Making New Cartridges

[Paul Slocum]

I've been too busy to get very far making a new Genesis EPROM board yet, but a guy from tototek.com said they could make programmed Genesis boards up to 16M for $10 a piece, which is actually a pretty decent price based on my experience releasing retro-console games. And it may be possible to get a better price in quanitity.

I ordered their Genesis RAM cart which should be here soon. They already shipped it here, but I was out of town for Christmas when it arrived, and the post office shipped it back because I didn't pick it up in time! But Tototek is shipping it again without charging me any extra. I was pretty impressed with that.

-paul

[oompa loompa]

$10 a piece is a very very nice price with the board and everything =P. the otp eproms of that size alone go for like $10 each (i think they're even cheaper now these days), and that's just for the chip XD. if ya had myself a milling machine, you'd break even with the $10 0.o

sega's very leniant with flash carts, roms, and everything, like atari. so you could probably set yourself up with selling massive quantities of your games in the US. unlike nintendo and atari =P, don't even dare sell homebrew carts for nintendo's system in the US x.x, even in hk, they took people to the cleaners

[CDoty]

Peon-Paul said:

... but a guy from tototek.com said they could make programmed Genesis boards up to 16M for $10 a piece, which is actually a pretty decent price based on my experience releasing retro-console games.

How many would you have to order to get them for $10?

[Fonzae]

;D 100 or 1000?
If its 100, i think its ok if we make a compilation...
Personaly i prefer segacd for now since it's easy to burn cd and the sound isn't a problem ^^.

[oompa loompa]

=o 100? if it were one of my games that i were to sell, 100 would be outrageous 0.o because my games are like....... play for 5 minutes..... barf. 100x$10=$1000 too x.x. If I were me, i'd find a shortcut around this =P

[fonzaz]

;D
I meant a compilation (5-6 games)...

[paul]

He said he could make one for $10.

[oompa loompa]

Peon-fonzaz said:

;D
I meant a compilation (5-6 games)...

=D, okay, now that'd change my view =P

and hey, do these carts just come with the pc-board, or does it include the plastic case and the whole 9 yards? ;D

this also reminds me on how i use to go to funcoland and buy some cheap nes sports games, and take them apart. i would replace the old roms with eproms that had super rare games on them, and then sell them to my rich friends in my high school =P. it was even at the time when cd burning was not so common too . i made some real good money =o

[paul]

it's just the board, but cases should not be difficult to find. I'm sure someone's got a lot of Madden '92s they'd be willing to sell for cheap. This is how Atariage makes their homebrews.

[FonzieV]

"t's just the board, but cases should not be difficult to find."
Well, if this guy can do you some Genesis cart PCB's, i'm sure he'll be able to find a "master" and a guy to inject some plastic cases in his garage

[oompa loompa]

lol =P, i dunno if that can be done in a garage =D, unless the carts were made out of wood, which would actually be nice, but strange XD. manufacturers will charge ya up the butt for molding plastic cases, and they would have to be bought by the 10^3 power =P.

hehe, just asking, only because it gets someone to post, and makes the forum active XD

[Fonziev]

Well, anyway, i'll make the game selection menu for the compilation ^^ ;D

[paul]

yeah, plastic cases are much more difficult to make than boards. the setup costs are VERY high unless you already have a mold. we went through all this with Atari homebrews (including the discussion of wood and other materials ). It's still cheapest to just reuse cases from common carts, but someone did finally get a mold made.

vgwiz.com/products-hw.html#a26-cas-a-01

If you guys do make a compilation cartridge (which sounds great!) you might consider getting Atariage to sell it. Albert's been selling my homebrews for years, and he does a good job, and Atariage gets a lot of traffic from all kinds of retrogamers (not just Atari fans).

[paul]

oh yeah, here's a link to the Atariage store:

www.atariage.com/store/

[oompa loompa]

yea, atariage is cool =P
people are willing to spend good money there =D

but, i think before even making cartridges (yea, that's me, bring everyone down 0.o), there should be more active developers to make these games. like, noone's going to buy "devster's galaxian!" for the genesis, if the hardware is 1000 times better than that =D