Entire NES stuffed into its cartridge kinda makes you cry

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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

68 thoughts on “Entire NES stuffed into its cartridge kinda makes you cry

  1. davidbessler says:

    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.

  2. Rachel says:

    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.

  3. spayced says:

    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?

  4. elle says:

    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.

  5. nesmass says:

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

  6. Anon says:

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

  7. Jamin says:

    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?

  8. ryan says:

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

  9. Know it all says:

    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.

  10. waste and progress says:

    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?

  11. Aeth says:

    The controller ports look like Sega ports, not NES.

    1. DaVince says:

      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.

  12. Phonz says:

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

  13. Abyss says:

    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…

  14. fratboy1905 says:

    i want one

  15. Droo says:

    “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!

  16. Dave B says:

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

  17. James says:

    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.

  18. Zorque says:

    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.

  19. Jebus says:

    just one word: 01001100011011110111011001100101

  20. tyler says:

    lawlz know it all

  21. Faranya says:

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

    Can i play duck hunt?

  22. Anonymous says:

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

  23. Sexy Cheese says:

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

  24. jacobtoddingram says:

    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?

  25. BingBingBali says:

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

  26. Sohei Fox says:

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

  27. Anonymous says:

    You spelled “its” incorrectly.

  28. Rellik55 says:

    Now it needs a screen, built in controller (just one with a port for another), and a rechargable battery to run it. Portable NES!

  29. supitsxander says:

    can i buy that?

  30. supitsxander says:

    can i buy that?

  31. Anonymous says:

    Incredible!

  32. Anonymous says:

    Incredible!

  33. Fraser Ntukula says:

    EPIC!

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