Project Plug-and-Play has moved to LIBG!



Today's update at last brings us the original Intellivision ports from which some of the most "beloved" Nice Code games are descended. Specifically, we now have all titles from the TV Play Power: Intellivision 25-in-1 plug-and-play console.



This update also adds Jungletac's VT03 ports of Scramble and Time Pilot. Although you could not tell from the colorfulness of the graphics, both ports use the VT03's four bits per plane graphics mode.

For a full list of additions and changes, please refer to the WHATSNEW.TXT file that is included in the project archive. To find any particular title that you might be looking for, search the LIST.TXT file that is included in the project archive.

➡Download the Project Archive⬅

The latest build of NintendulatorNRS, available in this blog's sidebar, is necessary to play many of these games.

Three different types of games presented today, all together aboard on this very blog post. The chosen title? It's explained in the upcoming paragraphs.

悪魔城 Dracula (Kaiser)

This is one of two known cartridge conversions of the original Famicom Disk System version, named 悪魔城ドラキュラ, of Castlevania.
This conversion by Kaiser only removes the copyright notice from the title screen, and until the ending, seems to run flawlessly.
Unfortunately, the ending loops endlessly, preventing players from seeing the second run of the game with its unique bonus items.
What makes this conversion interesting from a technical point of view is that the mapper's bankswitching facilities are triggered entirely by reads from magic CPU addresses, which is otherwise almost unheard-of in the NES/Famicom world.

Anyway, that was the Good part, let's switch to a totally different subject.
Thousands and thousands of cartridge compilations exist. Some made history thanks to the variety of games they offered, like the Golden Game series or more recently, the CoolBoy 400-in-1 Real Game. Some others made it due to their menu (such as the Powerful 250 by NTDEC) or simply because they contained some exclusive games (Asder 20-in-1).

And of course, conversely, there happen to be an large quantity of immemorial compilations of games. These usually features the same set of games. In the early days of Famicom piracy, these cartridge would have typically featured Wild Gunman, Galaxian, Duck Hunt and Battle City. Years passed and these games would eventually be used to fill up the selection of games as more ambitious titles were occupying the podium of the menus.

However, around mid 1997, really cheap multicarts were overturning the market all around the world. VT cartridges were coming from Ka Sheng and another unknown company, the King series was starting. Waixing had seemingly stopped their EW line at around that time. Smaller business like J.Y. also switched to cheaper products and slowly put an end to their line of quality products at the same period. Realtec was seemingly gone too (or at least, had completly changed strategy).

So, how does one cut cost on products that were thought to be already more than cheap and where the seller's margin was already low? Easy. Pick any of these bullet points and you're in for some serious cost cutting:

• Use the exact same printed circuit board for a large lot of cartridge (10+)
• Rely on another manufacturer that has cheaper technology readily available. Such as the ASICs which we know as mapper 45, 52, 176 and possibles variants.
• Have a fixed selection of advanced games that are readily compatible with the mapper and each cartridges are just a slightly different selection every time.

A combination of these factors lead to what we'll present today: multicarts from seemingly different manufacturers and years that all offer just the same set of games.

Here are some examples that fall in the Bad category.

1997 Super 7 in 1 (JY-201)


1997 Super 6 in 1 (JY-202)


1997 Super 7 in 1 (JY-203)


1997 龍珠武鬥會 7 in 1 (JY-204)


1997 SUPER 7 in 1 (JY-205)


1997 SUPER 7 in 1 (JY-206)


超强小新2＋瑪莉家族 7 in 1 (JY-215)


1998 97格鬥天王 激鬥篇 6 in 1 (JY-222)


1998 97格鬥天王 激鬥篇 7 in 1 (JY-224)


1998 97格鬥天王 激戰篇 6 in 1 (JY-225)


SUPER 8 IN 1 (JY-301)


SUPER 8 IN 1 98格鬥天王＋熱血 (JY-302)


絡克家族大集合 - Rockman 16-in-1 (SD01)


And lastly, the Ugly. These cartridges are just like their counterparts discussed in the previous paragraph. But what makes them different? The game selection menu.
These multicarts were seemingly cheap alternatives frequently sold in Mainland China and Thailand in the late 90s. They were sold under various ID: JB, 4Y, JY and possibly others. It's not known at this time if these may have been related or not to the actual Jing Tay in a way or another. These all uses mapper 52, yet they don't appear to be related to Realtec either... but hey, they did use some similar fonts and some similar games to the SPC002 multicart. The Samurai Spirits port by Rex Soft was seemingly considered as a hit back then.

