The magical MMC chip in NES cartridges

The Nintendo Entertainment System or Family Computer was one of the most innovative consoles in the past for multiple factors, the most important was how it rescued the confidence of gamers and consumers in the West after the terrible crash of 1983, however, there are others that greatly influenced the quality of their games, making them jewels of engineering in those years.

The NES had a limit with respect to its hardware, this could be seen in its first games such as Super Mario Bros, Donkey Kong or Circus Charlie, where the amount of memory was very small, consequently, the movements were only horizontal or vertical (depending on the game) and the sprites were very small, but thanks to the developers all this would evolve in an amazing way.

In 1987 came out a video game that left many totally surprised by how complex it was graphically, this was Megaman, also known as Rockman in Japan. This was one of the first cartridges to have a chip which helped the console to exceed its limits, it was the MMC, which expanded in a way the ROM memory of the console, helping developers to extend the content for their games.

Although Megaman is one of the best known games for using this chip, it was not the first to implement it, the one that takes this honor was Gradius, released in 1985 and considered one of the best shooters of those years. The chip used in this cartridge is specifically the MMC CNROM, manufactured directly by Nintendo for the developers who deserved it.

Different versions of the MMC chip were released, among which we can highlight the UNROM (used in Castlevania, Contra or Megaman), MMC2 (incorporated for the game Punch-Out!!) and MMC3 (well known for the famous Super Mario Bros 3). Each of these chips represented a great evolution in each of its games, something that could be noticed in each year that the console was active in the market.

The MMC3 chip was one of the most impressive that could be created for the NES cartridges, as it greatly increased the ROM capacity for programmers, in addition to being able to do something that, at that time, was unthinkable, to move the game screen in two simultaneous directions, nowadays this effect is something totally normal, but at that time it was a totally shocking novelty.

For this reason Super Mario Bros 3 was a game so extensive and at the same time with the ability to see Mario fly and the screen could move diagonally, all this was thanks to the architecture and performance of the MMC3 chip, achieving something that the console by itself could never do, also this cartridge is considered one of the most complex with respect to the architecture of its internal board.

The MMC2 is not far behind, as it was designed specifically for a video game called Punch-Out! This allowed the simultaneous loading between two memory banks for graphics, allowing the NES could use on screen some very large sprites and at the same time other small ones, thus not producing that annoying effect called flickering or also known as flickering, something that can be seen in games like Double Dragon 2.

The MMC Chip was one of the great things that could be created in the mid 80's for the NES, managing to expand in each of its games the capabilities of the console, in addition to mark history with video games that revolutionized, being a reference for future developers that we know today.