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In video game parlance, a multicart is a cartridge that contains more than one game. Typically, the separate games are available individually for purchase (such as Sega Smash Pack ) or were previously available individually (such as Final Fantasy: Dawn of Souls ). For this reason, collections, anthologies, and compilations are considered multicarts. The desirability of the multicart to consumers is that it provides better value, greater convenience, and (in the case of portable games) more portability than the separate games would provide. The advantage to developers is that it allows two or more smaller games to be sold together for the price of one larger game, and also provides an opportunity to repackage and sell older games one more time, often with little or no changes.
Multicarts are distinct from minigame series such as Mario Party , Game & Watch Gallery , or WarioWare . These games consist of several minigames specifically created for the overall game experience. In contrast, the NES multicart Super Mario Bros./Duck Hunt contains two full-version games, each available for purchase individually.
Although most commonly associated with NES and SNES, both authorized and unauthorized, multicarts have appeared for many cartridge-based systems, including the Atari 2600, Intellivision, Odyssey 2, Master System, Sega Genesis, Vectrex, and Game Boy. As storage capacity on cartridges continues to grow and become less expensive, the popularity of multicarts has seen a resurgence on the only remaining cartridge-based systems, those of Nintendo’s Game Boy Advance and DS. Since launch, these systems have seen an increase in “2-in-1” and “3-in-1” games, with some re-releasing popular titles previously seen on the same platform, such as Konami's Castlevania .
Among pirate Famicom games, multicarts often advertise an inflated number of games on their labels, calling them "x-in-1" (x can be any number greater than 1, such as "76-in-1," "200-in-1," "1200-in-1," and even "9999999-in-1"), but in reality usually [1] only have anywhere from five to one hundred truly unique games. The list is padded by different variations of these games, modified to start the player either at different levels or with different power-ups. The games are usually first-generation Famicom titles, several of which were never officially released outside of Japan, and in typical pirate fashion have either had their names deliberately misspelled, their copyright notices/logos removed, or both.
Other popular video game systems have their own share of unique pirate multicarts. Unlike the Famicom, the Nintendo Game Boy multicarts have a variety of different, innovative multicart designs. Standard-sized Game Boy multicarts have either a game selection menu like the NES multicarts, or require quick toggling of the Game Boy power switch to select through games. Most of them incorporate an external soft reset button (not available on any original cart), so you can reset the game without powering off the system. Huge pirate carts were created to overcome the storage limitations of a standard-sized pirate cart. These unusually large and thick carts, more than twice the height and depth of a standard Game Boy cartridge, could easily store many of the larger new games, such as Donkey Kong Land . One drawback of these carts is that they lack any battery backup, but some newer carts come with battery backup, so saving games on them is impossible if the battery backup is not included. Most of these carts were produced in China, Taiwan, and Hong Kong.
There have been Game Boy Advance multicarts with several GBA games and several or even hundreds of NES ROMs. These carts are known to include some bootlegs, hacks, or variations of games, advertising them as different games and giving them incorrect box art on the main box art. [2]
These multicarts were published with the consent of the owners of copyright in the games themselves, but without the console maker's consent:
Due to the relative ease of duplicating Atari 2600 cartridges, a large number of pirate multicarts were developed for the system. Most of these were released outside the US and EU (most commonly Brazil).
Sega-released Master System multicarts were labeled "The Combo Cartridge" on the box, as opposed to the "Mega Cartridge" and "Two-Mega Cartridge" labels placed on single-game cart boxes.
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