Yay, Famicom cartridges! Boo, inconsistency

[Protoman]

Sunsoft cartridges have the protruding Sunsoft bit, but RAF World doesn't

Irem games has the protruding Irem bit, but Daiku no Gen-san doesn't

Why did Konami abandon the special cartridge with an endlabel, so my Super C cart has to stand on it's own looking odd?

Taito, Jaleco and Namco, why couldn't you have decided on a cartridge design and stuck with it?

I love the diversity of Famicom cartridges, but some of these inconsistencies are annoying for a mostly cartridge-only collector.

[fcgamer]

I totally agree with this as well.  It makes them look ugly when sitting on the shelves, by developer / publisher.

[HVC-Man]

Easily explained, sometimes third party companies got Nintendo to publish their game, rather than publish them on their own.

For example, Cosmic Wars from Konami was published by Nintendo, so it's in a short Nintendo shell.

[L___E___T]

 



Is there more info on that?  That sounds like a manufacturing / distribution deal rather than a publishing one.  The packaging is very much Konami style.

[Protoman]

So, was Super C also published by Nintendo then? Seems like a big enough game for Konami to publish themselves

[L___E___T]

 



...and all the Ninja Turtles games, plus Motocross, plus Bucky, Exciting Boxing, F1 Sensation, Top Gun 1+2, Penguin, among others.

I wondered if there's  a correlation between those and the Palcom / Ultra releases?

[Protoman]

...and all the Ninja Turtles games

All of them? Turtles and Turtles 2 (aka 2 and 3) came in the endlabel-variety, gekimade ninjaden(turtles 1) came in regular, tournament fighters didn't even come out in japan I don't think?

[HVC-Man]

What other info is needed? Famicom and even NES publishing is self-explanatory.

For practially 95% of the NES library, Nintendo did the publishing. There are exceptions though, for example, Konami, Sunsoft and Acclaim published their own licensed NES cartridges later in the system's life. Konami used Nintendo shells and Konami boards, while Sunsoft and Acclaim actually had their own cartridges made, they have Sunsoft and Acclaim stamped on the back shell instead of Nintendo.

Sometimes the big Famicom third party publishers had Nintendo do the publishing for them. You can tell by the cartridge shell. Need more proof? With the exception of discrete mappers like UNROM, Konami typically used their own mappers, you'll never find a Nintendo integrated mapper in a Konami FC shell. Likewise, you'll never find a Konami VRC# chip in a Nintendo shell. Cosmic Wars is an MMC1 game, for example.

[L___E___T]

 



I was hoping/asking for some kind of source i.e. where did you find this out?  That's not publising though, that's manufacture.  I think when you say publish (bring to market), you mean manufacture (make units).  I know that Sunsoft did indeed publish and distribute their titles because I'm lucky enough to know the head of Development in America back then.

The MMC1 example touches on what I had wondered in that, if Konami didn't need to use special chips (and by extension boards), they also didn't need to create their own shells to house them.

I don't think you can use the NES business models as a standrd explanation, as many things were different.  Nintendo didn't allow custom cart designs or colours.  They also enforced the Seal of Quality system.

[famifan]

i think that custom shell/board usually means that it was proudly made for sale in Japan only. simply without bearing to be worldwide released in mind.

apparently, regular nintendo shells/boards were more export friendly according to nintendo's policies. until then those policies were slightly changed and custom mappers were allowed. that's why you can find non-nintendo manufactured mappers inside of late NES cartridges which were made say in 90s.

[HVC-Man]

I was hoping/asking for some kind of source i.e. where did you find this out?  That's not publising though, that's manufacture.  I think when you say publish (bring to market), you mean manufacture (make units).  I know that Sunsoft did indeed publish and distribute their titles because I'm lucky enough to know the head of Development in America back then.

The MMC1 example touches on what I had wondered in that, if Konami didn't need to use special chips (and by extension boards), they also didn't need to create their own shells to house them.

I don't think you can use the NES business models as a standrd explanation, as many things were different.  Nintendo didn't allow custom cart designs or colours.  They also enforced the Seal of Quality system.

