I've been meaning to do this for quite a while, but have kept putting it off. The goal here is to find, and hopefully have dumped, all versions of carts. To start with I'm going to just focus on licensed US games. If you have anything that has not been dumped, I am willing to buy/trade with you for it or if you want, you could loan it to me (or anyone else with a CopyNES). Even if you have no intention of letting it out of your hands, please let me know about it just to verify existance!

The information here is based from my site which some friends and I have been working on. Eventually all this data will be merged with NintendoAge.

Dain: This is probably more suited for the Help Wanted forum, feel free to move it there.


---How to identify cart version---

There are 2 ways to identify what version a cart is:

1. On the back label, in the top-right corner, will be an imprinted letter if the game has been updated. Do not confuse the revision with the printed "REV-A" that may be nearby. If it's the carts first revision, there will be an 'A' imprinted. If it's the second, there will be a 'B' and so on. In some cases this letter is next to the Mfg Plant ID (the imprinted number on the top-left) instead. If there is no imprint, then it is the first version of the game. I refer to these as Rev0.

This method of course is not bullet-proof because people sometimes swap the back of the case without regard to such details.

2. The other way is to open the carts and examine the ROMs themselves, as they have a version number printed on them. The names follow this format:

pre-xx-v typ

'pre' will usually be 'NES', but on some of the earlier games will be 'HVC', which are simply ROMs that were also used in Japan.

'xx' is the same as the unique 2-digit ID code found on the label and whatnot.

'v' is the version number. Normally will be 0 (Rev0), RevA carts will be 1, RevB will be 2.

'typ' is either PRG or CHR. All carts have a PRG ROM, but some of them have a RAM instead of a CHR ROM.

For example here is what RevA Super Mario 3 ROMs would look like:
NES-UM-1 PRG
NES-UM-0 CHR

Generally revisions were only done with PRG ROMs, but occassionally the CHR is updated too.

Ok, hopefully that is clear enough, if anyone has any suggestions to better explain, please do.



---Missing Rev0 Carts---

To start off with, there are only a handful of unaccounted for Rev0's. These should be very easy for people to look for, simply check the backs for the lack of an 'A'. If you do turn one up, it would be nice if you could open it up just to verify that it's not a swapped back.

"Donkey Kong"
"Donkey Kong Jr."
"Popeye"

Cowering has updated me on some info about some games that do or are suspected to have revisions. This is nice because it gives you a specific few games to check.

---NEW: Possible RevA to look for---

Defenders of Dynatron City
Dragon Warrior III
Elevator Action
Indiana Jones and the Temple of Doom
Maniac Mansion
Pinball Quest
The Chessmaster

---Known RevA Carts---

These will require a bit of searching on ones part, because there is no defined list of what carts had revisions. So bascially what we're interested in here is any RevA carts *NOT* in this list.

"Barbie"
"Bases Loaded"
"Captain SkyHawk"
"Castlevania"
"Donkey Kong"
"Donkey Kong Jr."
"Double Dragon II: The Revenge"
"Double Dribble"
"Dr. Mario"
"Dragon Warrior"
"Faxanadu"
"Home Alone"
"Ikari Warriors"
"Jeopardy!"
"Karate Champ"
"Kid Niki: Radical Ninja"
"Kirby's Adventure"
"Major League Baseball"
"Mega Man 4"
"Mike Tyson's Punch-Out!!"
"Operation Wolf"
"Platoon"
"Popeye"
"Pro Wrestling"
"R.C. Pro-AM"
"Rambo"
"Robin Hood: Prince of Thieves"
"RoboCop 2"
"Rygar"
"Silent Service"
"Sky Shark"
"Super Mario Bros. / Duck Hunt / World Class Track Meet"
"Super Mario Bros. 2"
"Super Mario Bros. 3"
"Taboo: The Sixth Sense"
"Tecmo Bowl"
"Tecmo NBA Basketball"
"The Hunt for Red October"
"The Legend of Zelda"
"The Simpsons: Bart Vs. The Space Mutants"
"The Untouchables"
"Top Gun"
"Track & Field II"
"Wheel of Fortune"
"Wild Gunman"
"Winter Games"
"Wizards & Warriors"
"World Class Track Meet"
"Wrath of the Black Manta"

---NEW: Possible RevB carts to look for---

"Dragon Warrior"

---Known RevB Carts---

"Bases Loaded"
"The Untouchables"
"Dragon Warrior III" (sort of, has 'B' stamped in back but same ROMs!?)

Man, I'm going to get right on this and check my carts when I get back near my collection this weekend (unless some else here beats me to it). And thanks for all the info, btw, you just answered a couple of questions that I had always wondered about.

On a related note, are you interested in undumped protos at all? I've got Bignose and the Witchdoctor and I've been dying to get it dumped for ages, but I'm not willing to send the cart through the mail and I don't want to buy a copynes just to dump one cart. Thoughts or suggestions?

