Physical, Forever: Cartridge Tech Continues To Evolve

Physical, Forever: Cartridge Tech Continues To Evolve

An ebook and a game all in one compact package.

As physical media finds itself in increasing peril, it’s comforting to know that enthusiastic designers and hackers continue to evolve the capabilities of what a video game cartridge can even do. Enter Kevin Mellott’s HyperFlash32, a rewritable Virtual Boy cartridge that more or less has an ebook reader built into it. Well, sort of.

Although ROM cartridges are not known for being a rewritable format (it’s kind of built into the concept right there with the name: ROM means “Read-Only Memory”), there have always been exceptions. Back in the day, developers and publishers used to rely on an expensive development tool called the EEPROM, or Electronically Erasable Programmable Read Only Memory. Yes, it’s a self-contradictory name, but it spoke to the premise behind the tech: an EEPROM functioned like a standard cartridge for a console (such as the NES or Genesis), but you could erase the data stored on the chips and rewrite them with the use of special computer tools. The EEPROM was an improvement over the EPROM, which required the use of ultraviolet light to purge recorded data, and it has since been replaced in turn by a cheaper and more refined variant known as flash memory. (That’s the tech you use every day in tools like SD cards and your smartphone’s built-in storage.)

These days, you can buy fan-made flash cartridges for just about any vintage console you care to name. Although people tend to use these as storage devices for massive collections of game files they pilfer from the internet, flash carts have fully legitimate purposes. You can legally transfer games you own onto flash carts in order to save wear and tear on your original carts (a fine idea for those hoping to cash out on their copy of Princess Tomato in the Salad Kingdom someday), and more importantly you can use them to test your own game design projects. We have used flash carts here at LRG headquarters on many occasions to test NES and Game Boy projects! Those aftermarket gadgets are a homebrew developer’s best friend, and they cost a whole heck of a lot less than official development kits.

Or you could always make your own dev kit, like this NES kit that Rare Ltd. bodged together back in the day. [Source]

But there’s nothing inherently special about flash cartridges. They’re just a tool that can make up for one of the feature gaps between physical and digital game releases. Rewritability is no problem for downloaded games! In fact, it’s kind of their biggest vulnerability. They can be erased by their publisher even if you’ve paid for them!

This flash cartridge, on the other hand, is built different. Literally: Mellott created the HyperFlash32 as a development cartridge for Nintendo’s Virtual Boy, of all thing. “Wow, LRG blog author, I didn’t even know that there was a homebrew scene for Virtual Boy,” you sputter, reeling in surprise. Yes, it’s true, beloved reader. It’s actually quite lively! The Virtual Boy dev scene is pretty ambitious, with folks creating brand-new games, attempting to tie a bow on incomplete or unpublished titles, and even converting games from other platforms to run on Virtual Boy.

The HyperFlash32, which has been out of production since 2024, contained sufficient built-in memory to hold the largest Virtual Boy projects ever created (32MB creations, hence the device’s name) as well as an SD card slot that could keep additional titles in storage. Users could swap easily between projects, allowing them (for example) to quickly cross-compare different builds of their works-in-progress for fine-tuning or troubleshooting. Neat! But still not anything particularly unique or special.

Ah, but: there is just one more thing. The HyperFlash32 could swap more than just the currently active game selection. It could also swap the label on its cartridge… electronically. The “3D Tetris” label on this cartridge looks like a typical printed sticker at first glance, but in fact it’s a tiny e-ink screen. When you change out the active game loaded into the cartridge, the e-ink display updates to show the cover art (or any other image you choose to assign) on the “label.”

Of course, this does nothing to enhance the game experience. It doesn’t affect gameplay in any way, and it barely even matters as a piece of visual flair since Virtual Boy cartridges sit tidily tucked into the underside of the system, hidden away inside a slot that neither the player nor an outside observer can see. So it’s more or less pointless. But that doesn’t make it worthless. You could apply this same principle to a cartridge for some other system where the cartridges sit exposed (the Super NES, for example) and cycle through e-ink imagery for more than just a conversation piece. You could display a cheat sheet of playbook commands for a Madden game, for example, or special move inputs for your favorite character in a fighting game, or even swappable maps in an RPG. You know, dual-screen gaming, like Nintendo DS or Wii U. But cooler.