unlike today's game consoles mostly use optical discs or small cartridges as storage media. Early game cartridges could provide additional computing power or functions by inserting special chips, allowing games to break through the host's hardware capabilities and bring better sound and light performance, even vibration, dynamic sensing and other functions, adding points to the gaming experience.
plugs the enhancement chip into the cartridge
Take , commonly known as red and white machines, as an example. Nintendo has launched the MMC (Memory Mnagement Controllers) series enhancement chips. Its main function is to provide additional memory control capabilities or channel switching (Bank Switch) and other functions, allowing game programs to access more memory and improve program and image performance capabilities. Some MMC chips also have additional memory built-in or provide additional audio source channels to improve sound performance.
Konami has also launched an enhanced chip called VRC (Virtual Rom Controller). The most famous one is the VRC6 chip equipped with the legendary Castlevania. It not only provides channel switching functions for program codes and image memory, but also provides 2 sets of rectangular waves and 1 set of sawtooth wave sources. In contrast, the American version of the game uses MMC5 chips, and due to the difference in the sound source processing capabilities, the background music between each other is different.
By the time of Super Famicom, Nintendo also launched the Super FX chip with stronger performance. It is actually a RISC processor. It can not only be used to process special effects such as amplification and rotation of 2D images, but also be used to draw 3D game pictures. For example, Star Wars Firefox uses Super FX chips to perform 3D computing and depict game pictures through multilateral forms, bringing a stereoscopic visual effect beyond the original performance of the host.
As for the SEGA camp, one of the most representative enhancement chips is the SVP (Sega Virtua Processor) dedicated to Mega Drive games. It can provide 9,000 multilateral drawing capabilities per second, which is 12 times that of Mega Drive host. With the assistance of SVP, VR racing was able to be ported from large video games to Mega Drive. Although the screen performance is still far from that of large video games, it has already made many players very excited to be able to play at home. But unfortunately, the cost of SVP is too high, so it is only equipped with the VR racing game (priced up to US$100 in North America). In the future, VR Kuaishou, Daytona USA and other games that were originally expected to use SVP chips were directly launched on the Saturn platform.
▲On the circuit board of the Legend of the Castlevania card, the one marked as VRC VI chip at the bottom is VRC6. (Picture source: Wikipedia, this picture is marked with creative CC name - shared in the same way, the author is Yaca2671)
▲ Star Wars Firefox, with the assistance of FX chip, can draw 3D game pictures with the help of FX chips. This level of 3D effect was enough to shock players at that time.
▲VR racing car is on the back of the packaging, and it is particularly mentioned that the SVP chip can provide 9,000 polygonal types per second drawing performance.
▲ Due to the SVP chip, the size of the VR racing cassette is larger than that of ordinary games.
▲VR racing scene is the same as Star Wars Firefox, and the main objects are composed of multilateral types.
adds more interactive
The game card can move hands and feet, in addition to adding special chips, for example, Game Boy Color's Pokémon Pinball Platform, a vibrating mechanism is installed in the card card, and it will vibrate when the marbles collide, making the console feel like it becomes a vibrating handle, adding the stimulation of the game.
During the Game Boy Advance period, there were also many special card boxes worth seeing. Our sun is a work that cleverly combines light sensors. Players need to let the card boxes shine in the sun during the game to replenish energy for the weapons in the game. The rotating Leo Workshop adds dynamic sensors to the card box, so the game operations are achieved by directly rotating the host, which is a very creative small game collection.
Another interesting example is the Nintendo DS brick-making. Since the host can support Nintendo DS and Game Boy Advance cassettes, you not only need to insert the game cassette into the Nintendo DS cassette slot when playing, but also need to insert the exclusive controller into the Game Boy Advance cassette slot. In this way, you can operate the game with the knob on the controller, making the game experience closer to the original large-scale video game version.
The current game console performance is already quite powerful, and the controller functions are also very complete. Although players can easily enjoy high-standard gaming experience, there are no such strange game cartridges and peripherals, which makes the chat topics during the game less fun.
▲There is a vibration mechanism in the pokemon pinball cassette, which provides power through a No. 4 battery during operation.
▲The protruding part of the rotating bad Leo Workshop cassette is the dynamic sensor, which is similar to the somatosensory control of Wii.
▲Nintendo DS brick-making supports unique shape exclusive controllers.
▲Players can operate the game through the knob, which is the same as the original large-scale video game version.
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