	Right	Open	Close	Up (Long)	Down (Long)
b	b	b	b	b	b	b	b
b	b	b	b	b	b	b	b
b	b	b	b	b	b	b	b
g	g	g	g	g	g	g	g
b	b	b	b	b	b	b	b
g	g	g	g	g	g	g	g
g	b	b	g	g	b	b	g
g	g	g	g	g	g	g	g
g	b	g	b	b	g	g	g
g	g	g	g	g	g	g	g
b	g	b	b	g	g	b	b
g	g	g	g	g	g	g	g
b	b	b	b	b	b	g	g

b = black screen, g = green screen.

The last two frames seem to indicate only whether an up or down movement by R.O.B. is a short (Stack-Up) or a long (Gyromite) movement.  The test feature for both Gyromite and Stack-Up continuously alternates black and green screens in a 1:1 ratio after the first three black frames.  Given that the code is at least five bits (32 possibilities), there could be up to 24 other commands that R.O.B. could recognize by timing the screen flashing appropriately.

R.O.B. takes 4 x AA batteries.  The LED on top of its head lights up to tell the user that it is functioning.  It is not on all the time.  It will turn on when you use the Test mode correctly in either game.  It also turns on when R.O.B. is not moving, indicating that R.O.B. can accept a command.  R.O.B. should be situated as directly in front of a TV screen as possible.  The manual indicates that he should be no further than 45 degrees from the center of the screen and works best within 3 feet of the screen.  More than 6 feet is not recommended.

The gyro spinner additionally takes 1 x D battery.  The spinner is not active until a gyro or other object depresses the black piece.  R.O.B. should keep his hands on the gryo when in the spinner to avoid slowing down the spinning speed.  When you turn on R.O.B., you should notice one thing immediately, he is loud.  The next thing you will notice is that he is slow.  The spinner makes noise as well.  Playing either game as intended is a real challenge because you have to think several moves ahead so R.O.B. can catch up with you.  Once the novelty wore off, and it usually did pretty quickly, then R.O.B. typically got put back in the box or on the shelf.  Children would often ask their parents why they did not get them Super Mario Bros. instead.

The bundling of R.O.B. signaled a shift in Nintendo's strategy.  Nintendo's first attempt at bringing the Famicom to western markets, the Advanced Video System, failed to excite buyers when it was previewed at the 1984 Consumer Electronics Shows.  The AVS included the hardware of the Famicom with a built in keyboard, essentially the Family Computer Keyboard merged with the Famicom.  It also came with a westernized version of Family BASIC built in or bundled with it.  It also had a resdesigned version of the Family Computer Data Recorder and wireless gamepads, zapper and joystick.

Considering the video game crash taking place, Nintendo initially had a good thought to "computerize" its console.  However, the market for cheap home computers was dominated by the $300 Commodore 64.  Retailers were not impressed, perhaps because the Nintendo AVS had a few too many features in common with other failed home computers like the Coleco Adam and TI/99 4A.  (Cassette-based storage was seen as cheap in 1984).  Fortunately, the video game crash had eviscerated the home console market in North America, leading to opportunity in the lower end of the market.  Nintendo took a dual approach.  It went to lengths to distinguish its system from other systems by designing it to look like a Hi-Fi "Entertainment System."  However, it also marketed its product as a toy to toy stores.  Of course, it had to include a toy to make the pitch plausible, so R.O.B. was the "face" of Nintendo at first.

Ultimately, while video game histories may point to Nintendo's marketing of the NES as a toy rather than a video game console, I doubt any consumer was fooled into thinking that the NES was substantially different than the Atari and other systems.  The system used cartridges and hand-held controllers like its predecessors. The Famicom looked more like a toy than the NES, the NES looked like a electronic entertainment device.  Nintendo avoided using previous terms like console and cartridge and joystick, using Control Deck and Game Pak and Controller respectively.  Ultimately, it was the overall quality of the games that sold kids and their parents on the system, it was too expensive for a novelty toy.

Does R.O.B. have character?  Nintendo thought so, because it included him as a playable character in Super Smash Bros. for the 3DS and Wii U and gave him many cameo appearances before then.  Both color variations now have Amibos.  R.O.B. was released a year before a robot with a similar design appeared in in the film Short Circuit and twenty-three years before another similar robot was introduced in WALL-E.  These design successors demonstrate that R.O.B. does have character in and of himself.  He represents a 1980s version of an electronic toy, sleek lines and minimalist function.  Unlike earlier toys, he relies on micro computing technology instead of pure electro-mechanical functioning.  However, despite his empty, soulless eyes. he has a humanoid shape and makes natural noises.  Moreover, he does not suffer from the uncanny valley effect like another 1980s popular toy, Teddy Ruxpin.  So yes, I would conclude that R.O.B. has a good deal of character and deserved more games than he got.  If nothing else, he is always a conversation piece.

Number of Unique NES Games

The NES, according to NintendoAge, has 678 licensed US games and 91 unlicensed games.  NintendoAge is a collector-oriented site, and it considers a unique cartridge as a game.  Of course, many of those cartridges have major and minor label variations.  Major variations include cartridges with old and new Nintendo Seals of Quality.  Minor variations include things like Rev-A or Rev-B on the box.

However, not all cartridges contain unique games.  Nintendo re-released Mike Tyson's Punch-Out!! as Punch-Out!! when their license to use Mike Tyson's name and likeness expired.  They removed the opening screen where there is an image of Mike Tyson with the caption "Mike Tyson is awaiting your challenge!", adjusted the title screen and replaced Mike Tyson in the game with Mr. Dream.  The game plays exactly the same.

