By: Gareth Hall
By now, most people should have heard that the Next Generation Nintendo Console (I'll call it the N128 from now on) will use DVDs as its storage medium. Just in case you don't know, DVDs are essentially fancy CDs which can hold around five or six times as much information. This move is probably against Nintendo's wishes, but carts, their format of choice, have been having a bad time recently. This, then, seems as good a time as any to have a retrospective on Nintendo's (mostly) prestigious involvement with the cartridge.
Nintendo's 'love affair' with the cart began with the NES, although this wasn't the first home console to use them (that accolade probably goes to Atari's VCS - correct me if I'm wrong). This was back in the 8-bit days when home computers used to load games from cassette tapes. Anyone who owned a C64, Spectrum or the like will recall the aeons spent waiting for a game to load, if it did at all. There wasn't much that could be done about this - cassettes could only hold a relatively small amount of information and there was no foolproof way of speeding them up. Their unreliability was also a problem. This, coupled with the aforementioned speed problem, meant that cassettes would be useless as a 'pick-up-and-play' medium, the like of which Nintendo was after.
The cartridge, in comparison, seemed a natural choice. It was rugged, and the basic principle of carts - that of ROM chips on a circuit board inserted into the main machine with the processing hardware - allows for lightning fast access speeds, often seemingly instantaneous. Back then as well, cartridges also seemed to hold more information. This was because, given the slow speed of tape loading, computer programmers often tried to squeeze the game into a single load - usually a maximum of 48 or 64 kilobytes. By contrast, carts could be continually accessed with only the slightest of pauses. Games didn't have to run in a single load (which was lucky, given the minuscule amount of RAM the NES had on board), and so could be larger without inconveniencing the player with huge loading times.
Of course, the disadvantage of the cartridge then, as now, was cost. Carts had a high manufacturing price which was filtered down, naturally, to the consumer. So, whilst home computer games typically cost a maximum of £10, carts usually ended up around the £30 price range. It seemed like a fortune, especially when you considered the computer budget games could be picked up for as little as £1.99 (although the difference in quality was usually relative to the price). Eventually, though, we all grew accustomed to it, even if we didn't like it very much.
For Nintendo, though, the cartridge was a dream format. Not only did it have all the inherent advantages laid out above, but because the company insisted on manufacturing the carts themselves, it could force third parties to pay them a fee for each one made. Furthermore, special security chips were placed inside the carts (as well as the NES itself) as a measure to prevent illegally manufactured games (although the system proved not to be foolproof). In a similar vein, the bods at Nintendo also discovered that chips could be implanted into the cartridges to actually enhance the power of the NES. Without these, games such as Super Mario Bros. 3 would simply not have been possible.
Naturally, Nintendo stuck with carts for its SNES. The 16-bit home computers of the time (such as the Amiga and the Atari ST) used floppy disks which, whilst unquestionably faster than tapes, still weren't exactly speedy. Learning from its NES experience, Nintendo used 'special' chips in SNES cartridge to boost the base machine's power. Perhaps the most famous of these was the SuperFX chip, which enhanced the machine's 3D abilities. The resulting games, such as StarFox and Stunt Race FX, gave players a tantalising glimpse of the next generation of gaming.
However, during the life of the SNES, a new format raised its head. The CD had been in use for storing music ever since the early Eighties, but had only become a format for holding computer data at the beginning of the Nineties. The CD's potential was enormous: low manufacturing costs, massive storage space and high quality digital sound. Seeing this, Nintendo entered into a partnership with Sony to create a CD drive add-on for the SNES. The project was eventually cancelled by Nintendo, perhaps after they had seen the mess Sega had got themselves into with the ill-fated MegaCD. However, Sony would use what it had learnt during the partnership to build possibly the greatest threat to Nintendo thus far: the PlayStation.
CD-based, possessing great graphics (for the time) and driven by the same marketing machine that had propelled the Walkman to worldwide success, the PlayStation was set to redefine the games industry. Nintendo answered Sony's challenge with the N64. Technically superior, the N64 had the better graphics and the greater processing power of the two. Its Achilles' heel (well, the main one), though, was its use of carts as a storage medium. Nintendo were loath to let go of the profit margins offered by the format, and they also claimed that they would be able to use 'special' chips again to enhance the games - although after three years none leap straight to mind. Carts still had speed on their side, but publishers were put off by the high cost of manufacturing, and the storage size suddenly seemed tiny: the biggest N64 game thus far is 64 megabytes big, compared to a standard 650 megabytes on a CD. This size difference also prohibited companies from using FMV, which had become the norm on the PlayStation, and was one of the main reasons why Square jumped ships to Sony, taking their massive Final Fantasy series with them - a great loss to the N64.
Nintendo's decision to go with DVDs for the N128 is in direct response to third-party complaints regarding the constraints of cartridges. DVDs will help the N128 battle on equal ground with PlayStation 2. But, even so, it's sad to say goodbye to the cartridge. Wouldn't you prefer to smack a cart into its slot and then rip it out again after play, rather than carefully place and remove discs from a drive? Carts have played host to some of the world's greatest games of all time, many of which wouldn't have worked on another medium (Super Mario 64 and Zelda: Ocarina of Time being prime examples). Of course, the Game Boy and its successor with still use them, but for the 'big' home consoles, the cartridge's days are numbered. Goodbye, old friend. Sniff.