I guess my source is Nes Cart DB, but it's out of order right now. If you were to browse that site's catalog, you could see for yourself what games were published/manufactured by who.

I don't see how there's a significant difference between publishing and manufacturing. The developer made the game, the publisher handles and pays for the manufacturing and distribution of the game. Ever hear of unreleased games that were canceled because the developer couldn't find a publisher? That's because most developers don't have the capital to pay for manufacturing, so they turn to publishers.

In this case, sometimes Konami paid for the manufacturing of FC/NES cartridges themselves, other times they got Nintendo to do it.

I certainly can use the NES business model, it's almost the same thing as the Famicom. The one big difference is because the Famicom has no means of locking out unlicensed cartridges, third parties were free to do cartridge manufacturing on their own, essentially acting as their own publishers. Jaleco, Konami, Irem, Sunsoft, Taito, Namcot and many others.

On the NES, things were a little different. With the lockout chip, Nintendo had control over game publishing. During the early years, every developer had to go through Nintendo to get a game published and manufactured. Later on, during and after the release of the SNES, Nintendo loosened their publishing policy and started allowing third parties to publish their own licensed cartridges. Sunsoft and Acclaim made their own boards and shells, Konami had their own boards but kept using Nintendo shells. (I haven't yet found a Konami-published NES game with a Konami-marked shell).

During those early years, sometimes third parties did completely pay for the publishing handled by Nintendo themselves, but they were still restricted to Nintendo boards and shells. Capcom is an example of third party publishing but still using Nintendo parts. Mega Man 6 is a curious case where Capcom declined to pay for publishing, so they instead licensed it to Nintendo, thus Mega Man 6 is in fact technically a first party NES game, in North America that is. There exist Capcom-published copies of Mega Man 6, but they have only appeared in South American countries.

If Nes Cart DB was available, you could easily browse through the library there and you'll see what I'm talking about.

[Great Hierophant]

Konami was always a most-favored developer during the Famicom/NES era.  I believe it had sufficient influence with Nintendo to arrange to manufacture its own NES boards for a while and to allow the Ultra Games subsidiary to publish additional games.  This was important to both parties during the chip shortage of 1988.  It was the chip manufacturing that was in short supply, not cardboard or plastic.  Konami could have avoided the cost of making a mold for NES carts.  

Later Virgin Games made their own licensed board for Overlord and Acclaim made their own board and MMC3 clone for several licensed games.  They are a bit cheap compared to real Nintendo boards because they do not use a solder mask to protect the traces.  Nintendo released boards with the Namco 118 and the Sunsoft FME-7 chips.  

Jaleco, Konami, Irem, Sunsoft, Taito, Namco and Bandai were the only licensed developers to make their own cartridges.  They were among the first 3rd party publishers and were given more favorable licensing terms than later developers and publishers..  Many of these companies sometimes used Nintendo-made boards and shells.  

[HVC-Man]

Nintendo released boards with the Namco 118 and the Sunsoft FME-7 chips.  

The NES FME-7 board doesn't have the regular Nintendo markings, like XXROM. Given the cartridge shell says Sunsoft on the back, I'd be willing to bet the PCB inside was manufactured by Sunsoft instead of Nintendo.

But yes, there do exist third party-published, licensed NES games. I forgot Virgin also did their own publishing, they were primarily a PAL company, yes?

[Great Hierophant]

Nintendo released boards with the Namco 118 and the Sunsoft FME-7 chips.  

The NES FME-7 board doesn't have the regular Nintendo markings, like XXROM. Given the cartridge shell says Sunsoft on the back, I'd be willing to bet the PCB inside was manufactured by Sunsoft instead of Nintendo.

But yes, there do exist third party-published, licensed NES games. I forgot Virgin also did their own publishing, they were primarily a PAL company, yes?

Look to Europe, the boards for Mr. Gimmick and Batman: Return of the Joker are designated "JLROM" and have the Nintendo copyright.  Virgin Games was primarily a U.K. software distributor in those days.