If you owned Mike Tyson's Punch-Out and saw Punch-Out on a World of Nintendo M82 Display Demo machine, you might say "Hey, where is Mike Tyson?"  You would understand that both cartridges had the same game.  Similarly, if you were one of the lucky people who purchased Stadium Events, you would see little difference between it and World Class Track Meet.  The only difference between the three releases of Pac-Man, in software, is the copyright text on the title screen.  However, the Namco licensed release of Ms. Pac-Man is very different from the Tengen version.  The former is little more than an improvement on Namco's Pac-Man.  The latter has new mazes, more two player modes, a speed boost, more difficulty selections and a starting level selection.  The Namco version keeps all the action on one screen, but the Tengen version scrolls the screen.  Indiana Jones and the Last Crusade is the title for two very different games, both based on the movie, released by Ubi Soft and Taito.

No multi-cart game is a unique game unless it contains something substantially more than the standalone cartridges, and this requires more than a game selection menu. Maxi-15 is a good example of a multi-cart game that does have something unique.  While it contains fourteen games released by AVE or Color Dreams, Stakk'm was not released as a standalone cartridge.  The only way to play that game in the United States was to buy Maxi-15.  It was released in Taiwan as Poke Ball.  Additionally, while Sunday Funday: The Ride had been previously released as Menace Beach, Sunday Funday is a multi-cart that adds two additional programs.

One should still count games that use the same engine as unique even if little beyond the levels have been changed.  Thus the Adventures of Lolo 2 offers almost nothing beyond the Adventures of Lolo, but the levels are different.  Additionally, Crystal Mines and Exodus use the same engine but have different levels, as do Dudes with Attitude and Trolls on Treasure Island.

Some games had a very limited release.  Stadium Events was released very briefly and then recalled when Nintendo licensed the Power Pad from Bandai.  Flinstones: The Rescue of Dino and Hoppy may have been available only at Blockbuster Video as a rental, but this is debatable.  1,500 copies of Cheetamen II was discovered in a warehouse in 1996 and sold unofficially.  The game is as buggy as a prototype and cannot be finished but exists in numbers far exceeding any prototype.  There may only be 6,000 copies of Action 52, another very buggy collection of games from the same company.  So it appears that Active Enterprises was prepared to ship Cheetamen II to unwitting buyers as a last cash grab but business failure thwarted its plans.  Even though the NES was discontinued the year prior, it would be nine years before somebody else released a cartridge for it.  One can only row so far against the accepted wisdom.  However, unlike Nintendo World Championships 1990, all these games were made available to the public for purchase at some point in time.  NWC 1990 was only given to finalists of that particular contest and winners of a Nintendo Power Contest.  So NWC 1990 is not here or at NintendoAge.

So, according to NintendoAge, there were 678 licensed US NES games.  We have to subtract the following 8 to get to the true number of unique games :

- Pac-Man (Namco re-release)
- Punch-Out!! (re-release of MK's Punch-Out!!)
- World Class Track Meet (re-release of Stadium Events)
- Donkey Kong Classics
- Sesame Street ABC & 123
- Super Mario Bros/Duck Hunt
- Super Mario Bros/Duck Hunt/World Class Track Meet
- Super Spike V'Ball / Nintendo World Cup

Again, NintendoAge says there were 91 unlicensed games released in the US during the NES's lifespan. However, due to the above we have to subtract these 7:

- 6 in 1 by Myriad (Caltron 6-in-1 with a new label sloppily slapped over the old label)
- Bubble Bath Babes (The adult version of Mermaids of Atlantis)
- Gauntlet (licensed version exists)
- Indiana Jones and the Temple of Doom (licensed version exists)
- Impossible Mission II (AVE is same board in a different shell)
- Pac-Man (licensed versions exist)
- R.B.I. Baseball (licensed version exists)

Therefore 678 + 91 - 8 - 7 = 754.   While there are relatively few duplicates across the Nintendo library, there are many across the Atari 2600 library.  The number of unique games released during the Atari 2600's long 15-year official lifespan only numbered 436 as I had explained in this post : http://nerdlypleasures.blogspot.com/2014/12/atari-2600-just-how-many-games.html.  Yet when you see the release lists for various companies it appears to be a lot more.

Retro City Rampage 486 - A Review of a "New" MS-DOS Game

I knew about Retro City Rampage back when its developer, Brian Provinciano, was calling it Grand Theftendo and trying to port it to the NES.  However, he decided to continue development on the PC and eventually released it on Steam and several consoles.  In its released form, it may have had the feel of an NES or MS-DOS game, but under its hood it was all modern.  Thus it did not really grab my attention and games with no physical release do not either.  In fact, the only Steam games I have ever purchased were the Special Editions of Monkey Island 1 & 2 and I value them today only for their ability to build the Monkey Island 1 & 2 Ultimate Talkie Editions.

When it was announced that not only would RCR receive a true port to the MS-DOS platform as Retro City Rampage 486 but also come in a boxed version, my interest was piqued.  Having a physical release of a game with no need to run a Steam installer and no concern that upgrading to the latest Windows will break the game interested me a great deal.  I was suitably impressed that the game came on a floppy disk.  I had never purchased a physical retro "homebrew" style game before, but the price was $29.99 and it came with a Steam key for the extras, so I eventually decided to take the plunge.  The total came to $34.99 with shipping.

MS-DOS as a gaming platform began with the introduction of the IBM PC back in August of 1981.  The first developed PC game was Donkey.bas, which came on the PC-DOS 1.0 diskette.  It relied on IBM Personal Computer BASIC to run, but it came on a disk, so it required DOS as well.  While during the first few years of PC gaming many games did not need MS-DOS to run, eventually the convenience of using MS-DOS for disk access and the necessity of using it for hard drive access made it ubiquitous by the end of the 1980s.  Until Windows 95 became firmly established as the successor to MS-DOS as a PC gaming platform in 1996-1997, everybody used MS-DOS when they played games on their PC.

It is hard to tell what was the last commercial game released that ran on MS-DOS and came in a box. I am tempted to say Tyrian 2000 from 1999.  However, Tyrian 2000 is an updated release of the original Tyrian, released in 1995.  Perhaps WWII GI is a better example of a DOS game that was first released in stores in 1999 but received a critical drubbing at the time for using the out-of-date Build engine. The last DOS game to be released on floppy disk of any consequence was probably Hexen in 1995 .  It was clear that DOS was Dead by the end of the last century.

