Ninja Gaiden III Demo

How's this for luck? Another NES demo cart. Discovered in, of all places, Funcoland.

I found out a Funcoland store had opened practically in my own backyard. Not one to skip opportunity, I downloaded their price list, sorted all the cheapass $1 carts, printed my shopping list, and paid them a visit. The clerk reluctantly let me nose around their shelves behind the counter, after I explained that I intended to make a bulk purchase, and it wouldn't be worth her time to play seek-and-fetch for me.

Once again, the odd cart caught my eye. Surely Tecmo would have put a more colorful label on a production cart. And centered it. And printed it on good paper.

Pretty boring to look at, eh? Let's see what's on the back.

How cute. A little red sticker with some Japanese text. What could it say? Perhaps the secrets of the ages are encoded in those three tiny glyphs. If only we had a clue what it says.

I wonder what's on the inside.

Now this is more like it!

This is the same board found inside the T2 and World Champ demo carts. It uses the MMC3, and can support up to 512K of PRG ROM, and 256K of CHR ROM. It even has space to mount a battery and a RAM chip for memory-save games. This one uses PRG and CHR ROMs of only 128K. If the whole board was populated, it would be one heavy smeggin cart.

This cart is no longer in my possession.

Jay Tilton
04/21/99