What is your thought then on a game on a "super" cartridge that you could transport back in time to say, 1977, and would work without modification on the 1977 platform? Would that still be cheating? Not necessarily. It's still using the original platform and its inherent capabilities. You're not adding anything to it.
Even in that case, though, so what if you added capabilities on the cartridge? It's not like there wasn't precedent for that when these systems were mainstream. For instance, Pitfall II for the Atari 2600 included a custom DPC chip in the cartridge that allowed for four part harmonies. That was in 1984. Super Mario Bros. 3 (1988), one of the NES's most iconic games, included the Memory Management Controller 3 (MMC3) ASIC, which among many other enhancements, contained extra RAM that allowed for better diagonal scrolling. The NES and many other consoles were DESIGNED from the get-go to access extra registers via the cartridge port, making enhancements via cartridge a design feature. Anyway, those are just two of the more popular systems as examples--there are examples of that for nearly EVERY console system that accepted cartridges.
So again, just because homebrew authors have larger palettes to work on and sometimes better dev tools, it doesn't make what they're doing any less authentic. It's just the modern day way to keep these classic systems in new software...
*************************** Bill Loguidice, Managing Director
Armchair Arcade, Inc.
What is your thought then on a game on a "super" cartridge that you could transport back in time to say, 1977, and would work without modification on the 1977 platform? Would that still be cheating? Not necessarily. It's still using the original platform and its inherent capabilities. You're not adding anything to it.
Even in that case, though, so what if you added capabilities on the cartridge? It's not like there wasn't precedent for that when these systems were mainstream. For instance, Pitfall II for the Atari 2600 included a custom DPC chip in the cartridge that allowed for four part harmonies. That was in 1984. Super Mario Bros. 3 (1988), one of the NES's most iconic games, included the Memory Management Controller 3 (MMC3) ASIC, which among many other enhancements, contained extra RAM that allowed for better diagonal scrolling. The NES and many other consoles were DESIGNED from the get-go to access extra registers via the cartridge port, making enhancements via cartridge a design feature. Anyway, those are just two of the more popular systems as examples--there are examples of that for nearly EVERY console system that accepted cartridges.
So again, just because homebrew authors have larger palettes to work on and sometimes better dev tools, it doesn't make what they're doing any less authentic. It's just the modern day way to keep these classic systems in new software...
***************************
Bill Loguidice, Managing Director
Armchair Arcade, Inc.