Nester64x: The BEST Format

This piece is a fanboy satire. The views and opinions expressed herein do not state or reflect those of Nintendojo or any of its affiliates.

Yo, what’s up, hozers.  Here’s why I’m celebrating the DS as a system– and looking forward to the 3DS, come to think of it.  The fact is simple– it uses the best kind of video game medium ever invented by anyone ever.  Of course, I am talking about cartridges here.

Now, any Nintendo fan worth his butter knows that Nintendo doesn’t call cartridges “cartridges.”  From day one, Nintendo of America has referred to said media format as “Game Paks,” except for the DS itself, when they started referring to them as “Game Cards.”  Which I was a little confused by.  That makes little or no sense, but as I am certain that Nintendo always does the right things, ALWAYS, I guess I can take them at their word for it or whatever.

Anyway, as you probably already know, cartridges were invented by John J. Cartridge back in 1892 as a way to store data without the cumbersome and fragile method of diskettes.  They made their way into early computers in 1957.  This was before computers were trying to take over the world, you understand.

Now, the Atari corporation used to make both computers and video game systems, so when the cartridge format worked so well for the Atari series of personal computers, they naturally gravitated the format over to their home consoles as well, save for the earliest ones that were single-game only, like Home Pong.  These wonderful cartridges allowed players to have multiple games for the same system.

Of course, in the mid-1980s, we got the most important use of cartridges to date, or since– the NES.  This is where cartridges became “Game Paks.”  Now, I’ve gone on and on and on again about how the NES is the most important piece of hardware ever built, and how it kind of rivals the wheel in terms of cultural relevance, so I guess I technically don’t HAVE to wax on and off about it again, here, but why not?  It had Super Mario Bros, Popeye, and Princess Tomato in the Salad Kingdom.  It had the Zapper, Duck Hunt, and its OWN ROBOT.  Nothing could ever top that.

But we still kept using Game Paks for future systems, proving that they, too, were superior in many ways.  Of course, the Super NES, N64, Game Boy, and Game Boy Advance Systems all used cartridges– sorry, Game Paks– too.  Now, everything wasn’t coming up roses forever, of course.  Those guys at the other game companies started wanting their new-fangled games on their disk-shaped doo-hickeys, and so we ended up with every system being based on this new-fangled thing.

Of course, Nintendo fought back by making the GameCube disks very small and compact, like cartridge-disks, if you will.  Of course, the Wii was so super-advanced that bigger disks were needed.  But the DS, oh, Nintendo, you really kept us close with that.  You used our beloved cartridges again.  Technically, they’re more like Flash cards than the classic cartridges, but the intent is there.  They are solid-state storage.

And that’s why the DS is the most important game system currently on the market.  Not because of touching things, blowing on things, or always being able to see the map screen.  No, it’s because Nintendo was kind enough to grace us with the best kind of storage for games ever invented.  Fortunately, we’ve got more of the same ahead of us.  Yeah!