How many games on a cartridge

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Mobsie
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How many games on a cartridge

Post by Mobsie » Fri Nov 22, 2013 10:20 am

What you prefer?
For every new game ONE cartridge?
What about a solution like Xonox did back on the Atari 2600?
XonoxDouble.jpg
Is with 2 games in one cartridge.
More the two games i personely don`t like because here we don`t have space for a nice label and package with information about each game.
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MADrigal
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Re: How many games on a cartridge

Post by MADrigal » Fri Nov 22, 2013 4:31 pm

I suppose it's 2 EPROMs in a single plastic shell.

Or maybe it's a double-capacity EPROM with specific lines layout on the PCB (line on one side enables lower EPROM memory, and line on other side enables higher EPROM memory).
RayXambeR
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Re: How many games on a cartridge

Post by RayXambeR » Sun Nov 24, 2013 9:26 am

Could be great to have more than one game on the same cart. As I am of course a collector I am first a player and, as we can see on Colecovision, it becomes impossible to buy each game on single cartridge. So, I prefer more than one game.
But I consider the fact of the label for more than two games. So, perhaps two games could be the best solution! Perhaps you can consider a label for the best game (the huge one?) and a mention "contains also xxxxx game"?
Or, is the game has a complete packaging you can consider two artworks for the two sides of the box! and a label for the cartridge like Xonox.
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carlsson
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Re: How many games on a cartridge

Post by carlsson » Mon Nov 25, 2013 9:19 am

I think it depends on the size of every game. For example my Reversi game is in the 4K range even with music routines, which I would think is a waste of PCB, plastic case and cardboard to release on its own. In that case, my idea was to develop 3-4 small games, about 4K each and have a selection menu to let you choose between e.g. Reversi, Tetris, Bejeweled and what else I'd fit in there.

Of course for larger projects, one game per cartridge would make sense. Another variant would be to bloat the game with graphics screens, music, visual effects etc so it takes relatively much space but I would think that is cheating the customer.

For that matter, Xonox made double-enders for the VIC-20 and I believe C64 too. I think that mostly was a novelty, and in modern terms you'd rather have a larger EPROM and perhaps DIP switches instead of making it a double ender.
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