Does anyone know if there is a list of games that contain w-ram anywhere? Thank You
There is a
pretty comprehensive document listing cartridge board types for a large number of known NES games. Certain of these board types have W-RAM and others don't; SAROM, for instance, has an MMC1, 128KB PRG-ROM, 64KB CHR-ROM, and 8KB W-RAM, while SBROM is identical except that it lacks W-RAM. A pretty good way to find out what boards have what is to look at the "iNES Mapper #
x" articles on the
NESDev Wiki.
There's also a
less comprehensive document that, near the end, simply says what carts (out of a significantly smaller list) have what.
commodorejohn wrote:
There is a
pretty comprehensive document listing cartridge board types for a large number of known NES games. Certain of these board types have W-RAM and others don't; SAROM, for instance, has an MMC1, 128KB PRG-ROM, 64KB CHR-ROM, and 8KB W-RAM, while SBROM is identical except that it lacks W-RAM. A pretty good way to find out what boards have what is to look at the "iNES Mapper #
x" articles on the
NESDev Wiki.There's also a
less comprehensive document that, near the end, simply says what carts (out of a significantly smaller list) have what.
w-ram is what is used in mario 2/3 correct? On this list
http://nesdev.com/rom.txt it states that it does not have it???
...Are you thinking of CHR-RAM? Quick overview:
W-RAM (aka SRAN) is on-cart memory, usually battery-backed, which is mapped into the CPU address space; it's usually used for saved games.
CHR-RAM (aka VRAM) is on-cart memory, never battery-backed, which is mapped into PPU address space; it's used to provide writable tiles.
Mario 3 doesn't have either type, and I'm pretty sure Mario 2 doesn't either (I know it doesn't have W-RAM, it might have CHR-RAM.)
I'm pretty sure Mario 3 does have WRAM. Not with a battery though.
Yes, SMB3 has it. I opened the cart the other day.
That list is wrong about both mario 2 and 3. They have pretty much the same setup and they both have wram.
As said earlier, learning what boards have wram and then using the "pretty comprehensive document" is probably the best way to make a list. I'm too lazy to make you a boards with wram list (much less a games with wram list), but you can figure most of them out from kevtris's mapper database:
http://www.tripoint.org/kevtris/mappers/mappers.html
Boards with WRAM :
MMC1 : SAROM, SJROM, SKROM, SNROM, SOROM, SUROM, SXROM
MMC3 : TNROM, TKROM, TSROM
MMC4 : FJROM (not sure, that's just what the Wiki says)
MMC5 : EKROM, ETROM, EWROM
Other carts : NES-BTR (Batman : Return of the Jocker)
Notice : Some japanese Bandai carts use serial EEPROM to save games instead of WRAM.
Carts in red means there is room for more than 8kb of WRAM. Carts in yellow means that there is 8kb WRAM, but no slot for any battery. For other cats, there is a slot for a battery, but it's not always used.
Note that WRAM without any battery is often used just to have a lot more arrays of varialbe, upgrading the working ram from 2kb to 10kb, wich is interesting for developpers. With a battery a part of the 8kb is used to store variables arrays that are used to save the game and that must be power-down remanant.