Hey Mark,

Here's what I've found so far. On your missing link of Rev0, I found Jeopardy:

Chip 1:

NES-JP-0 PRG
LH231169
8833 D

Chip 2:

LH5164D3-L
SHARP JAPAN
8833 1DA

6113A
1987 8831 7AA

MC74HC161
(M) N A8819

NES-AOROM-01

I also thought I might have the DK and DK Jr. ones, as those from my collection came from a single-owner lot I won a long time ago. Interestingly enough, neither one had the "A" on the back (and these were 99.9% likely to have not been swapped), but both had the -1 PRG chip. I suppose that would make finding those extremely difficult. I have 6 different variations of Popeye, and every last one has the -1 chip!

I'll *definitely* keep my eyes out for these, as I feel this is very important information. Now if I could only find a cheap computer to hook my CopyNES up to!

I didn't even realize so many games had the A revision. I knew about the two "B"s you have listed (I think there may be another one in fact -- I'll check). This is great information, and I already have a spot in the system to hold this variation info, so I'll try and get those added soon.

-Dain

Mark, one other question -- I noticed you don't have Untouchables with a revision "A". Is there one?

-Dain

Wait, I just answered my own question. I checked, and I have a revision "A" Untouchables.

Yep all 3 of The Untouchables have been taken care of

I too have seen some of those carts with no 'A' but -1 ROMs. It may be possible that a couple of those black box games (ones with HVC ROMs) don't have a Rev0 as the revision would have happened in Japan first. I just don't see why they would label any of the ones in the US as 'A' if that were the case. Or why they would label some as Rev0 and others as 'A' if nothing changed...

Does anyone have a DK, DK Jr., Popeye, etc with a 60-72 pin convertor in them?

I'm not sure if this is where I should post this question or not, but...I noticed you have only a gold/white Nintendo seal on your Mega Man (1) cart. I looked at mine and found it has the old gold with no background seal. The back lable has only a "O1" imprinted in the top left. There is nothing in the top right only the "rev-a". I was just wondering if this is something you already know about or is this a first? I am not willing to take it apart to look at the chips though, because I plan on selling it.

Those are pretty common I think, in fact thats what's shown on my site If it was a 5-screw version, you'd really have something though!

Here is a quote from an old undumped list compiled by Sardius:

Dragon Warrior - Revision 3 (?) - Contains the text "Leather Shield" and
"Iron Shield" rather than "Small" and "Large" (Nintendo/Enix)

This is a hint on a missing revision B of Dragon Warrior.

Oh, okay. Thanks for the reply!

I remember Cowering saying something about that one. I need to talk to him again about this, I know there are a number of RevA carts he suspects exist as well.

Just knocked 4 of those undumped Rev0's off the list

Home Alone and hopefully Pro Wrestling are on the way too!

Go BootGod Go!!!

There is a mistake in the db concerning Operation Wolf. Both revisions have the same crc for combined roms but the CHR is different.

btw how many versions of Wisdom Tree games are we still missing?

Not a mistake, they both have the same data. Only reason I can think of that they upgraded the version number is that they changed from a 28-pin to a 32-pin CHR ROM. But the Sky Shark does the same odd thing with the PRG ROM, but those are both 28-pin. So I don't really know wtf Taito was doing there.

Just recently I found that Dragon Warrior III RevB is apparently meaningless as well. Same PCB and ROMs inside. Only difference is the back label...

Oh I just see The -0 and -1 CHRs are both the same dump. This is pretty weird. Thanks for pointing that out.

The DW 3 revision B uses romchips labeled MOSEL, the old one NEC which might be the reason they called this another revision. In few cases the revision on the back refers to other things in the cart than the romchip. Super Mario Kart uses a different PCB-chip in the revision A for instance.

ROMs by different manufactures for the same game is very common, so I doubt it's referring to that. It was probably a fluke and doesn't mean anything.

Anyways, I just updated the list again, missing Rev0's is down to the ever elusive Popeye, DK, and DK Jr.

Also if anyone has a Chessmaster RevA, please shoot me a msg! I've checked with like 50 people (I don't think I'm exaggerating much either :/) and haven't turned one up, but I know it's around.

The Popeye revision 0 will be the same as the japanese version as both codes are HVC-PP- . But a confirmation an US-version exists too would be great of course. And imo Dragon Warrior 3 revision A is not really needed for dumping anymore when revision B doesn't offer a new rom. Maybe for research purposes only.

Yeah all three of those rev0 games have been dumped via the famicom carts, and if there are US rev0's they would be the same data. It would just be nice to know if they were released here or not. I'm thinking not though. I have a RevA DK Jr famicom cart and the date codes on the ROMs are from the first few weeks of 1984, so that would make it seem impossible version 0 was ever here in the US.

As for DWIII, I agree, and personally I don't even think there is going to be one with an 'A' stamp, I think they just screwed up.

In the database the crcs of the PRG dump and the roms combined of Kid Icarus PAL are different. What's the reason for that?

Whoops, thanks for catching that. Bregalad doesn't have a CopyNES so I am allowing him to substitute in existing ROMs. He had accidently used the wrong Kid Icarus ROM and I fixed the CRC for the ROM but looks like I forgot to fix it for the cart.