While hardly attracting the same attention as consoles, there has been some homebrew style activity for MS-DOS in the 21st Century.  SuperFighterTeam released translated versions of the Taiwanese games Sango Fighter (2009) and Sango Fighter 2 (2013) as free downloads that ran in DOSBox.  Jason Knight released Paku Paku, a Pac-Man clone which ran on a 8088 CPU with CGA using a tweaked 80 column text mode, in 2011.  A guy named mangis is working on a nice-looking CGA tweaked 80 column text game called MagicDuck and has been releasing working alpha builds for quite a while now.  Companies still released shovelware compilations of older DOS games in the early 2000s.  You could order floppy disks of many of Apogee's classics from their website.

Back to RCR 486 and non-free games.  When I received my copy of RCR yesterday, the first thing I did I put it on my shelf and fired up Steam!  Actually, that is what a collector or a reseller might do, but I wanted to do something more with my purchase than simply display it.  The box is a standard size for a NES cartridge, 5"x7"x1".  The Vblank Entertainment logo looks like it came from an Xbox 360 game, the title font looks like it came from a NES game, but the System Requirements label is something that would not look out of place on a Sierra game.  I sliced open the shrinkwrap, opened the top flap and looked at the contents :

I received the fully-boxed Retail Box version, which is limited to 1,000 numbered units.  I ordered my floppy disk with the boring "business beige" color because that is authentic to DOS games and see-through floppy disks are not.  Apparently they are running out of stock of that color.  The glasses have two red lenses rather than the red/blue lenses of regular 3-D glasses.  If you just want a floppy disk and a Steam code, you can get it for $14.99 plus shipping.  In fact, the price for the remaining collector's editions went up $10.00 since I ordered, and judging by my number, they will sell out.

The manual does not need to spend much time on the instructions, which are also located in the game.  The red/blue printing was occasionally used back in the DOS days for document-based copy protection.  More often it was used for hint guides.  In the manual, the cheat keys are hidden by the red/blue printing as is some other artwork, which is pretty cool.

Nor was the cloth map truly necessary as the game has an in-game map.  The material of the cloth map feels like the material found in those smartphone wipes and is about as thick.  The map is rather lacking in contrast, so it will probably stay in the box.  Packaging is nice, but if the game in it is bad, then the whole purpose behind the release is meaningless.

After examining the contents, I did what anyone else would have done back in the day.  I took the 1.44MB disk to my 486 and installed it on my computer.  The installation process went off without a hitch.  The game comes with a proper installation program, which decompresses the game and copies it to your hard drive. Because the game takes 3.7MB of free hard drive space, it cannot be run off a floppy disk.  The install took less than 5 minutes on my 486DX2/66.   The install program is aptly named INSTALL.EXE, the game directory is RCR and the executable is RCR.EXE.  After I installed the program, I made a disk image in case the physical floppy becomes corrupt.

According to the developer, the minimum specification for the game is a 386 with a 387 math coprocessor, but the game was meant for a 486.  It recommends a Pentium for maximum performance.  It also requires 4MB of RAM, DOS 3.3 or better and a VGA card.  It supports keyboard and a joystick or game pad.  I highly recommend using a Gravis Gamepad.  The game will let you map four gamepad buttons and calibrate the joystick or gamepad.  While there are a few more functions than buttons on a PC gamepad or joystick, the main ones map nicely to the most commonly used functions.

The game gives you four frame rate options, 15fps (3 frame skip), 20fps (2 frame skip), 30fps (1 frame skip) and 60fps (0 frame skip).  Real VGA monitors run at 70Hz and none of those options evenly divide into 70, but I did not notice a lot of ugly screen tearing.  For the main game you may want to use the higher fps option, but for the challenges the lower fps options give a faster paced game.

The other fun option in the settings is the ability to change the color scheme.  You can have CGA (both major palettes) or EGA-style graphics.  There is an MDA mode, but it displays more shades of color than real MDA.  You can have graphic schemes that take from the NES, C64, Atari 2600, ZX Spectrum, Genesis, Game Boy, and even the Virtual Boy.

One criticism of the DOS game is that its sound is limited to the PC Speaker.  The original PC release has chiptune music and you can change tunes when you drive the cars.  Unfortunately, the only music in this game appears to be when you are on the title screen.  While the instructions for RCR 486 indicate you can change music in the vehicles using the Tab or Page Up and Page Down keys, they do nothing.

The developer set himself a challenge to fit the game onto one floppy disk.  He had to cut down the game features to do it.  Considering 3.7MB was compressed down to 1.44MB, every byte was precious.  Plus he wanted to target the PC Speaker as a programming challenge.  I would not be displeased if he later released a patch to add music and features, but I will take the game as it is now.

RCR is based on Grand Theft Auto, namely the first two games which had a top down view.  The essential goal outside of story mode is to kill civilians and police.  There are many weapons you can use to wreak havoc and you can carjack any car and run pedestrians over.  There are challenges like the one that gives you a bazooka and requires you to cause as much damage as possible or the one that gives you a certain amount of time to run over 50 people.  Some of the vehicles have special features, you can turn the sirens on the cop cars, shoot a bazooka when you are in a tank and one the vehicles has a pair of machine guns, taken from a certain hard-as-nails NES game made by Konami.

RCR tries to parody pretty much every iconic video game of the 80s and 90s.  Super Mario Bros. 1 & 2, Mega Man 2 and other games are targeted.  The plot of the main game involves the main character who gets lost in time (via a TARDIS) and has to turn to a Doc Brown-type of scientist (from Back to the Future) to obtain the pieces to construct a machine to get him back to his own time.  The main character is a henchman for a psychotic Joker-like character who loves to kill off henchmen who aren't up to snuff.  Other icons of the time like Rambo and the Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles make appearances.

