To read more about the specifics, including an interesting VHDL design, check out this wiki page. It provides a boot menu that allows the user to select a game before locking itself down into a separate “normal” mapper mode that only exposes certain banks to the game inside the collection. Similar to MBC5Ī “metamapper” for a game collection, which switches between sets of banksĬustom MBC designed by Bandai for a single game, Tamagotchi 3Ĭustomer MBC designed by Hudson, supports infrared LED input.Ĭustomer MBC designed by Hudson that adds a RTC and piezo buzzer to the HuC-1Ī note about the MMM01, it is a “metamapper” that is used in the game collection (Momotarō Collection 2 and Taito Variety Pack). ROM banks were 8KB and RAM banks were 4KBĬontained additional 256 byte EEPROM and 2-axis accelerometer.
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Had separate, switchable ROM and RAM sets plus flash memory. Only used for one game: Net de Get: Minigame 100. Supported the light sensor, and a rumble motor Similar to MBC1, also included addition of a real time clock
No bank controller, just a ROM chip and potentially 1 bank’s worth of RAM The following types of memory bank controllers were usually available for use: Type The size of the game and add-ons like RAM controlled what type of memory bank controller would be required. When developing a game, it was and still is important to consider the size of the final product (unless you’re Call of Duty). The Gameboy color bumped that to 32KB, but that could still be constraining for larger titles.įor a deeper dive into the specifics of how games performed ROM and RAM bank switching, check out my article here: Gameboy DMG ROM and RAM Bank Switching. Many games took advantage of having extra RAM on the cartridge because the Gameboy DMG only had 8KB available internally. That data was mounted at addresses 0xA000-0xBFFF and was able to be both read and written to (as one would expect). RAM banks behaved similarly, though it only mounted 8KB at a time. The selected bank would be mounted from 0x4000-0x7FFF, right next to the area of memory that was bank 00. The game would be able to swap out any additional banks by writing values to special areas of the memory map, which would instruct the MBC what bank to switch to.
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This first bank usually contained code that was used commonly, as it would always be present and accessible by the program. The first bank, 00, would be always mounted at 0x0000-0x3FFF in the Gameboy’s memory map. ROM data on a cartridge would be split into 16KB “banks” that could be swapped out at will by the game. This allowed for very simple PCB layouts, as the single ROM chip would be directly connected to the cartridge pins.īy placing an MBC between the console and the cartridge ROM/RAM, it could translate special reads and writes to facilitate the bank switching. Mario were 32KB or less in size, so didn’t require a MBC to operate. In practice the maximum ROM size of a game without an MBC was 32KB. The MBCs were most commonly paired with larger ROM and additional RAM, but different MBCs also allowed the use of real time clocks, rumble, and even a light sensor.Ī normal cartridge had 16 address lines, allowing the Gameboy to address a maximum of 64KB of ROM on the cartridge without an MBC. It allowed the cartridge to not only address larger amounts of RAM and ROM, but to also have additional hardware that the Gameboy could utilize. Memory Bank Controller were a part of many cartridge games developed for the Gameboy and Gameboy color. Next we’ll look at how the Gameboy determined the cartridge type by examining the game ROM header.įinally, we’ll take a look at some real examples from my own game collection and see how the MBC was applied in practice. We’ll also analyze some usage statistics about how common they were in cartridges, and what types were used the most.
To start, we will define what exactly a Memory Bank Controller is, and the different types that were available. In this article, we will examine the Memory Bank Controllers (MBC) contained inside the cartridge, and how they enabled the worlds of Pokemon, Zelda, and countless other to become a reality in the hands of children and adults everywhere. How did a Gameboy cartridges store such a wide variety of games, while also enabling things like save files, rumble, and even infrared communication? Once slotted in, the bits and bytes contained within a cartridge created countless worlds and memories. Without a game cartridge, a Gameboy is just displays “Gameboy” and freezes. Exploring the Gameboy Memory Bank Controller |
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