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Is there a trick to put in an NES cart? Because whenever I do it, it doesn't read properly and then I try tilting the cartridge a few times, but when it finally works, I end up losing my save file. Is there a way to avoid this?

Wasn't there an old trick about holding the reset button when you turn the power off, to keep the save data from deleting or something? Maybe hitting the cartridge has nothing to do with it.

You should hold reset while powering off the system. You should also be sure your cartridges are clean. You may also need to clean the connector in the system.

It wasn't really a "trick", some battery backed games did ask you to hold reset while powering off. (e.g. Final Fantasy) Later games used safety diodes and write protect measures in the mapper/cartridge that made this unnecessary.

However, I don't think even these protection measures were very good against what happens when you pull a live cartridge out of a powered on system. Game Boy and some models of SNES both had physical locks to keep the cartridge in while powered on.

I've definitely had saved games ruined by pulling out the live cartridge. I remember vividly saving my SimCity game, and on the "good night" screen my sister (eager to play a different game) yanked the cartridge out because she thought it was safe at that point. (It was not!!!)

And cartridges. I don't know about the Super Famicom or European SNES, but there were 2 basic shapes of cartridge in North America, one of which could not be locked in using the North American SNES's lock.

Until today, I had no idea why that particular cartridge shape exists, when it was first distributed, or whether it pre-dated the locking design. Now I know; the locking mechanism caused more problems than it solved with impatient players breaking it.

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I wonder if people pulling out cartridges with the SNES still on is why it seems like you can find a lot of dead SNES systems. I remember reading it was some fuse that tended to pop on the SNES so I guess the two might be related.

This is the first time I've heard of a locking mechanism on the SNES, it's actually kind of mind blowing to me, considering the SNES is pretty much my favourite video game platform.
The only American SNES model I have ever seen is the "jr" model though, and I never use it due to lack of RGB.

I do have a few US carts (in fact, I should have 40-50 of them), so now I'll have to go through them and double check - I honestly never noticed that there were two different designs.

speaking of pulling out cart, sorry if this is not related to the topic exactly but i recall when i was like 7 or 8 years old when i first got Mario 2 for the NES ...there's this 1 fuzzy memory in my head still of a time when i kept taking out the cart and putting it back in...

or that thing people usually do where you slam it down at a certain angle just a little outside of the NES to "force" it in ...i was doing that a bunch of times and somehow i ended up instantly starting the game at world 4 (the ice world) instead of the title screen when i KNOW i never played that far before previously

why is that ? how can that actually happen ??

You can get all kinds of glitches like that by tweaking cartridges in the port. There's a really popular one in Goldeneye: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SP5c_MEs9mo


More stuff: http://errors.wikia.com/wiki/Cartridge_tilting

Interesting, I've never seen that in Japanese or PAL cartridges. They all have the lock mechanism as far as I can tell. I guess breaking the lock mechanism wasn't very common here.

I was under the impression that the change in cartridge shape was to keep the Game Genie from properly grabbing the cartridge by the notch. The lack of change to the Super Famicom and PAL Super NES cartridges may reflect that the Genie wasn't sold in those markets.

The switch to the new-style notch appears to have happened in early 1993, as my Super Mario Kart has the old-style notch, but Super Mario All-Stars has the new.

My photo of both styles:

I had never noticed this change before... Actually, the old format looks a bit strange to me, I don't think I even own any cartridges with that design... Maybe by the time SNES games started being sold here the new design was already consolidated. I have to check my cartridges out.