RCR has something like an open world, or as open as a game of its design can be.  You can enter shops to upgrade your weapons, buy health items and reduce your evil reputation so the police do not attack you every second.  You play through missions and each stage is comprised of multiple missions.  You have three save slots to save your progress in the main game.  Like seemingly all modern games there are achievements and unlockables.

Lazy Game Reviews made a fair criticism that the game tries to parody everything and resemble GTA so closely that it fails to have its own identity.  One or the other could be said about many independent and homebrew games.  Even though it is not a classic in its DOS form it still brought a smile to my face on occasion and the gameplay is easy to pick up and play.  The story mode adds some meat on what would otherwise have been a somewhat shallow offering.  However, I will take it because the developer took the time to bring the essence of his game to a large number of older machines.

A final criticism is that this game is not particularly representative of a retail game that runs well on a 486 but recommends a Pentium.  No game released earlier than 1995 would put something like that on its system requirements sticker.  In 1995, shareware was also dying and this game would hardly be seen as competitive compared with Descent or DOOM II or even Jazz Jackrabbit.  People of 1995 would have been puzzled why a game that looked like it should be on the NES should require system power orders of magnitude greater than the gray box.  However, the developer did not intend this port to be a completely accurate retro game with a presentation from 1990-1991 and system requirements from 1994-1995.  It was to him a fun programming exercise that was sufficiently successful for a limited edition release.

There is no software in this box that I could not have acquired from Steam for $20 less.  $5 extra gets you a floppy disk with an installer and a label, and the extra $15 (now $25) on top of that gets you the other physical feelies.  The developer cannot be making much off this, especially considering all the additional headaches and time it takes to put together a 1,000 copies of a physical software product.  If you just want to try it out, grab it from the Steam.  If you want the total experience of placing an order, waiting for it to ship, opening the box and enjoying the physical items inside, then act fast!  LGR would probably say something like "Mmm, feelies..."

Prince of Persia DOS 1.0 Sound Card Autodetection Weirdness

When Prince of Persia was originally released for DOS, alongside the Apple II version, it supported several sound cards.  The sound cards the original 1.0 version supported were Adlib, Game Blaster, Sound Blaster, Covox Sound Master.  It also supported the IBM PS/1 Audio/Joystick upgrade, the Tandy PSSJ DAC and the Tandy 3-voice PSG, and of course the PC Speaker.

For sound effects, the original version only supports either digitized sound effects or the PC Speaker sound effects.  To hear digitized sound effects, you must have a Sound Blaster, Tandy DAC, Covox Sound Master or IBM PS/1 Audio/Joystick card.  Otherwise, you will hear PC speaker sound effects.

You can hear music with any of these cards.  Music will sound identical with an Adlib or Sound Blaster or any compatible.  The music will sound similar whether played on a Tandy 3-voice PSG, the 3-voice PSG of the Covox Sound Master or the 12-voice PSG of the Game Blaster.  There is also PC Speaker music. Note that of all the music choices, only the Game Blaster will output in stereo.

The game's executable recognizes several command line parameters related to sound.  The sound card command line parameters in 1.0 are adlib, covox, gblast, ibmg, sblast, tandy & stdsnd.  All should be self explanatory.  They are intended to allow you to override the autodetect function, but do not always work as intended.

When you put a sound card inside a Tandy 1000 with a DAC, things get interesting :

Adlib MSC :
No parameter – Adlib music, Tandy DAC sound effects
Adlib – Adlib music, PC Speaker sound effects
Tandy - Adlib music, Tandy DAC sound effects
Stdsnd – PC Speaker music, PC Speaker sound effects

Game Blaster :
No parameter – Game Blaster music, PC Speaker sound effects
Gblast – Game Blaster music, PC Speaker sound effects
Tandy – Tandy music, Tandy DAC sound effects
Stdsnd – PC Speaker music, PC Speaker sound effects

No Sound Card :
No parameter - Tandy music, Tandy DAC sound effects
Tandy – Tandy music, Tandy DAC sound effects
Stdsnd – PC Speaker music, PC Speaker sound effects

I underlined the unusual options.  You cannot use the Tandy DAC with a joystick, so the Adlib parameter with the Adlib always gives you PC Speaker sound effects and restores joystick support.  However, while the game will use the Adlib with Tandy DAC if present, the same is not true with a Game Blaster in a Tandy DAC system.  You always get PC Speaker sound effects with a Game Blaster.

If you have a Tandy 1000 without a DAC, you have additional options :

No Sound Card :
No parameter – Tandy music, PC Speaker sound effects
Tandy – Tandy music, PC Speaker sound effects
Stdsnd – PC Speaker music, PC Speaker sound effects

Generic PCs behave as you would expect with sound cards, except for the following :

Sound Blaster w/CMS Upgrade :
No parameter – Adlib music (or Game Blaster music if YM-3812 is removed), Sound Blaster DAC sound effects
Sblast - Adlib music, Sound Blaster DAC sound effects
Adlib - Adlib music, PC Speaker sound effects
Gblast - Adlib music, PC Speaker sound effects (if the YM-3812 is removed from a Sound Blaster 1.0-2.0, Game Blaster music will play)
Tandy - Adlib music, PC Speaker sound effects
Stdsnd – PC Speaker music, PC Speaker sound effects

I do know that a Sound Blaster will not work reliably with a Tandy 1000 with a DAC.  Both will use DMA1 and neither device can be truly disabled.  While a Sound Blaster Pro will work in a Tandy 1000 with a DAC, you need to set it to non-standard IRQ/DMA settings to avoid freezes.  While Prince of Persia 1.0 will use IRQs other than 7, it will only use DMA1.  There were no other DMA choices available to the pre-Pro Sound Blasters other than 1.

As far as whether a Sound Blaster will work reliably in an IBM PS/1 with an Audio/Joystick card, I am uncertain.  The IBM device is mounted on a special header inside the PS/1 Model 2011 or 2121.  These machines require external adapter upgrades to support ISA cards, and they are very rare.  Both sound devices use IRQ7, but the IBM card does not use DMA.  Because Prince of Persia uses Sound Blaster IRQs like 5, it won't matter for this game but it could matter for a game like King's Quest I SCI, which only supports a Sound Blaster at IRQ7.  I think it likely that an Adlib would override the IBM music.