1996 Super HiK 2-in-1 - 新系列超武鬥會 2.3 代組合強卡 (2B31)


1997 Super HiK 3-in-1 - 新系列眞侍魂・蝙蝠俠・ 天使之翼II代 組合強卡 (3D166)


1996 4-in-1 Super HiK Gold Card (JY-412)


1996 Super HiK 4-in-1 - 新系列超霸眞人快打组合卡 (4Y21)


1996 超级新卡 新系列眞人ⅡⅢ代上尉空魂組合強卡 - Super HiK 4-in-1 (4Y26)


1996 Super HiK 4-in-1 - 新系列眞人II,III代 足3 龍2 組合強卡 (4Y27)


1996 Super HiK 4-in-1 - 新系列武鬥2.3 12人 古巴 組合強卡 (4Y48)


1996 Super HiK 4-in-1 - 新系列眞人2.3 人間忍3 組合強卡 (4Y52)


1996 Super HiK 4-in-1 - 新系列12人古巴斧4脫2 組合強卡 (4Y55)


1997 Super HiK 新系列　武鬥會、激龜、蝙蝠俠　組合強卡 (4Y257)


The latest version of NintendulatorNRS (binary and source) can be downloaded from its dedicated page in the blog sidebar.

⇨Download the ROMs⇦

Credits to NewRisingSun for the emulation and Kevtris for dumping Akumajō Dracula.

Spring is here, and no, I don't mean that flowers are blooming but dumps definitely are??

Super Mario 15

For years, we had all the Mario hacks dumped and available on the net. Yet, the fifteenth was missing. Its existence was rumored, one sole site claimed it was Doki Doki Yuenchi, yet never provided any backing proof. Beside, I had seen the exact same cartridge on auction recently, it was just the Tiny Toon 2 Mario 14 one, title screen unchanged. The question remained however, was it just a number the Taiwanese companies omitted? They had a head-on crash with the two different Mario 14 games released at the same time. Both may have thought that skipping a number was a fair plan?
Well, one company definitely either noticed this number was lacking or recycled one of the Mario 14 hack to differentiate it from the other Mario 14. And here we have it. Super Mario 15, a hack of Super Mario 14 based on Kaiketsu Yanchamaru 3. Copyright was changed to read "©1993 Mario" rather than "Wario". The details, you know.
Special thanks to mt777 for lending his cartridge.

Gameinis Boxing+Soccer

Two newly developed games for some manufacturer named Gameinis, that apparently produced numerous (educational?) famiclone in the 2000s. Soccer was already available with some DDR clone but not Boxing. All the Gameinis games uses an infrared sensor to detect the player's input. This is emulated by left-clicking with your mouse. Gameinis' Ping Pong is also provided, properly headered, so you can try this gameplay eccentricity.


Waixing Megapad

Nintendo did the NES Classic Mini. Waixing had the Megapad, a console comprising of a good chunk of their all-time classic. Right??
…Are those seagulls from the Unchained Melody multicarts?!

Wik!d Joystick 14-in-1

Continuing the UM6578 commando operation, here's another one with obscure origins. Shenzhen Nanjing sound driver, strongly inspired by some Jungletac games… What we know however is that it was manufactured by ABL. I'll stop there otherwise the melting pot will get too large. Here's some captures of the games so you get a taste of its delicious content. The extracted games are provided too!


Cartridge Story I, II

Everyone have stumbled at some point on the infamous 260-in-1 (and variants) while visiting the abyss of Famicom piracy. Most people ignore the existence of the predecessor multicart line from RCM Group however: the Cartridge Story cartridges. First discovered with the last and most complete entry of the series previously dumped by CaH4e3, we intend here to close the book regarding this multicart by providing the remaining dumps of the first and second volume. The first contains no exclusive Hwang Shinwei minigames, the second has a few like Sky Shot. Only the third entry has Face Tetris and the likes. The archive contains all three instance of the Cartridge Story.

Fighting Hero

On the first glimpse, you must be wondering why you're seeing a capture of Fighting Hero, one of the most common NTDEC game on this blog? Because we've just dumped the original print of the game. And what's up with this specific version? Literally nothing beside a really unfortunate typo in the company name: Maga Soft instead of Mega Soft. The same error was made in the credits screen.
But wait, we're not done! Krzysiobal also found by accident another version of the game that changed the way the game read the player's inputs. Rather than acting when the buttons are released, a wise change was made: the game will now react when the button are pressed. That's how the game should have operated since the beginning…
The archive contains the three revision of the ROM so one can investigate all the difference and claim proudly and loudly on forums "I own all three ROMs of Fighting Hero"!

