Multicarts

Multicarts are usually a single game cartridge that has more than one game on it. Since they are very easy to make, a lot of them are made by various pirate companies. They are most commonly found for the NES/Famicom, but they have been produced for many popular cartridge-based consoles, including the Atari 2600, Game Boy, Game Boy Advance, Mega Drive/Genesis, Nintendo DS etc. Almost all multicarts released on the NES/Famicom are unlicensed.

Basics

A pirated multicart. The amount of games is exaggerated, as approximately half are repeats and Pokémon never officially had any NES/Famicom games; said game is the pirate platformer Pocket Monster. The art for Robocco Wars (here spelt "Aobocco Wars") is completely unrelated to the game it represents.

General

• A whole bunch of pictures crammed onto the cartridge's art. Sometimes the pictures are from a more recent game (or possibly an unrelated film), or the official art has been edited.
• Misspellings of the game names on the cartridge and/or menu.
• A list on the back of the cart listing the game names, sometimes in Chinese.
• Many multicarts have an unusually high number like 200-in-1, 777-in-1, or even 99999999-in-1.
• Most of them use a menu system, although multicarts containing 4 games or less are sometimes reset based.
• The cartridge itself sometimes has a list of games on it, usually on the back for those claiming to have a large amount of games.
• The carts typically don't hold up their promise, meaning the last few games could be duplicates of the originals.
• Most of the time, the lower the number of games listed, the better the cart is. Lower ones like 4-in-1 usually contain a rare game or a game made or published by the company that made it.

Famicom/NES only

• The copyright notices are usually removed from the games. With 1st generation games, the logo is sometimes removed as well.
• When larger games are included, these are usually MMC3 games or games converted to that format.
• Tengen Tetris, TwinBee, and Arkanoid are typically 40KB instead of 48KB like they should be, causing graphical glitches in the latter two. In the case of Tetris, the title screen is removed. 40KB versions of BPS Tetris and Hokuto no Ken exist as well, although the originals are more common.
• DIP switches that can "alter" the amount of games on it, although the extra games are usually repeats.
• A few recent multicarts for the Famicom are designed to work on the OneBus architecture, allowing for more games than usual. (The largest known size being 16MB) These are usually built into Famiclones, but sometimes made as stand-alone cartridges; these carts do not work on non-OneBus Famiclones. VT03 cartridges work on VT02 clones but games that use the VT03's extra features either will not start or run with corrupted graphics.

Other Systems

• On multicarts for all systems other than the NES/Famicom, the games usually retain the copyright. Known exceptions include some older Mega Drive multicarts.
• SNES multicarts usually contain about 7 games without repeats.
• Mega Drive multicarts are similar to those for the SNES, except some of them contain repeats.
• Some larger Game Boy multicarts are twice as tall as standard carts to accommodate the extra games.
• Some Game Boy multicarts don't have a boot-up menu at all, and instead, employ a physical button on the cartridge itself which resets the system and cycles to the next one on the cartridge.
• Game Boy Color multicarts have backwards compatability for the Game Boy. However, GBC games that don't work on a Game Boy are exempt from this.
• Game Gear multicarts sometimes have either a small number of games made for it or Sega SG-1000 ports.
• With bootleg GBA multicarts, most (if not all) of the games included are for the Famicom/NES. These kind of multicarts were created with PocketNES, a free NES emulator for the GBA.
• GBA multicarts often list most of the games in alphabetical order, apart from games beginning with one or two certain letters which appear earlier in the list.
• With GBA and recent Famicom multicarts, there are normally several larger Famicom/NES titles included among the frequently included games.
• Nintendo DS multicarts typically include DS games exclusively and many of these contain at least 250 different games.

Common Games

Famicom/NES and Game Boy Advance

• Super Mario Bros. (probably the most common, and many have slight variations such as using graphics from the Japanese Super Mario Bros. 2, a different logo, or hacked to make something like Pandamar)
• Contra (usually the NES version)
• Dr. Mario
• Duck Hunt/Wild Gunman/Hogan's Alley (the different modes are sometimes seperated on the menu. These are usually excluded from GBA multicarts due to the lack of light gun support)
• Battle City (sometimes appears as Tank 1990, a pirated hack of it)
• Pac-Man
• Donkey Kong trilogy (Donkey Kong 3 is normally called "Gorilla 3")
• Galaxian
• Popeye (should not be confused with Popeye II)
• Star Force
• Tetris (most commonly Tengen's, but BPS' version appears as well with Tengen's typically referred to as Tetris 2 if both are present together; Nintendo's version is rarely, if ever, seen)
• Many other first-generation Famicom games which are 40KB or less.

Game Boy (Color)

• Alleyway
• Tetris
• Super Mario Land (sometimes using the Super Pika! Land hack)
• Battle City
• Super Mario 4
• Many other first-generation Game Boy games
• Bootleg translations of Pokémon games (Game Boy Color only)
• Bootleg games

Mega Drive/Genesis

• Sonic the Hedgehog
• Sunset Riders
• Rambo III
• Flicky
• Ms. Pac-Man
• Shove It!
• Tetris
• Many other games which are 512KB or less

Super Famicom/SNES

• Super Mario World
• Tom & Jerry
• Sonic the Hedgehog (hack of Speedy Gonzales: Los Gatos Bandidos)
• F-Zero
• Top Gear

Notable Carts

10000000-in-1 Multicart Menu, notable for its rendition of "Unchained Melody".

• 45-in-1 - by JY Company, this is the only cart known to have the full version of the Famicom Super Mario World. As well as this, many JY and Ka Sheng multicarts in general usually contain a small number of Famicom games about 256KB in size and/or at least one pirated game, usually by Hummer Team.
• 260-in-1 - made by Goldengame. Includes many of Hwang Shinwei's games, many of which aren't known to have been released on their own.
• Action 52 - known for its original games but also infamous for the poor quality of them. The menu is ripped from the Supervision 52-in-1 and modified somewhat.
• Super Game's multicarts usually contain at least one pirated port of a game such as Earthworm Jim 2. This was probably done to include more space on the cart for the game. (They usually include a few more games to fill up the rest of the cart.)
• Maxi 15 - unlicensed NES games made by various game companies such as Color Dreams, Sachen, and American Video Entertainment. Distributed in North America and Australia by AVE and HES respectively. An updated version replaces the Sachen titles.
• Caltron 6-in-1 - includes six games made by NTDEC. Also sold as Myriad 6-in-1.
• The bundle 9999999-in-1 multicarts that usually had Unchained Melody (original track performed by The Righteous Brothers, has a beach shown in the background picture with seagulls flying around) or Can You Feel The Love Tonight (originally performed by Elton John, had Super Lion King's graphics used as a base, but the music seems to be covered from scratch) as the background music. The first type is known to exist in several variations, including the undumped ones, like the one bundled with Haili LM-888 (neither animations nor music are present, includes four unique games).