Although the Tandy 3-voice and IBM Audio are both based off the same PSG, IBM's card used a slightly higher base frequency than the Tandy PSG.  IBM's card will have higher pitched sound (because of a 11.7% difference in base frequencies) than the Tandy.

Finally, I am uncertain whether an Adlib card will override a Covox card for music.  Since an Adlib card always overrides a Game Blaster even if you use the gblast parameter, it is likely that it will override the Covox for music.  It is also probable that the Covox will still produce digitized sound effects like the Tandy DAC.  Covox cards are extremely rare, only recently has a user made recordings of Prince of Persia's opening with the Covox.  While the Covox has advanced musical capabilities, most companies only used the basic musical capabilities which were only slightly more advanced than the Tandy chip.  Thus the Covox sounds like a Tandy.

If you want to disable the Adlib override for the Game Blaster and Tandy 3-voice music, you have to edit the PRINCE.EXE executable.  At offset 13875h change 75h to EBh, this will make the game respect the command line parameter for sound.  This will allow you to hear Game Blaster music if an Adlib card is installed or on an upgraded Sound Blaster 2.0 or below.  The credit for this patch goes to ripsaw8080 on the VOGONS forum.

Game Blaster support is a bit buggy in version 1.0.  You can hear dropped or hanging notes in the introduction, and it gets worse as the system speed increases.  I have had nearly flawless playback in an 8MHz Tandy 1000 TX or TL.  Ripsaw8080 wrote a program that will dramatically improve note playback in faster systems, find it here : http://www.vogons.org/viewtopic.php?f=46&t=41129&hilit=prince+persia+game+blaster&start=20#p386191  Note that it requires extended keyboard BIOS functions, so it won't work properly in an IBM PC, IBM PC XT or Portable with 1st BIOS, or any Tandy 1000 before the TL and SL.  Its generally not necessary with systems that slow anyway.    The buggy Game Blaster support is probably why they removed it in version 1.3, plus it was obsolete along with the Covox Sound Master, another casualty of the version upgrade.

Famicom Expansion Audio Carts - Best Examples

During the Famicom's lifespan, 26 cartridge games were known to support expansion audio.  The Famicom directed its audio to cartridge port and games that did not use expansion audio would simply loop it back to the RF modulator.  The expansion audio that these 26 games would generate would intercept the internal audio and mix it with the expansion audio and send the combined signal to the RF modulator.  In addition, 75 Famicom Disk System games (4 of them unlicensed) are also known to use expansion audio generated in the FDS RAM Adapter.

Here is a list of all Famicom games known to use Expansion Audio : http://wiki.nesdev.com/w/index.php/List_of_games_with_expansion_audio

In this post, I identify the most accessible games for English speakers using each expansion audio chip and describe what needs to be done to play it.

Sunsoft 5B

Gimmick! - The original cart alone can go for $200 easily, however, there is at least one other more common Famicom cart (Gremlins 2) with a Sunsoft 5B chip, but obtaining one is something of the luck of the draw.  Additionally, one can make a donor NES cart with a Batman Return of the Joker and an AY-3-891x chip, or you can get a INL-ROM NES reproduction board with an AY chip on it.

Konami VRC-VII

Lagrange Point - This is the only game that uses the expansion sound capabilities found in this chip, which is exclusive to this game and Tiny Toons 2 Japanese version.  Tiny Toons 2 does not have an SRAM chip, battery or any of the passive components to mix the audio, so it would be a large undertaking to get it to work in a NES cart.  I am not sure whether the Largange Point board plus a pin converter would fit inside a NES cartridge shell because the game's board is very tall.  You may need an external pin converter.  Interest in this game has also increased substantially because of a full translation patch.

Nintendo MMC5

Just Breed - This is a large strategy RGB from Enix and one of the three games that use the expansion audio of the MMC5.  Because of its translation patch, it is by far the most accessible of those games.  The original cartridge can have its ROM replaced with a translated ROM burned onto an EPROM, some minor reworking will be required.  Because it uses Nintendo's MMC5 board, this can work with a reproduction cart in a NES.  The most suitable NES cart is Gemfire, but I suspect that any of the battery backed MMC5 boards will work with some minor reworking. Castlevania III and Laser Invasion will require the addition of an SRAM chip and a battery, not a beginner mod.

Konami VRC-VI

Akumajou Densetsu - This is the Japanese version of Castlevania III, and does not have so much Japanese text that it requires a ROM swap to enjoy it.  The Famicom board is small enough to fit inside a NES cartridge shell with a converter without difficulty.  Madara and Esper Dream 2, the other games that use the chip, do have translation patches.

Namcot 109/163

Rolling Thunder - Most Namcot 109/163 games with expansion sound are not very English friendly.  This game is basically the NES Tengen version with better sound.  Additionally, Namcot almost always used epoxy-bonded ROMs on their boards because they were cheap.  Unfortunately, this makes replacing these ROMs with translated ROMs on EPROMs very, very difficult.

NEC µPD7755C/µPD7756C & Mitsubishi M50805

The NEC ADPCM Speech chip was found in Jaleco's Japanese baseball games, virtually all of which were ported to the NES in the Bases Loaded series.  The chip stored and could play back voice samples on command.  Grab any one of them, games like Moero!! Pro Yakyuu are as common as they get in Japan, but realize its only a novelty.  Of course, the speech samples are in Japanese for the Famicom cartridge and English for Bases Loaded.  The NES versions had more PRG-ROM space to store the samples in ROM instead of on a special chip and used the NES's internal PCM channel to play them.  The Mitsubishi chip was found in Family Trainer 3: Aerobics Studio, which was similarly ported to the NES as Aerobics Studio.  Roll out your Power Pad for that one.

