Clone systems

This post is sort of related to one I read some days ago about NES hardware turning old and not working anymore.
As more and more clone systems hit the market, such as Retro Duo (and even Retro Trio which I myself happen to own), folks wanting to try out development on the "real deal" will be greatly disapointed about not being able to use, say, PowerPak on these clones.

This may be a thing for the wiki to cover perhaps, like if there are any prior experiences and diversities in compability to list.
Put more simple, a quick overlook of "will my [name of clone] be able to use [name of devtool/equipment for homebrew]" in some sort of list..?

Retrousb about PowerPak:

That is great to know and all, but ; why doesn't it work? Also for a wiki page perhaps? Once I get my own PowerPak, I will try if it works on my clone, I mean what harm can it do?

EDIT: hmm... why didn't I post this in the wiki section instead.. ah well..

I believe it's because of how the cartridge slot is wired. Some pins that could be controlled by the cartridges/mappers are hardwired in these systems. This is also why MMC5 games don't work on clones.


It will probably not work. The PowerPak has been reported to work on older Famiclones (from the 80's and 90's) that don't use NOACs, bot not on newer ones. The Everdrive N8 appears to be more compatible with clone systems, but AFAIK support isn't guaranteed either.

The first three questions you should ask the seller of any NES clone:

1. Can you show me Castlevania III on this system? (Don't say MMC5 because they might not know what that is, and making the seller feel dumb might make the seller uncomfortable to deal with you.)
2. (If local, not online) Can I try this red game? (Whip out your PowerPak, preferably with NovaSquirrel's AUTORUN.NES set to some homebrew ROM.)
3. If it doesn't run my other NES games, can I return it for a refund?

Sure.. that will be in no way time consuming
By the way I found this for SR Trio
Image: How to fix famiclone to play MMC5

Tested a thing just now and discovered something strange, my clone runs 'older' mmc1 games like Kid Icarus a lot slower than my NES does.. PAL Cart on PAL Nes vs dito on PAL Clone.. hmm.

Might the Kid Icarus problem resemble this one with The Legend of Zelda? They're both among the three well-known FDS-to-SNROM ports.

Yes, but the slow down cant be considered "slow motion" in this case. It seem a few % off or something.. The music also has higher pitch on SR, which is really confusing. I had the opportunity to connect both SR and my NES at the same time with TLoZ in both consoles and the only thing off seems to be the music and sfx pitch.

Same thing with Mega Man (1).

Ok. So here is my humble contribution so far

That sounds like the PAL famiclone might be configured like a Dendy, with the CPU:PPU timings kept in proportion to the NTSC one to allow for compatibility with J and U region games.

Well you can probably be safe to say that the RetroUSB AVS system will play the PowerPak. Plus it will be in HD Also, from what I've read, the PowerPak 2 has been finished for a long time, so who knows when/if that will appear.