101 Games

Generic recent multicart that tries to look like the old Tsang Hai ones. It is a variant of a multicart previously dumped by CaH4e3 in 2016.

76-in-1 D-2003 Super (329-JY818)

76-in-1 D-2003 Super (329-JY819)

Two nearly identical multicart from 1999 or so, when J.Y. was moving away from cartridges operating on their ASIC, to cheaper solutions. These cartridge have various DIP settings which will change the number of games displayed. But both are still not so interesting 19-in-1…

76-in-1 D-2003 Super (JY805)

金色比卡丘口袋怪獸 130-in-1 (JY-130)

Two multicarts from 2003 or so, by either what remained of J.Y. at this time or a completly unrelated business.

Lastly we have a few J.Y. cartridges. Two with a nice menu, the rest reset based.
1995 Super HiK 4-in-1 新系列恐龍戰隊組合卡 (JY-020)


1998 Super HiK 8-in-1 (JY-021 B)


1997 Super HiK 4-in-1 新系列鳥人戰隊组合卡 (JY-021)

1995 Super HiK 4-in-1 新系列雙人籃球组合卡 (JY-023)

1995 Super HiK 4-in-1 新系列米奇老鼠Ⅲ组合卡 (JY-024)

1996 Super HiK 4-in-1 超級新系列球類風雲組合卡 (JY-072)

NintendulatorNRS latest version (binary and source) can be downloaded from its dedicated page in the blog sidebar.

➡Download the ROMs⬅

Credits to NewRisingSun for the emulation, krzysiobal for dumping Fighting Hero (rev2) and Super Mario 15, Frank Cifaldi and Sean Riddle for the Waixing Megapad, Yahweasel for the Gameinis 2-in-1, Cartridge Story II and 101-in-1. The Wik!d Joystick comes from the MAME sets.

UMC is well-known having produced highly-compatible cloned versions of the NES CPU and PPU chips that were built into almost all Famiclone consoles from 1988 to the early 2000s. In 1997 or so, they stepped up their game and introduced the first NES-on-a-Chip (NOAC) with additional features: the UM6578, with 10 KiB of CPU memory (compared to the NES' 2 KiB), 10 KiB of PPU memory (compared to the NES' 2 KiB), and four bits per pixel graphics (compared to the NES' two bits per pixel). The UM6578 so far has been unemulated and its games undumped, unlike its much more famous successor NOACs, VT02 and VT03, from V.R. Technologies. That is about to change!

Handy Boy 11-in-1

Emulator users have played Jungletac's games before on VT03- and VT09-based plug-and-play consoles, such as the "VG Pocket" series. Many of these games always had some strange quality about them: the lack of proper title screens, odd color choices, very repetitive stock music, and gameplay that seemed to resemble well-known Famicom games but was sufficiently different in timing and machine code to pass as "derivative but original". And most puzzling, these games used the VT03's four bits-per-pixel graphics mode, yet still restricted themselves to the normal 52 colors of the original NES palette.

And now we know why all that is so: Jungletac originally made most of these games for the UM6578! Back in 2001, they were basically elaborate hacks of popular Famicom games, most with the original music and gameplay mostly intact, but with (sometimes) highly enhanced graphics and even additional gameplay features. When the UM6578 NOAC went out of production sometime in 2002-2003, Jungletac ported these "Jungletac original versions" to the VT03. Apparently fearing legal problems, they not only reimplemented the game logic from scratch so as to no longer use any copyright-infringing code, but also removed most title screens and replaced all soundtracks, retaining only the new graphics from their original 2001 versions. With the UM6578 being emulated, we now get to see these titles in their original 2001 versions, eleven of which can be found on this "Handy Boy" console from that same year.


The first game, Big Racing, is either a very advanced hack of Road Fighter with R.C. Pro-Am elements mixed-in, or an entirely original game. Race on a curved track that scrolls both horizontally and vertically and follow your progress on the map of the race track at the bottom of the screen. The game's reprogrammed VT03/VT09 version, to be found on the "Classic Max Lite 120-in-1", greatly simplifies this gameplay and just shows a track without any curves whatsoever, always going straight-ahead, even as the map of the race track still misleadingly shows the original track layouts!


Ultra Doggy and Space Castle are two games that (as far as we know) are not graphics hacks of Famicom games. Ultra Doggy is obviously inspired by Frogger and has you control a small dog who must collect two keys from the street before being able to reach the exit. Space Castle is a slightly more difficult Space Invaders clone.


