In the past two weeks, I have been generating a list of licensed games and the mapper information needed for them to run. Unlike other lists, mine incorporates the latest submapper assignments and takes from the most accurate sources available, mainly the NES Cart Database.
My goal in making this list is to keep headers correct and accurate. I would also like it to be something of a backup if the NES Cart Database goes down again. However I did not blindly copy everything from NES Cart DB. Some information on it is out of date or inaccurate. When I could not find a board shot on NES Cart DB, I looked to no-intro's dat-o-matic site and sometimes on ebay for the rarer stuff.
My list includes everything needed to get a game running, how much PRG-ROM it has, how much CHR-ROM or CHR-RAM (or both) it has, the mapper, the mirroring (if hardwired, otherwise it is set to M or 4, treat 1 as M), whether it has extra RAM and if it is battery backed, non-battery backed or contained in the mapper (128 and 256 indicate the size of EEPROM, not SRAM) and if it has been assigned a submapper.
There are limitations to this list. First, I did not try to cover the Asian unlicensed and gray market. Pirate multi-carts, Hong Kong specials, South Korean unlicensed and even more mainstream Sachen Taiwanese is not included. That appears to be the NES cartridge equivalent of a never-ending story. I have limited my list to the most well-known games, namely complete licensed and well-known unlicensed from the US, Europe and Japan, in other words, "the canon". Where I could not find a board shot I highlighted the entries in yellow. I have also indicated instances where further dumping is required. There is the possibility of error in the European and Japanese Mapper 1 and 4 games without board shots. I used the latest versions of Nintendulator-NRS, Mesen and Nestopia 1.48 to try to verify the RAM usage. I even used Mesen's debugger to see if a game was using RAM in a way to suggest that RAM was actually present.
I'm only one person, so it is possible I may have made a mistake here and there, but I think the list is reasonably accurate. Getting a complete list of Famicom cartridges is a trial in and of itself, especially given the variant translations of the names. I used the NES Cart DB for the names except when a game had no entry, even in the "missing" section, then I used no-intro.
Updated to add a few variant demo/sample ROMs and to reflect that Mapper 157 only has an entry in the battery backed W-RAM column if the cartridge has additional EEPROM. The Datach base unit EEPROM provided is not added to the W-RAM column, its presence is implied by the mapper.
My goal in making this list is to keep headers correct and accurate. I would also like it to be something of a backup if the NES Cart Database goes down again. However I did not blindly copy everything from NES Cart DB. Some information on it is out of date or inaccurate. When I could not find a board shot on NES Cart DB, I looked to no-intro's dat-o-matic site and sometimes on ebay for the rarer stuff.
My list includes everything needed to get a game running, how much PRG-ROM it has, how much CHR-ROM or CHR-RAM (or both) it has, the mapper, the mirroring (if hardwired, otherwise it is set to M or 4, treat 1 as M), whether it has extra RAM and if it is battery backed, non-battery backed or contained in the mapper (128 and 256 indicate the size of EEPROM, not SRAM) and if it has been assigned a submapper.
There are limitations to this list. First, I did not try to cover the Asian unlicensed and gray market. Pirate multi-carts, Hong Kong specials, South Korean unlicensed and even more mainstream Sachen Taiwanese is not included. That appears to be the NES cartridge equivalent of a never-ending story. I have limited my list to the most well-known games, namely complete licensed and well-known unlicensed from the US, Europe and Japan, in other words, "the canon". Where I could not find a board shot I highlighted the entries in yellow. I have also indicated instances where further dumping is required. There is the possibility of error in the European and Japanese Mapper 1 and 4 games without board shots. I used the latest versions of Nintendulator-NRS, Mesen and Nestopia 1.48 to try to verify the RAM usage. I even used Mesen's debugger to see if a game was using RAM in a way to suggest that RAM was actually present.
I'm only one person, so it is possible I may have made a mistake here and there, but I think the list is reasonably accurate. Getting a complete list of Famicom cartridges is a trial in and of itself, especially given the variant translations of the names. I used the NES Cart DB for the names except when a game had no entry, even in the "missing" section, then I used no-intro.
Updated to add a few variant demo/sample ROMs and to reflect that Mapper 157 only has an entry in the battery backed W-RAM column if the cartridge has additional EEPROM. The Datach base unit EEPROM provided is not added to the W-RAM column, its presence is implied by the mapper.