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.

The Basics of an Average Multicart

An example of a pirated multicart. The amount of games is exaggerated - approximately half of the games are repeats - and Pokémon never officially had any NES/Famicom games; the Pokémon game included is the pirate platform game "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.
• 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 are 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 notice and sometimes title screen are usually removed from the games.
• When larger games are included, these are usually MMC3 games or converted to that format.
• Tengen Tetris, TwinBee and Arkanoid are typically 40KB big instead of 48KB like they should be, causing graphical glitches in the latter two. In Tetris' case the title screen is removed. A 40KB version of BPS Tetris exists as well, although the original version is much 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.
• 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.
• Larger Game Boy multicarts were twice as tall as standard carts to accommodate the extra games.
• Game Boy Color multicarts have backwards compatability for the Game Boy.
• 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.
• 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 Found on Multicarts

Famicom/NES and Game Boy Advance

• Super Mario Bros. (This is on many multicarts, many of which have slight variations like using Super Mario Bros. 2's (Japan version) graphics, a different logo or hacked to make something like Pandamar)
• Duck Hunt/Wild Gunman/Hogan's Alley (The seperate modes from these games are sometimes seperated on the menu)
• 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 version, but BPS's version appears too. If bundled together, Tengen's version is typically referred to as Tetris 2. Nintendo's version is rarely, if ever seen)
• Many other 1st-gen Famicom games which are 40KB or less

Game Boy/Game Boy Color

• Alleyway
• Tetris
• Super Mario Land (Sometimes hacked as Super Pikachu Land)
• Battle City
• Many other 1st-gen Game Boy games
• Bootleg translations of Pokémon games (Game Boy Color only)
• Pirated games

Mega Drive/Genesis

• Sonic the Hedgehog
• Sunset Riders
• Rambo III
• Flicky
• Ms. Pac-Man
• Shove It!
• Tetris
• Many other games which are 256KB or less

Super Famicom/SNES

• Super Mario World
• Tom & Jerry
• Sonic the Hedgehog (Speedy Gonzales: Los Gatos Bandidos hack)
• 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 port of Super Mario World. As well as this, many JY Company & 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 - Includes 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 - A multicart which includes 6 different 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 that was bundled with Haili LM-888 (neither animations nor music are present, includes four unique games).