The remaining games are graphics hacks of popular Famicom games of increasing graphical quality: Jump Car based on Bump 'n Jump a.k.a. "Buggy Popper", Racing Pioneer" and GP Race based on Road Fighter, Race One based on F-1 Race (with the Astro Boy theme song at the title screen), Omega Zone based on Galaga, Jewel Master based on Magic Jewelry from Huang Xinwei (itself a clone of Sega's Columns), Block Shock based on Arkanoid, and Balloon Boy 2 based on Balloon Fight.

Here's hoping that over time, all Jungletac games become available in their original versions! Our archive also includes extracted versions of each game. Three of them have alternate versions, with different title screens and different levels, that are enabled by initializing a memory location with a non-zero value. It's not known whether these can be activated from the Handy Boy's menu, but thanks to us providing them in extracted form, you no longer need to!

Bandai Gamepad

In 1997, Bandai released a Famiclone-based plug-and-play gamepad with ten board games on it. In addition to playing each game individually, it also features a Story Mode that lets you play a selection of six games in succession, grades and (presumably) presents you with a different ending depending on your performance. Story Mode saves your progress in a 256-byte EEPROM. This gamepad was quite rare even in Japan; one reason for this rarity could be that in 1997, Nintendo's Famicom patents had not yet expired, with the resulting legal problems preventing a wider distribution.


City Patrolman

The UM6578 was not just used in plug-and-play consoles, but also in cartridge-based Famiclones that play both Famicom games and 6578-enhanced games, such as Daidaixing's (or Timetop, for us Westerners). City Patrolman, one of these cartridge-based 6578-enhanced games, is a clone of Konami's lightgun-based arcade game Lethal Enforcers, of which we previously saw the Famicom port (renamed to Lethal Weapon). It's surprisingly fun to play, with the very grungy-sounding PCM samples and the music that is basically a medley of various film and television themes (including Airwolf) only adding to the hilarity.

Other 6578-enhanced Timetop games that have not yet been dumped include Baseball, Ping Pong and Tennis. If you're curious on how those cartridge look: here's a scan of City Patrolman. Fight back, boys!

At the time of this writing, only NintendulatorNRS emulates the UM6578 hardware. Its latest version (binary and source) can be downloaded from its dedicated page in the blog sidebar, if you want to have a blast trying those games.

➡Download the ROMs⬅

Credits to NewRisingSun for the emulation, krzysiobal for dumping City Patrolman, Frank Cifaldi for buying and Sean Riddle for dumping the Bandai Gamepad and the Handy Boy.

Snow is lacking, at least here, unfortunately. As you can't go skiing nor build the yearly snowman, here's some ROMs to pass some time.

1500-in-1

A strange version of Golden Game 100-in-1 with some really odd graphical hacks of NROM games.

400-in-1

If you follow taizou on his twitter or pay attention to what's happening at the BGW headquarters, you may have heard of an obscure Inventor game called Waddy Boy that has had been planned to show up on a bunch of Plug and Play and multicart but was always replaced with something else (maybe for a good reason?). It turns out that it does exist and it did show up on some obscure and not so recent 400-in-1 compilation. The last update you may have seen was this one, "waddy update: located". As you'd guessed from the title of the blogpost, we've got a final update regarding it.
The 400-in-1 is Waixing's largest multicart to date (64 MiB), with a few other previously-undumped hacks besides Waddy Boy. Waddy Boy was made based on Spartan X's mapper 4 hack, which splits the screen at the wrong scanline, so we present a kind-of 'back-hack' back to Spartan X's original mapper 65.

The following extracts are included in the archive.


千禧年熱血大進擊 8 in 1 (SC-112)

This is just JY-112 with a more boring menu and operating on a more common mapper. Next.

1998 全新超強 黃金組合卡 7 in 1 (WF-001)

One not too bad multicart seemingly from J.Y. You can pick either DBZ2 or DBZ3, depending if you want to play the proper version or have a weird trip with some other NES games' backgrounds.

HEROS 新熱血總動員 8 in 1 (JY-207)

Having already a ton of Kunio 4-in-1 compilation and one 8-in-1, you would obviously guess that, if J.Y. was starting a new series, it was a requirement to have a Kunio compilation in it, right?

Hot-Blood 8-in-1 Funny Time (PA-01)

Some Kunio compilation from the 2000s. They were everywhere and they likely overflooded the market with those games.

1995 SUPER HIK 4 in 1 新系列獅子王组合卡 (JY-047)
We released the 1997 version some months back, but the 1995 version has the better other Donkey Kong game.

➡Download the ROMs⬅

The latest version of NintendulatorNRS and the associated source can be downloaded on its dedicated page in the blog sidebar.

Special thanks to NewRisingSun, taizou and Yahweasel.