Cartridge and mappers' history

• 1983 July 15th : The Famicom is released in Japan. The 3 launch games are : Donkey Kong, Donkey Kong Jr. and Popeye. During one year only Nintendo games were released for the system. All of them were 16kB PRG and 8kb CHR.

• 1984 June 21th : Family Basic is released. It is the first special cart Nintendo made for the system, instead of being a game it is a device that allows to program the system in Basic language. It's also the first cart that uses 32kB of PRG. It also uses 2KB PRG RAM and 2 KB battery backup, it is the first cart (for a long while) to use PRG-RAM and battery backup.

• 1984 July 28th/31st : Hudson's "Nuts & Milk" and "Lode runner" appears to be the first 3rd party games released on the Famicom. The cartridges were made by Nintendo though.

• 1984 November 2nd/8th : Namco's "Pac Man" and "Xevious" appears to be the first entierely 3rd party made cartridges released for the Famicom. Also Xevious appears to be the first 32 KB PRG game for the system (Family basic isn't a game). Because of the lack of any lockout chip, many other companies will follow this trend and make their own cartridges instead of having Nintendo make them for them.

• 1985 September 13th : Nintendo "Super Mario Bros." is released in Japan. It is one of the first (if not the first) Famicom game to not be merely a port from another arcade or computer game. This will be a major twist to the console's sucess.

• 1985 September 28th : Jaleco's "City Connection" is the first game to use hardware other than 2 ROMs (again I don't count Family Basic as a game). The cartridge was made by jaleco and uses some circuitery to allow 16 KB of CHR ROM, switching between two 8 KB banks. Mappers were born.

• 1985 October 18th : The NES is released in the United States. The launch games are : 10-Yard Fight, Baseball, Clu Clu Land, Donkey Kong Jr. Math, Duck Hunt, Excitebike, Golf, Gyromite, Hogan's Alley, Ice Climber, Kung Fu, Mach Rider, Pinball, Stack-Up, Super Mario Bros., Tennis, Wild Gunman, and Wrecking Crew.

Some of those contains famicom games with an internal famicom to NES adapter so that they are adapted to the NES's different cartridge connector. Other were directly re-made for the NES. This list already includes some third party games but this time the lockout chip prevents them from building their own cartridges.

• 1986 January 4th : Konami copies Jaleco's CHR bankswitching circuit in their "Twin Bee" game.

• 1986 February 21st : Nintendo release the Famicom Disk System accesory, which can vastly improve the possibilities of the console (almost no games were using mappers). One disk could hold 128 KB of data, and could be cheaper to produce. Also it could save data, and extra sound could be used.

• 1986 April : Bandai, Konami and Nintendo appears to start produce CNROM/mapper 3 games almost symunaneously. It's an improvement over Jaleco's circuit that uses only one chip instead of two.

• 1986 April 17th : Sunsoft's Atlantis no Nazo appears to be the first cartridge that uses a dedicated mapper chip (as oposed to 74 series logic chips). Other companies (Konami, Namco, etc...) will follow this trend rapidly.

• 1986 June 6th : Nintendo's Gumshoe (released in USA) is the first game that extands not only the CHR ROM, but also the PRG ROM. It's the first game to use 128 KB of PRG ROM.

• 1986 June 13th : Japanese version of Capcom's Maikamura (aka Ghost 'n' Goblins) appears to be the first UNROM/mapper 2 game. It'a also the first game cartridge to use CHR-RAM (not considering FDS's RAM adapter as a game).

• 1986 September 1st : The NES is released in PAL-B regions.

• 1987 April 14th : Seta's Morita Shougi appears to be the first game to use a Nintendo MMC1 mapper. It's also the first game cartridge with a 8kb SRAM and battery backup.

• 1987 May 15th : The NES is released in PAL-A regions.

• 1988 March 18th : Irem releases Napoleon Senki, the first games to have 4-screen mirroring, and to contain both CHR-RAM and CHR-ROM.

• 1988 September 27th : Seta's 8-Eyes appears to be the first game to use a Nintendo MMC3 mapper (it's just an improved version of an older Namco mapper by the way).

• 1990 September : Hal Laboratory's Uchuu Keibitai SDF and Konami's Castlevania 3 (released almost simunaneously) appears to be the first game to use a Nintendo MMC5 mapper.

• 1991 June : Videomation is released. It apparently is the first and only "game" to bankswitch CHR-RAM.

• 1994 May 13th : Coconuts Japan's Pachi Slot Adventure 3: Bitaoshii 7 Kenzan! appears to be the last licenced game released for the Famicom.

• 1994 December : Nintendo's Wario's Woods is the last licenced game for the NES in USA.