Although predated by a few consoles including the Sega CD and the 3D0, it was the Sony PlayStation that ushered in the era of CD-based consoles to the masses. Cheap manufacturing costs and the ability to store 650 megs of game data per CD won out over cartridges, which were more expensive to produce and limited in storage capacity (64 megabytes, on the Nintendo 64).

The unfortunate product of CD and DVD based games was piracy. With CD and DVD burners installed in even the most inexpensive computers, it was only a matter of time before enterprising hackers put two and two together and figured out a way to circumvent the copy protection included in CD-based gaming consoles. Figuring out ways around the protection was the hard part; duplicating the disc based media was simple.

Not so however with cartridge-based games. The average gamer did not have hardware or skills needed to extract (or “dump”) the game data from cartridges, or put that data back on to new, blank cartridges. Doing so (especially on a small scale) would have been cost prohibitive, which is essentially the entire reason for pirating software. So even though cartridge-based consoles did not have the copy protection that the CD-based systems had, because of the obscurity of the cartridge format, those systems were safe from pirates. Right?

Well, not really. While blank cartridges were expensive, floppy disks were not. Thus, the idea of console copiers were born.

[What is a Console Copier?]

Console copiers are devices that attach to cartridge-based systems and perform two primary tasks. The first is to allow users to load games from some form of removable media (other than a cartridge) into the console, tricking the console into thinking a cartridge has been inserted. A console copier’s second function is to allow users to dump their games from cartridge form to some other type of storage. I am being intentionally vauge here, as media differed from machine to machine; most earlier systems used floppy disks for storage. As cartridge-sizes grew, so did the media — Nintendo 64 copiers used Zip Disks or CD-Rom drives for storage. Console copiers had other uses as well, such as ROM hacking and serving as inexpensive software development units, but the primary demographic was undoubtedly pirates.

Flash cards are not console copiers. Flash cards are cartridges that contain memory that can be “flashed,” or reprogrammed, multiple times. Flash cards typically plug into game consoles the same way a cartridge connects. Depending on the amount of RAM the cartridge contains, a flash card may contain multiple games.

Due to inconsistancy between cartridges on earlier systems (such as NES mappers) and the expense in developing and manufacturing such devices, console copiers were relatively rare for 8-bit systems. There were copiers, such as simple EEPROM duplicators for the Atari 2600 or the original Game Doctor for the FamiCom, but it wasn’t until the arrival of 16-bit systems such as the Super Nintendo and Sega Genesis launched that console copiers began readily appearing — and by “appearing,” I mean “in the back alleys of Hong Kong.” In the early 1990s, console copiers were difficult to locate in the US. The only way to get one was to order one from some shady overseas company, or buy one from a local importer (and paying his import fees, of course). According to this archived FAQ from 1993, copiers run between “$280 and $370.” That was a lot of money to mail to an overseas company selling illegal devices. As manufacturing prices went down, companies began cranking out console copiers. Companies such as UFO Enterprises, Front Far East, Venus Corp. and the oddly-named Bung Enterprises began churning out dozens of different models.

Most of these devices were similar in design and function. Each unit plugged into a console’s cartridge port, and contained a floppy disk drive and a cartridge port of its own. Insert a game cartridge into the copier, and these machines were able to dump the contents of that cartridge on to a floppy disk. These ROM dumps are the same ROMs that are used for computer-based emulators. Without a cartridge in the unit, games (via the floppy drive) were able to be loaded into the unit and played on the original console. Likewise, ROMs downloaded from the Internet (or BBSes, back then) could be copied to a floppy disk and played, without needing the original cartridge.

3.5″ floppies were large enough to store Super Nintendo and Sega Genesis games at first, but as games grew in size, so did the needs for more RAM on console copiers. Most copiers were able to span large games across multiple disks. For the Nintendo 64, the makers of console copiers upgraded their media storage. The Z64 uses Zip Disks; the V64 and CD64 both use CD-Rom drives. Some copiers included parallel ports for linking units directly to computers. Others began including multiple adapters for connecting to multiple systems. Venus’ Multi Game Hunter could connect to both the Super Nintendo and the Sega Genesis. Bung’s Multi Game Doctor could dump SNES, Genesis, Neo-Geo, PC-Engine, Super Graphics, Game Gear, and Game Boy games (Link).

[What happened to Console Copiers?]

The same thing that happened to dinosaurs. No, they didn’t fall into tar pits — they became extinct. After losing a lawsuit to Nintendo in 2000, Bung/Mr. Flash stopped distributing Nintendo copiers. In fear of more lawsuits, other companies quickly followed suit. With all new consoles moving to disc-based media, there was no need for new console copiers. Handheld consoles such as the Gameboy Advance and the Nintendo DS moved to flash carts. Flash carts were even developed for many of the older systems as well; Tototek.com currently sells flash carts for the Sega Genesis (which also supports 32X games), Super Nintendo, Game Gear, PC Engine, Sega Master System, and other systems. Some of these include parallel adapters that allow owners to also dump cartridges to their PC, although typically flash carts are simply associated with playing both copyrighted and non-copyrighted (homebrew) games on vintage hardware.

The rest of this week, I’ll be reviewing some console copiers from my private collection. These include copiers for the Super Nintendo, Sega Genesis, and the Nintendo 64. If I haven’t bored you to death by then, I’ll move on to some of the flash carts I own.