Pineconeattack!

Close your eyes and remember back in the day back when you and all of your friends would share that same copy of Mike Tyson’s Punch Out back and forth and remember how magical gaming was back then. Now imagine how amazed you would have been if I would have told you that in less than 20 years you can play probably almost every single Nintendo game on one Nintendo cart. Your head would probably have exploded. Gamers have been doing this for years with emulators on computers but they were never playing the games on the original hardware. Timing was off and games just never looked as good on the high resolution screens with countless filters trying to emulated the original NES experience. Well all that is behind you now because there is a way to play your roms on the real hardware, but it doesn’t come cheap. Now enters the magic cart: RetroZone’s PowerPak.

Not being into the rom scene, I stumbled onto a couple fan translation sites and I download a shit ton of translated NES games but I wanted a way to play them the Nintendo. I know this technology has been available for the Gameboy Advance and DS for a while now but until a few months ago I didn’t know that a device was available for the original Nintendo. Reading about the PowerPak, I wanted one really bad because just the idea of playing all of my games and homebrews on one cart is simply amazing! I’ve done my homework and knowing that it can’t 100% play every single NES roms, I figured the potential ability to play homebrew roms on actual NES hardware is worth the price of admission.I finally broke down and purchased one and after tinkering with and testing this hacker device I can say this: this thing is cool and ALMOST replaces my NES & Famicom collection; basically condensing 99% of my carts into one cool looking orange all-in-one magic cart. What can I say, I’m a sucker for quirky unique gaming devices.

The PowerPak is a very nice piece of hardware and is a must purchase for any eccentric retro gamer. The package was delivered fairly speedy and the box was well packed so my investment wasn’t harmed during transit. Being as Tenno would jealously call me, Moneybags Jango; I had to purchase the 512MB package that came with:

• PowerPak cartridge with high quality label
• clone multi region lockout chip for NTSC, PAL A, PAL B, Asian Systems
• Black dust sleeve
• 512MB Compact Flash card
• USB CF card reader
• 5 year replacement warranty – if the cart stops working we replace it
• Lifetime boot rom updates – mail the cart here, we update then mail back free
• Returns on listed bugs are not accepted

What’s involved with the PowerPak?

What makes the PowerPak distinctive is the fact that you are not playing the roms on an emulator but actually playing the games on the actual NES hardware that would is used in the original legit game cart. Basically, with the PowerPak, you can play most roms, homebrew, and protos on the same cart all stored on a compact flashcard. What makes this device so amazing is the fact that it’s one cart that houses multiple mapper chips thus bypassing any form of emulation. The game is and will play like the original.

You see the original NES hardware was very limited in what kinds of games were possible with the factory hardware specs and to increase and circumvent the hardware limitations, many developers, including Nintendo, used mapper chips or the Multi-Memory Controller (MMC) which were basically mini hardware upgrades to improve the cart’s visuals and sound. What makes RetroZone’s PowerPak so interesting is that it actually uses the necessary MMC to get the rom to play properly on the NES. I find the whole concept to be mind blowing, but I that’s how the original games were done. It’s one of the reasons why the original line up of games (i.e.: the sprite labels games or games with the NES Sprites as art ala: Super Mario Bros) were so much simpler than the later generation of games like Super Mario 3 and Punch Out!!

With this hardware I could play any game that the built in hardware can support. The original purpose to the PowerPak is to upload homebrew roms that were developed by homebrewers and try out their creations on real official hardware. The one thing that I’m disappointed with this device is that some really great hacked games like Mario’s Adventure will not work on it due to not being built off of the NES software specs. To me that was one of the selling points, so its too bad that it didn’t pan out like I thought it would.

My Headache with my Memory card setup:

When I received my PowerPak, being the obedient consumer that I am, I followed the instructions to the letter and formatted the memory card and screwed the damn thing up. I used the adaptor that came with my kit and proceeded to format it on my Mac. What I didn’t realize was that Macs have a difficult time dealing with anything in FAT32 and if I should have read the instructions much more closely. Apparently I’m still a noob with my Mac and I couldn’t figure out how to get the PowerPak to recognize FAT16 either. After formatting the card and up loaded my files with roms, the TV was telling me that the memory card wasn’t formatted properly.

So after messing with the memory card for several days [hohohoho - Tenno], I had to search for a damn computer that was running Windows. When I found a computer to use on the weekend, the format was less than a minute and when I finally had my drive formatted to FAT32 memory card and loaded up with roms, everything worked like a champ.

