Entire NES stuffed into its cartridge kinda makes you cry

nes_on_cartridge.jpg

This amazing mod crams an entire Nintendo Entertainment System from the 80s into one of it's cartridges complete with power and reset buttons, controller ports and composite video and audio output jacks. This is equivalent to the gaming version of the "clown car" where there is so much stuffed into such a small physical area that it's pretty hard to understand how this could work.

via Technabob


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Comments

Oldest comments listed first.

Posted by: davidbessler on November 21, 2008 at 4:36 AM

Makes me cry thinking about an entire generation of kids who not only wasted their adolesence getting blisters on their thumbs, but also wasted what must be millions of pounds of plastic and metal when those could have been made so much smaller. We have solved for x and found that we are the waste generation.


Posted by: Rachel on November 21, 2008 at 6:03 AM

Awesome

So can we buy this somewhere? This is awesome. I still have my original NES and all the games. Plastic waster or not, its my fave of all time. What makes me cry is that davidbessler is actually upset about this; You can't ask from the 80's what the technology from 2008 took to make. That game was amazing for 1985 or whenever. And yeah, it would be smaller now. But that's what progression and development are all about. Get over it.


Posted by: spayced on November 21, 2008 at 6:55 AM

big boss

Hard to understand how it could work? The first time I cracked open a NES system the first thing that struck me was how much empty space it had. Would take no engineering at all to make it 1/3 the size. Why did they make it so huge?


Posted by: elle on November 21, 2008 at 7:07 AM

Re: big boss

Much of the bulk was to accommodate the front-loading cartridge, part of the effort to present the NES as a different product from the older consoles that preceded the crash. The front-loading slot was suppose to evoke a VCR, something that belonged in an entertainment center, instead of being strewn on the floor like some common Atari.

Remember, the NES is the same hardware as the top-loading Famicom, which is much smaller and closer to its technological predecessors. The entire reason behind the bulky design (and the faulty ZIF slot, and the extra RCA ports) was for marketing purposes.

Nintendo refreshed the design in the West with the NES 2, which was half Famicom and half SNES in design. But the hardware was nearly the same - they only removed the lockout timing chip and changed back to a top-loader.


Posted by: nesmass on November 21, 2008 at 12:17 PM

someone needs to find out what would happen if you plug one of these into another one of these..


Posted by: Anon on November 23, 2008 at 5:15 PM

yo nesmass

I put a nes on your nes so you can nes while you nes


Posted by: Jamin on November 23, 2008 at 7:02 PM

Where's the flip lid that you blow in, and how do you push the tray up and down repeatedly to make your games work?


Posted by: ryan on November 23, 2008 at 7:27 PM

sweet jesus. . . i envy the person who owns that


Posted by: Know it all on November 23, 2008 at 9:18 PM

Does anyone actually read the source material?

If you would actually look at the article again, you will see a line at the bottom that says "Via Technabob". That is a link. If you click on it, you will see the modder didn't stuff the guts of an original NES into the cart, he used a Nintendo-on-a-chip cheap Chinese knock-off. It's essentially an emulator crammed onto a single chip.

And, DavidBessler, the technology wasn't available 23 years ago when the NES was originally available.

As far as wasting resources.. go recycle your Macbook.


Posted by: waste and progress on November 24, 2008 at 7:49 AM

Of course it only looks like waste because we've progressed...I'm sure you think that a 'modern' computer uses "exactly" the "right" amount of stuff, and that a PS3 or even a Wii isn't "wasteful" because you "can't" make it smaller.

You have strange reasoning my friend.

And as for making you cry, you do realize an iPhone has about 1,000x more power than an NES, and yet it is smaller still?

"This is equivalent to the gaming version of the "clown car" where there is so much stuffed into such a small physical area that it's pretty hard to understand how this could work."

No. A PSP or GB DS can be described this way much more accurately, as again, more "stuffed" in, smaller package.

Cool mod, though, nonetheless. If only because you can still play NES games on it--and where else can you do that?