Famicom Disk System
FDS RAM Adapter + FDSStick
Read my review of this product for reasons why you should get one : http://nerdlypleasures.blogspot.com/2015/07/the-fdsstick-compact-solution-to-your.html

See also my list here of games for the Famicom Disk System where I give instructions how to clean the saves, all are easily accessible to English speakers : http://nerdlypleasures.blogspot.com/2015/06/cleaning-saved-information-from-famicom.html

Finally, I have generated a list of all Famicom and Famicom Disk System games that use expansion audio and were ported to the cartridge format :

Japanese Name	Expansion Sound Type	US Name
Gimmick!	Sunsoft 5B	Mr. Gimmick! (Europe/Scandanavia Release, US Proto)
Moe Pro! '90: Kandou-hen	D7756	Bases Loaded 3, Ryne Sandberg Plays
Moe Pro!: Saikyou-hen	D7756	Bases Loaded 4
Moero!! Pro Tennis	D7756	Rad Racket
Moero!! Pro Yakyuu	D7756	Bases Loaded
Moero!! Pro Yakyuu '88: Kettei Ban	D7756	Bases Loaded 2: The Second Season
Bio Miracle Bokutte Upa	Famicom Disk System	None (Japan Cartridge Release Only)
Doki Doki Panic	Famicom Disk System	Super Mario Bros. 2 (also Japan)
Dracula 2 - Noroi no Fuuin	Famicom Disk System	Castlevania II: Simon’s Quest
Egger Land	Famicom Disk System	The Adventures of Lolo (different levels)
Exciting Baseball	Famicom Disk System	Double Dribble
Famicom Golf - Japan Course	Famicom Disk System	Golf (different courses)
Famicom Golf - Japan Course Prize Card	Famicom Disk System	NES Open Tournament Golf
Famicom Golf - US Course	Famicom Disk System	Golf (different courses)
Famicom Golf - US Course Prize Card	Famicom Disk System	NES Open Tournament Golf
Gyruss	Famicom Disk System	Gyruss
Hao-kun no Fushigi na Tabi	Famicom Disk System	Mystery Quest
Hikari Shinwa: Parutena no Kagami	Famicom Disk System	Kid Icarus
Kaettekita Mario Bros.	Famicom Disk System	Mario Bros.
Link no Bouken: The Legend of Zelda 2	Famicom Disk System	Zelda II: The Adventure of Link
Metroid	Famicom Disk System	Metroid
Tobidase Daisakusen	Famicom Disk System	The 3-D Battles of the Worldrunner
Vs. Excitebike	Famicom Disk System	Excitebike
Zelda no Densetsu (Zelda)	Famicom Disk System	The Legend of Zelda (also Japan)
Family Trainer 3: Aerobics Studio	M50805	Dance Aerobics
Rolling Thunder	Namco 163	Rolling Thunder (Unlicensed Tengen Release)
Akumajou Densetsu	Konami VRC6	Castlevania III: Dracula’s Curse

New IBM CGA to Old IBM CGA Mod

There has been a revised interest in the IBM CGA card over the last few years.  I attribute this in no small part to demos like 8088 Domination and 8088MPH as well as interest in vintage PC computing in general.  IBM CGA cards are not particularly uncommon to find, but the New cards are much more common than the Old cards.

Varieties of IBM CGA

There are four known varieties of IBM CGA boards.  Here is a table with their features :

Board Number		# of Resistors		Bracket Type		Composite Output Type		Schematic Reference
18504464		7		Black Oversized		Oldest		IBM Personal Computer Hardware Reference Library Technical Reference, First Edition August 1981, D25-30
18504472		8		Black Oversized		Old		IBM Personal Computer Hardware Reference Library Technical Reference, Revised Edition April 1983, D46-51
1501486		12		Silver		Old		IBM Personal Computer XT Hardware Reference Library Technical Reference, Revised Edition April 1983, D36-41
1501982		15		Silver		New		IBM Personal Computer Hardware Reference Library Technical Reference Options and Adapters, Revised Edition April 1984, Color/Graphics Monitor Adapter 28-33

The oldest IBM CGA board has a lower amount of resistance from the transistor to the composite video output.  What this means for the video output is unknown, but I would suspect that it would be somewhat brighter than later cards.  Also, the schematic does not give resistor values for the other four resistors connected to the composite video circuit and I cannot make out the values with the photo of the board I have.

The differences between 18504472 and 1501486 are the addition of 30 Ohm resistors on the bottom row for resistors.  These only affect the RGBI output signals, and were probably added to improve compatibility with digital RGBI monitors.

The oldest cards came with black brackets.  These brackets are sized for the five expansion slots of the IBM PC.  The IBM PC/XT used eight expansion slots which were set closer together, so this black bracket will block the slot above it.

Old IBM CGA cards almost invariably use a green PCB color and New IBM CGA cards usually use a brown PCB color.

Old IBM CGA cards almost invariably use MC6845 CRTC chips, New IBM CGA cards use either the MC6845 or HD4650/HD6845 CRTC.  I was lucky to have chosen the New IBM CGA card that had the MC6845.  This allowed me to play the party version of 8088MPH correctly, which only shows correct colors on an Old IBM CGA card.  The final version of the 8088MPH shows appropriate colors on either an Old or New IBM CGA card with either CRTC chip.

Modding a New IBM CGA card to an Old IBM CGA card

Here are the steps I took to mod my new IBM CGA card to an old IBM CGA card :

1. Lift pin 4 from U24 (the pin broke completely off for me so I had to replace the IC)
2. Solder a wire between pin 4 of 24 to pin 4 of U65 (pin 4 of U65 does not need to be lifted)
3. Remove all resistors in the first three rows.
4. Replace the resistors in the first three rows (IBM's designations are hard to follow) with the following, all values in Ohms:

100       51   Empty
3300   13000    5600
Empty   2200   Empty   Empty

5. Solder a 33 Ohm resistor to the bottom contact of R4 and the top contact of Q1. (Because of the tight space, you may want to do this from the solder side).