The game cart feels sturdy and I would say on par to the original NES cart in quality. No cheap plastic case on this cart, well at least it doesn’t feel cheap. I would go as far to say that this game cart is so badass that it could probably cure cancer and feel the hungry little children of China, so at least that world have made me feel better about the annoying setback with my computer.

Navigation & Save System Could Be Better:

I went through and organized my roms by letters and uploaded them onto the cart separated by folders. I slapped the cart into my NES and lo and behold, all of my games were in the appropriate folders but the freaking games were all in the disarray. You see the cart has its fair share of limitation and the NES CPU is too slow to organize your long list of games and you have to jump through hoops to get them in alphabetic order. The only way that I can figure is that the cart only recognizes the file in the order that they were loaded so if you ever have to change the data is any way shape of form, then you would have to start all over to keep the games in alphabetic order. So basically if you’re OCD then stay away!

I have my cart separated by letters and each of the roms organized to the appropriate folders. To navigate, the up/down will do just that but the left/right will make the cursor faster. A & B are used to select and back. The controls are very straight forward, unlike the save system which is all FUBAR.

The PowerPak is unable to have the rom save any game files without jumping through a few more hoops. You are unable to save any games on the fly. If I know I’m going to play Earthbound Zero, then I need to setup my save files in advance. What I did was to download the save files from RetroZone and proceeded to make plenty of copies. I then made a new directory just for saves. Within the Save folders, I placed each field into the predetermined folders. Like this: Main Menu/Saves/Earthbound Zero. So I have to really look in advance for which games will need their own save folders. The obvious choices were the two Zelda games and the Final Fantasies and just in case I have a bunch of generic folders with the save files ready for use. You know, just in case.

So now that saves are setup to actually use the save feature on the PowerPak you have to pick the rom within the Game Genie screen, now navigate up to the “load battery ram” and then select your save file. The only thing I like about this minor annoyance is that if I really wanted to continue my game on the computer, all I need to do is transfer the save file over and vice versa.

The only thing I’m worried about with this feature is that with a physical battery inside the cart which will eventually die.  I will have to worry about replacing it with a fresh one, but luckily if it is anything like the original carts, I won’t have to worry about that in 15-20 years.

Minor Incompatibilities:

I’ve downloaded a bunch of Famicom roms like Kyattou Ninden Teyande (Samurai Pizza Cats), Gryzor: Contra and Akumajou Densetsu just to see if the PowerPak will them. Kyattou Ninden Teyande worked fine and had no issues just like my original Famicom cart. Gryzor: Contra didn’t load up at all and the same with Akumajou Densetsu because both of these games used third party mapper chips that the North America NES could not read. So as long as you stick with NES standard roms then there should be no problem. My only disappointment I had is that the Castlevania III does not work on the PowerPak because it uses the MMC5 chipset and as of right now, the PowerPak is unable to work 100% with that mapper. I’ll just have to wait for the newest update and hopefully this will fix this known issue like the last update did with the MMC2 issues.

I’ve had some minor issues with some common roms that should have worked. I had a hell of a time getting Super Mario Bros 2 to work. I’ve discovered that most of the roms I was having issues with were just bad rom dumps and they needed to be corrected. I would suggest reading this post about using NEStoy to correct any bad roms and get them repaired for use on the PowerPak.

As you can see in my nifty thrown together chart of mappers listings, mappers 1-11 pretty much encompasses 98%* of all Nintendo games. For the full list, check out the Big Ass NES Mappers list, where I gathered most of my info.

What I’m most excited for is the blue squares. Those are the planned mappers that the cart should be able to run: more importantly is mapper #24 which is Konami’s VRC6 chip, which is found in Akumajo Dracula 3. This chip improves the audio to an ungodly level. So if the VRC6 chip, in the near future (hopefully) I’ll be able to play the superior version of Castlevania III, perhaps with an english patch.

Conclusion:

The PowerPak is an innovative device and does about 90% of what I expected it to do. I would highly suggest this to anyone who has a huge collection of roms or is really into the homebrew scene. I paid a little more for mine since I needed the memory card adaptor but if you have an extra compact flash card and have a computer that can read them, then I would suggest picking up the standalone cart. The roms look amazing and play perfect on my NES.

It’s expensive but that’s not stopping it from selling out with every new shipment. If your happy gaming memories involves a NES, then pick one up when they become available.

[Update: I redid the order of my roms by placing each and every game onto my cart one at a time. Now they are all in alphabetical order]

*some percentage that I pulled out of my ass

–Jangofatt