Making NES cartridges (don’t do it)

[pbj]

TLDR - You can get an Everdrive N8 bootleg on Ali for less than $40.  Full stop, just do that.

Jaws on NES was not a game I discovered until well after childhood.  When I finally played it, I remembered thinking “LJN oddly advertised this game for years in magazines…” and it was also in every video rental store I ever visited.  When I finally played it, I was surprised at how much I enjoyed it.  You frequently get caught in a death loop but a good run can be completed in 20 minutes.  It plays responsive, has colorful graphics, nice NES chiptunes.  Just always felt nice and I own a good condition original now.

Then a couple things happen.  Mike_A comes to visit and I play Intellivision for the first time I can remember at the Houston arcade show.  He fires up Shark! Shark! which was new to me and an obvious inspiration to Jaws.

The other thing is that Limited Run Games released Jaws Enchanced last month and the ROM was extracted and played on Everdrives.  I’ll never understand why they didn’t also release NES cartridges.

So, a game and movie store opened up across from a nationally known Indo-Pak restaurant I visit as often as possible to buy stewed goat.  (Aga’s)  it’s about two miles from my house.

After the Jaws rom was released, I went in search of the cheapest MMC3 cartridge.  According to my notes and their stock it was Play Action Football.



I cleaned them out.

I desoldered the original chips (do not recommend unless you have a station) and did a double stack of sockets.  Original chips booted, so I did the documented conversion where you lift up five legs per chip and run jumper wires. 



Original game burned to EPROMs was booting, so I proceeded.



Yes, so, turns out this cartridge is MMC3B.  You lift pin 12 of the MMC off the board and run a jumper from pin 10 and now it’s MMC3.



This got it going 100%.

[Mike A]

Hehe.

Nice work.

Jaws is a fun game.

Thank you for recommending it.