6.  If you have a New IBM CGA card with a yellow patch wire as shown below, make sure you reconnect it and do not make a solder bridge. If left unconnected, the light pen port will not work.

Note in my picture, I had to use a 1000 and a 12000 ohm resistor in series to make a 13000 ohm resistor.

Could the process be reversed?  Undoubtedly it could with the appropriate schematic, (see the chart above) but because Old IBM CGA cards are much less common, it would almost certainly be easier to just get a New IBM CGA card and mod it.

Swaps and Loads: Famicom Disk System Games Least Appreciated Development

The Famicom Disk System always had loading times for its games.  In fact, the Legend of Zelda was released as a launch title and used both sides of the disk.  The game required the user to flip the disk at a certain point and would load new data at certain times.  Over time, the loads and swaps became more frequent.  When you consider the major advantages of the FDS, namely the sound channel and no need for passwords, consider the tradeoffs over their cartridge releases in the form of disk swaps and load times.  Whether running a game off real disks, an disk emulator like FDSLOADR or the FDSStick or a NES emulator (Nestopia probably has the best FDS sound emulation), you will have to face these inconveniences.  Below let me give some examples of games that were ported to the NES and their loading and swapping requirements.

Zelda no Densetsu - The Hyrule Fantasy
Yume Koujou! Doki Doki Panic

These titles are the easiest to deal with when it comes to swaps and loads.  Both require you to swap to side B at the title screen.  Zelda will load each Underworld dungeon level as you enter it and the Overworld when you exit.  DDP will load each time you start a new world (but not a new level) and the incomplete ending.    Zelda saves to side B, but DDP saves to side A, requiring a swap when you want to save your game.  DDP also requires a swap to side A when you want to see the real ending.

Metroid
Palutena no Kagami

Metroid and Palutena require you to swap to side B after you start a game.  Metroid will load each of the five areas as you go up or down the elevators.  It will require you to swap back to side A for the ending and for saving.  Because Metroid saves to both sides of the disk, the swap instances take upwards of a minute.

Palutena has short loads before and after every boss palace level.  When entering Medusa's level, 4-1, you will have to swap to side A.  There is a final load after you defeat Medusa.

Akumajou Dracula

In all versions of this game, there is a load before every level.  The last level where Dracula is the boss has a second load between stages 17 and 18.  However, different versions of this game handle their swaps at different points in the game.  The same saves to side A.

In v1.0 and v1.1 of the game, you will swap to side B when you start the second level.  You swap back to side A after you beat Dracula to view the ending.  In v1.2, you will swap to side B when you start the first level.  When you reach stage 18 in v1.2, you will swap back to side A.  I believe that Konami was trying to give more experienced players a break in v1.2 by not requiring them to swap when they try to beat Dracula for the umpteenth time.

Legend of Zelda 2 - Link no Bouken
Dracula II: Noroi no Fuuin

These games win the prize for the most loads of any that were ported to the NES.  While both require you to swap to side B to start a game, they have many more loads.  The Legend of Zelda 2 has a load for each entrance to and exit from the eight towns and seven palaces.  Also, there is a load when you cross a land boundary.  There are four land boundaries in the game: Western Hyrule, Spectacle Rock,  Eastern Hyrule and Maze Island.  Finally, you must swap the disk to enter the Great Palace (the last palace) and there is a load for the ending but the disk swap does not occur until the credits roll.  The game mercifully lets you continue at the Great Palace if you lose all your lives (but not at previous Palaces), so you don't have to swap the disks again until you play a game from the main menu.

Similarly, Dracula II: Noroi no Fuuin has a load for every time you enter or exit one of the seven towns or the screen with one of the five Mansion entrances.  Even when you just want to walk on past the Mansion entrance, it is annoying because you have to put up with two loads!  If you get knocked back from a screen, you have to suffer through two loads.  If that was not bad enough, in the last half of the game there are frequent loads and swaps.  To give you an exact description of the loads and swaps, here is a plan of the last part of the game and the areas you must visit to complete the game in an efficient manner :

Town of Ondol - > Deborah Cliff - > Bodley Mansion - > Uta Lower Road 1 & 2 - > Debious Woods - > Joma Marsh 1 - > Laruba Mansion -> Joma Marsh 1 -> Debious Woods -> Uta Lower Road 1 & 2 -> Bodley Mansion -> Wicked Ditch -> Town of Doina -> North Bridge -> Dora Woods -> Town of Yomi -> Vrad Graveyard -> West Bridge -> Castlevania -> Ending -> Title Screen

 -> Loading
 -> Loading and Swap to Side A
 -> Loading and Swap to Side B

Before this sequence, you had only one swap to side B when you started a game.  There are nine loads and five disk swaps in a somewhat short period of the game map!  No wonder why even Japanese gamers appear to rate this game substantially lower than its predecessor or its sequel!

The Ethics of the Reproduction Cartridge

Reproduction cartridges are, in many cases, illegal.  They constitute a copyright violation because they contain an unauthorized copy or derivative work and often can constitute trademark infringement.  For many people, that would be the end of the discussion regarding the ethics of making unauthorized reproduction cartridges.

When ROMs are available for download at no cost and hacks and translations are simply available in freely-available software patches, usually it is not for profit and therefore less of a morally challenging issue.  But when you put this software into a cartridge and sell it, things start to weigh into the immoral area of the morality scale.  Even in this illegal world, there degrees of ethics and moral compromises when selling reproduction cartridges.

Not every reproduction is illegal.  For example, Beggar Prince was originally released in Taiwan in the 1990s, but Super Fighter Team secured the rights to it from C&E, translated it, fixed many (but not all) of the bugs and released it on a Genesis cartridge in 2006 and off and on ever since.  You can buy Beggar Prince and other cartridges from Super Fighter Team secure in the knowledge that you are buying an authorized product.  Similarly, Piko Interactive secures permission to release unreleased SNES games with the permission of the rights owners.  However, the guy who runs Piko Interactive used to have a separate label called RetroQuest which sold reproductions without authorization.

