Shoving extra chips for bank switching, co processors, and license protection bypasses had been in play since the Atari days (although 2600 had no lock out/cic chips.) NES did though.
My personal favorite was the hack on some NES carts that would use a "stun gun" approach to the 10NES lockout chip for loading unlicensed carts onto the console. They'd literally charge up a capacitor to spike a shock to the chip to "stun" it long enough to boot the rom. Classic stuff.
They were a big step up from the original nintendo cartridges we blew in and wiped with alcohol to keep Tyson winking, but I went the Sega route as Genesis was a better system at the time, but that of course is debatable. Happy people still are interested in the archaic gaming systems.
On the S-RTC, it was used in that specific game to control time ruin events. When you start the game you're asked to input date and time, and from there the game tracks time to enable certain events.
Shoving extra chips for bank switching, co processors, and license protection bypasses had been in play since the Atari days (although 2600 had no lock out/cic chips.) NES did though.
My personal favorite was the hack on some NES carts that would use a "stun gun" approach to the 10NES lockout chip for loading unlicensed carts onto the console. They'd literally charge up a capacitor to spike a shock to the chip to "stun" it long enough to boot the rom. Classic stuff.
They were a big step up from the original nintendo cartridges we blew in and wiped with alcohol to keep Tyson winking, but I went the Sega route as Genesis was a better system at the time, but that of course is debatable. Happy people still are interested in the archaic gaming systems.
The softer curved design of the PAL versions of these cartridges casings always appealed to me more than the chunky ones sold in the US.
I never understood why they were different though.
On the S-RTC, it was used in that specific game to control time ruin events. When you start the game you're asked to input date and time, and from there the game tracks time to enable certain events.
(2024)
Some discussion then: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=40111274
Thank you, really interesting post!
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