Homebrew on the NES

[TheFallOfMan]

Is there any way to play homebrew games/hacks with an original NES?
Like maybe a cartridge with an USB port to put your homebrew games?

If there is such a thing, could someone point me out where to get one?
Thanks in advance.

[arion]

Well there is the Powerpak

http://www.retrousb.com/product_info.ph ... ucts_id=34

It is rather expensive but believe me it's worth it.

[toredauei]

POWERPAK!!!! seriously its the only way to go and you wont regret it :]

[heelsinc]

o wow thats so awesome do any other systems have things like this?

[toredauei]

not really anything thats so convienient what with the sd slot and all. There are flash carts for most cartridge based consoles but you also have to buy the flashing equptment and usually need a computer that still has a parallel port. I think there are some usb based gameboy flash carts though.

[Ziggy]

o wow thats so awesome do any other systems have things like this?

I have one of these...

http://www.tototek.com/store/index.php? ... ucts_id=39

Sure, you need the programmer along with it, but that doesn't make it any more expensive then retrousb's Power Pak. In fact, even if your computer doesn't have a parallel port, you could buy one on a PCI card and have the total cost STILL be cheaper than the Power Pak lol.

The Super Flash Cart is great, there's so much you can do with it. There's a lot you can do with the programmer as well, so it's worth having. You can use the programmer to flash the Super Flash Cart, read original SNES games to ROMs, read save files from Super Flash Cart AND SNES games, flash save files to flash cart or SNES games. It even supports some emulator's save file format.

The flash cart itself is 64Mbit big. You can put up to 4 games at a time on it, and a game as large as 48Mbits on it. I believe the biggest a game ever got was 48Mbit, so you should be good there. It just doesn't support games with special chips like the Super FX, S-DD1, or SA-1 chip.

ToToTEK also has other great products, so check out the site. I know they have a Genesis flash cart as well, I've been meaning to get that and a Power Pak for a while now.

[TheFallOfMan]

135$... Wow that sure is pricey...
Not sure if I'm ready to pay that much to play Somario

[Hatta]

Given all the mappers this thing supports, it's actually reasonably priced. It's not based on a simple microcontroller, but an FPGA. I would like to see better compatibility before I bite though, it's been a few years and MMC5 support is still not implemented.

Compare the PowerPak to other retro flash devices (Neo Myth MD, Atarimax 128-in-one (5200), 1541 Ultimate, AppleII CFFA, etc). $100-150 is about what these things go for. I've only been able to find a few in the <$100 range (Atari 8-bit sio2sd, Atari 2600 Harmony cart (unreleased), Commodore uIEC (no fast loader support)).

Consider what you'd pay to play actual games on real hardware. If you're paying $5 a game, the Powerpak pays for itself after about 30 games. Or if you like, compare it to buying new PS3/360 games. Would you rather have a Powerpak, or 3 new games? That's an easy question for me.

[Pingfa]

If you just want to play Somari then you can check out gamereproductions.com or nesreproductions.com - just checked; gamereproductions has the version with Sonic in it and nesreproductions has the version with Mario (Somario).

[Dylan]

Given all the mappers this thing supports, it's actually reasonably priced. It's not based on a simple microcontroller, but an FPGA. I would like to see better compatibility before I bite though, it's been a few years and MMC5 support is still not implemented.

This is pretty much exactly how I feel. And while I don't want to pay $135 for it, it's hard for me to argue that it isn't worth it.