Here are some categories of games where the moral issues of reproduction cartridges become increasingly difficult :

1.  Pirates

Games like Somari and Final Fantasy VII for the Famicom go in this category.  In this case, the reproducer is a thief stealing from a thief.  The Taiwanese and Chinese pirate outfits who programmed these games use graphics and sound and often code taken directly from the games whose success they are trying to cash in on.  Final Fantasy VII for the Famicom also liberally helps itself to graphics from the Famicom Final Fantasies.  However, there is usually some original content here.  Does whatever original content lose all moral rights to protection because it is coupled with stolen content and sold with the intention of profiting off the creativity of others?  If someone made a reproduction of Leisure Suit Larry and the Long Look for a Luscious Lover, it would also fall into this category.

2.  Prototypes

Time Diver: Eon Man, the prototype versions of Maniac Mansion and the English translation of Final Fantasy II, and Star Fox 2 fall into this category.

In this case, the original cartridges were usually supposed to be destroyed or returned to the publisher or developer.  Other times, they were simply abandoned as trash when a company went out of business.  In the first sense, the person who buys a prototype may really be buying stolen property.  There is assumption that a 35mm print of a feature film in a private collection has a questionable chain of title. In the second, there are complicated questions of whether something was truly abandoned or whether the copyrights remain for the artistic elements or because of a finished game.  However, video game companies usually had atrocious storage abilities, so the first scenario may very well become the second scenario if someone did not rescue it.

Especially in the case of prototypes which never saw an actual release, there is an important concern in preserving these games and distributing them far and wide.  Star Fox 2 and Earthbound Beginnings are important examples of prototypes that should have been released then and provide a lot of enjoyment since.  Unfortunately, copyright law will protect this software for as long as it would officially published software, so if it is not distributed, it could be lost.

In Earthbound Beginnings' case, Nintendo has recently made it available on the Wii U Virtual Console.  This is unfortunately only one example of a prototype receiving official exploitation.  [Update : in 2017 Nintendo made the final, never-leaked version of Star Fox 2 available for the SNES Classic Mini, finally giving fans of the beta version and a franchise a legitimate way to play the game.]

3.  Contest & Limited Time-Availability Games

I include Nintendo World Championships 1990 and its successors in this list.  These games typically used unique hardware on their PCBs, making them unplayable as intended with ordinary hardware.  Also, one should consider the Sega Genesis Sega Channel Games and the SNES BS Satellaview games as also falling into this category.  The Nintendo Campus Challenges, 1991 (NES) and 1992 (SNES), and Nintendo PowerFest '94 cartridges also fall into this category.  They were never released to the public but were playable by the public for a period of time, often short

Nintendo World Championships 1990 gray cartridges were given to competition finalists and could be won as gold cartridges in a Nintendo Power competition, but Super Star Fox Weekend (Official Competition) and Donkey Kong Country Competition Cartridge were offered for sale in Nintendo Power.  Their print runs were low so they command high prices.  I actually did purchase a  Super Star Fox Weekend cartridge from Nintendo Power and regret the day I let it go.

4.  Hacks & Translations

Hacked games like Zelda Outlands and Super Mario Bros. 3 Mix fall into this category.  In this case, the reproducer is rarely reproducing his own work.  In this case, the reproducer is profiting off the hard work of not only the original developer but the hacker, who released his hack to the public gratis.

Porting a Famicom game to the NES often involves applying a translation patch.  Popular titles include Lagrange Point, Splatterhouse: Wanpaku Graffiti, Final Fantasy II & III and Sweet Home.  SNES games include large RPGs like Tales of Phantasia and Star Ocean.  Not only do these games need to fit hardware, most have to be translated as well.

Japanese Famicom games are playable with a pin converter and a minor modification for those games with expansion audio.  Japanese Super Famicom and N64 games are playable either by putting them in a SNES shell or breaking off a pair of tabs inside the SNES or N64.  Sega systems require a pin converter (Master System) or a trivial mod (Genesis).

Virtually no reproduction outfit produces their own translations, they use the typical translations available at romhacking.net.  (Super Fighter Team is a notable exception) Here is another ethical issue, not only is the reproducer profiting off the original game but the translator's efforts.

5.  Extremely Rare Release

This is when you make a reproduction of rare games like Little Sampson or The Flinstones: Rescue of Dino and Hoppy.  Collectors often react with scorn for these reproductions, even when the seller clearly states that it is a reproduction cartridge.  Many rare games use common boards and can be converted with little more than an EPROM programmer and a soldering iron.  Considering the high prices that sellers tend to charge for these, it is much cheaper to buy a NES PowerPak or Everdrive N8 and play these games with a multi-cart.  Collector-oriented sites like NintendoAge and AtariAge have no compunction about allowing forum members to sell cartridges falling into ##1-4 but get into a real hypocritical frenzy when it comes to #5.

I am aware of video game completionists who have to have every game on their shelf.  They may buy a reproduction to fill a hole, but while may satisfy their OCD-need to fill a hole, the reproduction will never legitimately acquire value anywhere near the real cartridge.

Consider Stadium Events, by far the most pricey of any licensed NES cartridge.  It is estimated that only 1,000 survived the recall when Nintendo took over the distribution of the Power Pad from Bandai.  Nintendo subsequently re-released it as World Class Track Meet, both individually and as a multi-cart with Super Mario Bros. and Duck Hunt.  WCTM in both releases is very common and has only cosmetic differences with Stadium Events.  There is no legitimate reason to make a reproduction of this game when the gameplay is so readily accessible.

Piko Interactive made a reproduction of Super Noah's Ark 3D for the SNES, but it obtained the permission of Wisdom Tree to release it.  Its reproduction uses a standard SNES shell instead of the unique one the original release used.  It also does not require an official cartridge to be plugged-in to a passthrough connector to bypass the lockout chip, unlike the original from the 1990s.  Clones of the SNES lockout chip exist which will allow the game to work with regular consoles.