Posted by: Aeth on November 24, 2008 at 1:28 PM

Oddity

The controller ports look like Sega ports, not NES.


Posted by: DaVince on April 9, 2009 at 5:09 AM

Sega port?

Not a Sega port, but just a really standard 9-pin controller port. Sega, Atari, Commodore and even the PC used those connections for quite a while.


Posted by: Phonz on November 24, 2008 at 2:48 PM

Composite?

oooh Composite RCA video on an NES :P sweeeeet!
*kicks his RF tuner out the door*


Posted by: Abyss on November 24, 2008 at 4:07 PM

It makes me laugh. The original NES or SNES were kind bulky and square, but now, that WHOLE system is put in the object holding the memory of a game for the system...so...you would a cartridge, in a cartridge...


Posted by: fratboy1905 on November 24, 2008 at 10:29 PM

i want one


Posted by: Droo on November 25, 2008 at 1:38 PM

Contra

"oooh Composite RCA video on an NES :P sweeeeet!
*kicks his RF tuner out the door*"

The original console had RCA Audio/Video but it was mono where as this looks to be stereo. That or it's mono split in two.

"We have solved for x and found that we are the waste generation."

Very profound! I like it.

"The controller ports look like Sega ports, not NES."

Those are NES ports, for sure.

This is a fantastic mod and I wouldn't change a thing about it. As we all know, though, it can probably get even smaller. You might be hard pressed to find where to put all the controls and ports but the memory should be able to be crammed into something the size of the controller. We've all seen by now that you can get put more sophisticated games on a cell phone. I mean if can get games like SFII and Doom onto a cell phone, you ought to be able to cram simple NES games onto something pretty teeny-tiny.

Again, though, I love this and I wouldn't change a thing. Perfect!


Posted by: Dave B on November 25, 2008 at 3:28 PM

That is so cool. It almost makes me want to cry because it's so beautiful!!


Posted by: James on November 26, 2008 at 12:44 AM

Yeah I had a famicon and that was pretty small compared to the NES.

Wouldn't surprise me if the market spiel was true.

Technically cars could be smaller as well, but they've got excess space in various parts of the body too.


Posted by: Zorque on November 26, 2008 at 6:51 AM

The way most mods like this work, and if I remember correctly it's the way Ben Heckendorn does it, is that they rely on the "NES on a chip". Basically it's one of those knockoff systems that runs an emulator and a bunch of shoddily-coded games, but if you can solder on a cartridge port (or if the makers were generous enough to include one) you can use it to fit a NES into whatever you want, pretty much. Since that's probably the case, that would also explain the weird controller ports and the inclusion of composite-out.


Posted by: Jebus on November 27, 2008 at 1:24 AM

awesome!

just one word: 01001100011011110111011001100101


Posted by: tyler on December 1, 2008 at 2:16 PM

mr.

lawlz know it all


Posted by: Faranya on December 1, 2008 at 9:01 PM

Now now, we are all missing the biggest issue here.

Can i play duck hunt?


Posted by: Anonymous on December 2, 2008 at 6:13 AM

i heard if you get two of those and insert one into the other the universe will self-implode


Posted by: Sexy Cheese on December 2, 2008 at 9:29 PM

Very Cool!

That's awesome! What do you blow on to make the games work now?


Posted by: jacobtoddingram on December 12, 2008 at 10:20 PM

its called emulators peeps....these programs installed onto your fast processing computer will efffectively execute nes, snes, sega, and n64 consoles for you. granted you have bought an xbox 360 usb controller to play them on :).....oh yeah this is all free check it out. wait did i mention like every game made for every one of these systems included?


Posted by: BingBingBali on December 16, 2008 at 9:35 AM

DavidBessler...you sir are an idiot.
How old are you, and have you ever played NES?


Posted by: Sohei Fox on February 20, 2009 at 8:18 AM

One Small Problem

Why does it have DB-9 controller slots instead of NES standard 7 pin?


Posted by: Anonymous on May 6, 2009 at 2:07 PM

You spelled "its" incorrectly.


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