NGPC Multicarts: What's the story on these?

So, I know of the existence of 4 different NGPC multicarts: 12-in-1, 9-in-1, 5-in-1, and 4-in-1. What's the story on these? What games are on the 5 and 4? Obviously they are some sort of HK product, but does anyone have more info? (Or any for s/t?)

Pirated carts. They are larger than normal carts so they stick out of your Neo Geo Pocket. I don't remember what were all the games on them, but there must be something wrong with some of those carts because the 12 in 1 has both Metal Slug 2nd Mission and SNK vs. Capcom on it, and these were both 32 Meg carts so something must have been done to cut the corners in order to fit them on a cartridge along with 10 other games.

Yeah, I always wondered about the size (memory size) on those. They are rather big (bulky) carts too, but worth it for the amount of games on one cart...

Which ones are the most difficult to find?

Flavor might have some information on the multicarts.

They could fit all the games they needed if they had enough ram on the cart. That makes them expensive though.

D-Lite:
Yeah, I always wondered about the size (memory size) on those. They are rather big (bulky) carts too, but worth it for the amount of games on one cart...

Which ones are the most difficult to find?

Click to expand...

How about data compression ??

PEACE

Comic-Kaze:
Flavor might have some information on the multicarts.

Click to expand...

I don't have one, but I know someone that does and they did some work on it.

As far as I can tell, it's somewhat similar to how the GameBoy Color writeable Bung carts work.

All the ROMs are right on the cart, and I think they're uncompressed. That's why they stick out of the NGPC so far. They need a longer cart to fit in the extra memory.

The makers of the cart wrote a menu program that lets you select a game, and that is what loads first when you turn it on. Then, when you select one of the games, the cart remaps its 0 offset to something else. Here's a quick example of what it could look like.

0x000000-0x0000FF Menu
0x000100-0x2000FF Game1
0x200100-0x4000FF Game2

So, when you turn it on, Menu boots. Then, if you select Game2, then the cart remaps some stuff and just adds 0x200100 to every address you request from now on. So, to the NGPC, the cart looks like Game2 is inserted.

It's the same way that the GBC flash carts work, and the same way the GBA carts work. Unfortunately, when they made the NGPC flash carts, they didn't include this type of functionality. That's why I wrote the NGPC Multi-ROM Menu. It seems very silly to use an entire 32M flash cart for a single tiny little freeware demo. Now, I think you can put every demo available on a single 16M cart. Though, I haven't tried lately. frown

<small>[ March 11, 2003, 08:51 AM: Message edited by: Flavor ]</small>

Does anyone know the list of games on the 4-in-1 and the 5-in-1? I know Gals Fighters is on one of them

ckchan still might have some for sale