Super Famicom Memory Casettes: anyone seen these before?

[greg]

I found this auction:
http://page16.auctions.yahoo.co.jp/jp/auction/u32271905
It's called a "Super Famicom Casette" and it's made in Taiwan. Those Chinese are always up to naughtyness, so obviously this is a bootleg copy of Fire Emblem Thracia 776. I'm surprised this has shown up on a Japanese auction site. The auction description says it uses a battery backup. I think I've seen something like this in Akihabara in a shop or two. Does anyone know how the roms are transferred to these cartridges? I don't think a Super Wildcard is capable of writing to these.

[Satoshi_Matrix]

No, you're wrong. The Super Famicom Data Cartridge, SHVC-041 was an officially licensed product in Japan. Between 1996 and 1998 in Japan, consumers could purchase these blank cartridges from vendors at a reduced rate and then either go to certain retailers or mail the cartridge to Nintendo through a service called "Nintendo Power" (had absolutely nothing to do with the American magazine).

Super Famicom Data Cartridges were an update for the aging Famicom Disk System write kiosks where players could take their FDS games and rewrite them with new games. The only difference was instead of writing to a diskette, flash RAM was the new storage medium.

The "Nintendo Power" service offered a dozen or so titles that had shown up as broadcast Stelleview games and were the only way of getting cartridge versions of these games. Some of these games included Super Picross, Super Wrecking Crew, Super Famicom Wars, and a remake of Famicom Detective Club Part II.

The Super Famicom Data Cartridge had a storage capacity of 32 megs, allowing eight possible 4 meg games, two possible 16 Meg games or one 32 meg game.

I happen to own a data cartridge containing only Super Famicom Wars as it takes up the entire storage.

Nintendo discontinnued the "Nintendo Power" service in 1999, making blank Super Famicom Data cartridges essentially worthless today. However, due to the fact that the games released via "Nintendo Power" are exclusive to the data cartridges, data cartridges with specific desired titles are very rare even in Japan and fetch quite a bit.

Last time I saw a data cart on yahoo Japan for the Famicom Detective Club Part 2 data cart, it went for over 20,000¥!

[Hobie-wan]

Snip

So like the Blockbuster Genesis rewritable carts then. Cool.

[greg]

No, you're wrong.

-snip-

Wow, thanks for the information! It makes sense then to see these for sale at retailers in Tokyo and also on YAJ if these were legitimate cartridges.

I do know that Thracia 776 was originally released on the Satellaview, however it was also released as a regular SFC game and that it goes for quite a bit. So about the Satellaview... There are cartridges such as Same Game and Derby Stallion '96 that are labelled as Eisei Housou ("Satellite Broadcast"). They come on those same BSX carts, but they are workable as stand-alone games that do not require a Satellaview unit to be played on. Did they really have anything to do with the Satellaview? What is the purpose of the mini-cartridges that plug into the top of those? I noticed that with Same Game, if you take out the mini cartridge, then Bomberman and Genjin characters are no longer playable with the game. When you put the mini cart back in the top, then the characters are again playable. Were these somehow interchangeable with other games? It was my assumption that for the Satellaview system at least, these mini "memory paks" were just for saving game data and such. These games seem to be perfectly playable without a Satellaview, so I'm wondering if these Eisei Housou carts really had anything to do with the Satellaview at all, other than the cartridges are the same shape as the BSX carts.

[mjmjr25]

I have one of these things too - mine's got derby stallion on it. I always thought it was like a way to save game progress and I was just too stupid to figure out how to do it.

[Satoshi_Matrix]

Sorry greg, I don't really know too many specific details about the Stelleview other than general knowledge as I've never owned one. My knowledge is about the Famicom and the NES; the SNES and Super Famicom I know a lot less about, except for the Data Cartridges because I'm a huge fan of Nintendo Wars games and after picking up Gameboy Wars 3, I really wanted to get the fabled Super Famicom Wars remake of the 1988 original.

[greg]

Satoshi_Matrix, would you mind if I quoted your information you've provided for the FAQ on my Super Famicom website? You would get credit, of course.

[Satoshi_Matrix]

Send me a link to your site, I'd like to check it out. I plan to write a detailed article on my knowledge on the SFC Data carts, so I wouldn't mind you including my info, but I would like you to credit me and to also link readers to my site as well. My site is www.satoshimatrix.wordpress.com. I don't specifically talk about the Super Famicom, but I do review excellent oldschool gaming, which does include the Super Famicom and titles exclusive to the sfc data cartridge format.

[greg]

I'd love to provide a link to your site, definitely. The link to my Super Famicom site is the big-ass image in my signature: The Anime Super Famicom Web Resource Center.