Cartridge and mappers' history

1983 July 15th

The Nintendo Family Computer (Famicom) is released in Japan. The 3 launch games are : "Donkey Kong", "Donkey Kong Jr." and "Popeye". During the first year, only Nintendo released games for the system. All of them had 16 KiB PRG and 8 KiB 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 programming the system in the BASIC language. It's also the first cart that uses 32 KiB of PRG. Additionally it provides 2 KiB PRG RAM that is battery backup. It is the first cart (for a long while) to use PRG RAM, let alone battery backup.

1984 July 28th/31st

Hudson's "Nuts & Milk" and "Lode Runner" appear to be the first 3rd party games released on the Famicom. The cartridges were manufactured by Nintendo though.

1984 November 2nd/8th

Namco's "Pac Man" and "Xevious" appear to be the first cartridges released for the Famicom which were entirely manufactured by a 3rd party. "Xevious" appears to be the first 32 KiB PRG game for the system (as Family BASIC isn't a game). Because of the lack of any lockout chip, Namco and many other companies (Bandai, Irem, Jaleco, Konami, Sunsoft, Taito) will follow this trend and make their own cartridges instead of having Nintendo make them for them.

1985 September 13th

Nintendo's "Super Mario Bros." is released in Japan. It is one of the first (if not the first) Famicom games to not be merely a port of another arcade or computer game. This will be a major factor in the console's success.

1985 September 28th

Jaleco's "City Connection" is the first game to use hardware other than two ROMs (not counting Family BASIC). The cartridge was made by Jaleco and uses some circuitry to allow 16 KB of CHR ROM, switching between two 8 KiB banks. Mappers were born.

1985 October 18th

The Nintendo Entertainment System (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 these contained 60-pin Famicom cartridge PCBs connected to an internal Famicom-to-NES adapter, while others used 72-pin cartridge PCBs designed specifically for the NES. This list already includes some third party games but this time the lockout chip inside the NES prevented them from building their own cartridges.

1986 January 4th

Konami copied Jaleco's CHR bank switching circuit in their game "Twin Bee".

1986 February 21st

Nintendo released the Famicom Disk System (FDS) accessory, which vastly improve the capabilities of the console (almost no games were yet using mappers). One disk can hold 128 KB of data (64KB per side), and was cheaper to produce. Additionally it could hold save data, and produce extra sound.

1986 April

Bandai, Konami and Nintendo appear to start producing CNROM/mapper 3 games almost simultaneously. 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 opposed 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 expands not only the CHR ROM, but also the PRG ROM. It's the first game to use 128 KiB of PRG ROM.

1986 June 13th

Capcom's "Maikamura" (a.k.a. "Ghosts 'n' Goblins") appears to be the first UNROM/mapper 2 game. It’s also the first game cartridge to use CHR RAM, other than the FDS's RAM adapter.

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 the Nintendo MMC1 mapper. It's also the first game cartridge with 8 KiB of PRG RAM and battery backup.

1987 May 15th

The NES is released in PAL-A regions.

1988 March 18th

Irem released "Napoleon Senki", the first game 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 the Nintendo MMC3 mapper (an improved version of an older Namco mapper).

1990 September

Hal Laboratory's "Uchuu Keibitai SDF" and Konami's "Castlevania 3" (released almost simultaneously) appear to be the first games to use the Nintendo MMC5 mapper.

1991 June

"Videomation" is released. It apparently is the first "game" to bankswitch CHR RAM.

1991 August 30th

HAL Labratory released "Metal Slader Glory", the largest licensed game with 512KB of PRG ROM and CHR ROM.

1994 June 24th

Hudson Soft's "Takahasi Meijin no Boukenjima (Adventure Islands) IV" is the last licensed game released for the Famicom.

1994 December

Nintendo's "Wario's Woods" is the last licensed game for the NES in USA.

2003 September 25th

Nintendo discontinued all manufacturing and support for the Famicom