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During the 1980s and early 1990s, when video game titles shipped primarily as cartridges, software developers eked out extra capabilities in their games by including special expansion chips inside the game cartridges themselves. The most simple of these enabled bank switching (a technique that allowed a CPU to access more RAM or ROM than usual), but the chips went on to grow dramatically in scope: adding RAM, extra sound-synthesis capabilities, graphical tweaks, and eventually 3D polygonal graphics using DSP co-processors. In the slides ahead, we’ll take a look at a handful of classic secret hardware expansions that allowed game developers to push game consoles past their inherent design limitations.
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