We love video games in whatever form they’re delivered. Give us a disc or a stick or a digital download – if the game’s a good’un, we’ll be happy whatever the format.
However, around these parts, we’re undeniably partial to the heft and clunk of a good old cartridge. Perhaps it’s because we’re gamers of, ahem, a certain vintage who grew up slotting lumps of plastic into larger lumps of plastic, but there’s just something about locking software into your console in this fashion that’s more satisfying than throwing a disc in a tray.
Image: Zion Grassl / Nintendo Life
With Nintendo’s long history of distributing ROMs on carts and physical media’s continued relevance despite the inevitable slide to digital, we’ve been thinking recently about our favourite Nintendo cartridge designs and thought it would be worth posing the question: Which of Nintendo’s many different cartridges is your personal favourite?
If this were a disc-based brawl, Wii would be watching from the sidelines while GameCube’s cute little mini discs (not MiniDiscs, of course, which are also lovely) and Wii U’s curvy-edged beauties would be duking it out.
But it’s not — this is cart combat. So before we turn it over to you for the deadliest of all deciders (a reader poll on’t internet), let’s take a look back at the many and various cart-y contenders, in roughly chronological order, looking to take the trophy. We’ve added some of our own thoughts as to their pros and cons. We’ve also excluded exotic variants and stuck to the standard-issue carts for each platform that supported them, including regional variants where they exist.
We begin in Japan with…
The Famicom Cart
The original — Image: Damien McFerran / Nintendo Life
The NES Cart
The original Western variant — Image: Zion Grassl / Nintendo Life
The Game Boy Cart
Gets the job done — Image: Damien McFerran / Nintendo Life
The Super Famicom Cart
Curvy and cool — Image: Damien McFerran / Nintendo Life
The Super NES Cart
Elicits sympathy for all our friends across the pond — Image: Zion Grassl / Nintendo Life
The Virtual Boy Cart
Thought we’d forget this one, did you? — Image: Gavin Lane / Nintendo Life
The Nintendo 64 Cart
Beautiful and chunky monkeys — Image: Zion Grassl / Nintendo Life
The Game Boy Color Cart
Inside out — Image: Gavin Lane / Nintendo Life
The Pokémon Mini Cart
wut — Image: Damien McFerran / Nintendo Life
The Game Boy Advance Cart
Advanced tech — Image: Damien McFerran / Nintendo Life
The Nintendo DS Cart
‘Carts’ or ‘cards’? — Image: Zion Grassl / Nintendo Life
The Nintendo 3DS Cart
A bit vanilla — Image: Damien McFerran / Nintendo Life
The Nintendo Switch Cart
Bitter — Image: Damien McFerran / Nintendo Life
So, there we are. Take to the poll below to pick the best cartridge Nintendo ever made.
Which is your favourite of all Nintendo’s cart designs? (184 votes)
Famicom5%
NES13%
Game Boy16%
Super Famicom and NES (EU)10%
Super NES (NA)10%
Virtual Boy0.5%
Nintendo 6417%
Game Boy Color6%
Pokémon Mini0%
Game Boy Advance7%
DS3%
3DS3%
Switch8%
Was it a tough decision? Which ones did you struggle to pick between? Are you more of a disc lover? Sure, the way the Wii sucked in its media with that sultry blue light was neat, but better than a cart? No, no, no.
Feel free to head down to the comments below and let us know how the 64DD (it’s a disc!) was robbed.
