I don't mind if anyone thinks that cartridges need a comeback, but lets keep it in your head. I can understand that cartridges can be more durable and overall more convenient than a disk, but lets not loose sight of what's important here. Currently, and Single sided, dual layer Blu-Ray Disk can hold around 50GB while a double sided dual layer DVD can hold about 16GB. Bringing back cartridges would seriously limit not only the graphics displayed, but complex game mechanics that you don't see. I think these are more important to gaming than anything. There's only so much to be done with the capabilities of a SNES cartridge. in time, even disks will be become obsolete, and be replaced with something else. Video game companies don't need to look backward, but forward.

SefirothPH : Currently, they have 64GBs the size of my thumb. That's a ton. And there's a ton of room left for accelerators.

Wow, for serious? What about the awsomeness of Blueray? But cartridges are NOT more durable than discs. The bits inside can become loose, if you step on a cartridge it can break or you can break the components inside... Just treat your discs with care. Buy a cd case for a few dollars at Wal-mart and store the discs in there.

Also, for the guy that blew out the dust in his cartridges, that's really bad. Spittle can get in there and cause problems. Try buying a small thing of condensed air and use that instead.

Cloudsnakeskin : i did that with sean white snowboarding and it still dosent work, damn disks!

Yeah I do also think that cartridges are alot better! They should definitly bring them back! There was no loading on cartridge! & scratches on CD could cause glitches!

Yes, the cartridges must come back, you can not fix the "red ring of death" of the Xbox 360 with a cotton swab and alcohol as the NES. N64 was great, the cartridges must come back.

Bobbynibbles : Yes, but that only seems to happen if you treat it like dirt. If you just leave your discs anywhere, they could get scratched, but if you leave a cartridge anywhere, they just stay the same. I have about 50 or so games that are on cartridge.

Bobbynibbles : yeah, cd's may have more space and memory,but original cartridges came in cases too. and tha blu-ray cd's cant be fixed. watch any video on youtube about "how to tough are NES games" and be suprised. NES carts are much more resistant than standard cd's. if you abused the crap out of carts, a q-tip and alcool solves it.

Alex, I have music CDs that I have had from before you were ALIVE that still work great. You say that cartridges will only break if you treat them bad and guess what? CDs will work great if you treat them with care as well. Don't ever put the glossy side of the CD down and don't scratch the top of the CD were the label is.
You are trying to say that cartridges last longer than CDs, but both will get messed up if you treat them bad. Just treat your games well and you don't have to worry about messing them up!

i think that those carts can work for longer than cd's, i've seen N64 carts being abused to the crap out of them and work as new. the solution for all this would be if game companies placed 1 or 2 games onto a single memory stick. like the super mario bros/ duck hunt game for NES.

I like that idea, yet they are so big, that they are hard to find places for them. Also, CDs are just for the game, the N64 wasn't like the Wii, it didn't store the data, the Chips (the game itself) did. so they'd have to go back to those systems.

i completely agree some cartridge consoles in my opinion are better than today's disc consoles like n64 in my opinion is better than the Wii

hackerman : Well, this isn't really about which console is better, it's more of the durability and space holding on a cartridge compared to a disc.

I prefer cartridges than CDs, because.. Of course, because of the fact CDs break easily. 

Although, the N64 did have a problem... The dust problem. You have to blow in the slot, and the hole in the cartridge, and try to press it in, hope for the best for it to work, and if it doesn't, repeat the process. I miss that.

I agree that they need a comeback. Just think about it. There are memory sticks about the size an sd card that hold upwards of 4 gb of space.

I like Cartridges better then disks. I prefer the durability much more then the "space" factor. However, I believe a lot of people are missing one major factor.


Cartridges screw up very easily. I don't remember how many times on the SNES I lost progress because the game "malfunctioned" simply because my cat of all things poked the cartridges lightly with it's nose just to smell it. At that time, my SNES and the games were fairly new and were in rather good quality.

The N64 was a bit better, but it still had some problems. The cartridges could be abused in some games, I.E. the crooked cartridge trick. You can really skip out on a lot of the games like Zelda by lifting the left side of the cartridge out slightly, allowing you to clip through many objects and in some cases when the cartridge is trying to possibly copy data, end up with a glitched file when a lot of crap can happen.



While I prefer cartridges over CD's, there are a few little mishaps the cartridges have themselves involving game-play.

Vincent Swiftstrike : Thats true. So why  not make it so you can't mess with the cartridge during game play. Have something similar to the PS2 Slim. 

2112tomsawyer : Because it's not that easy to just go and fix. Think of it this way: What if they created a sensor to be able to determine if the cartridge was removed even slightly? Then you have the same problems you have with the disks. Even if the cartridge was in, if the system or cartridge got even a little bit poked, it would shut itself off because it thought it was being removed. Then you have the same problem the SNES had; unstable cartridges.


Now and the case of closing something, for one, that would be one big fat system. Now that may not be a problem, but this is: Such a big thing that has to close around the cartridge is going to cook the cartridge. How will the heat that such a large system would generate possibly release the heat in a closed off area? It could be done, but then you would have to design to system to be even bigger.

Vincent Swiftstrike : That makes sense. It made sense in my head, but now that you mention it, over heating would be a problem. 

Cartridges would be interesting to have nowadays. We still have them, for the DS and some even survive for the GBA. For consoles, I guess they would be able to hold much more space, but CD's just seem so much more sleeker I guess.