Cartridge - Console Emulation

Cartridge puts working retro consoles into Minecraft. Burn a game from your computer onto a cartridge, slot it into a console, run an AV cable to a TV, plug in a pad and play: alone, with friends on the other pads over the server, or with a crowd watching the screen in your game room. The emulation is real (libretro cores, built into the mod), the netplay is automatic, and everyone nearby sees and hears the same game.

Cartridge comes with no games: you burn your own game files. It runs on Windows x64 and Linux x64 only (not macOS). The consoles are invented brands, not affiliated with any console maker.

The first time a console starts, Cartridge downloads its small emulator host program (cartridge-host, under 100 KB) from its GitHub repository. It checks the file against a SHA-256 hash built into the mod and runs nothing else. Nothing is uploaded.

The consoles

• Pixelon Entertainment System (NES and Famicom Disk System), with the Pixelon Pad and the Pixelon Blaster light gun.
• Super Pixelon (SNES), with the Super Pixelon Pad and the Super Pixelon Mouse.
• Vortex Drive (Genesis / Mega Drive), with the six-button Vortex Pad.
• Pixelon 64 (Nintendo 64), with four ports and the Pixelon 64 Pad.
• Pocketron and Pocketron Color (Game Boy and Game Boy Color), handhelds you hold and play, with a Link Cable for trading and two-player games, and the Pocketron Adapter to play them on a TV through the Super Pixelon.
• Pocketron Advance and Advance SP (Game Boy Advance).

Burn your games

• The Cartridge Writer burns a game file from your computer onto a Blank Cartridge (pick it or drag it onto the window). The server keeps each game once; everyone who meets the cartridge gets it automatically.
• One blank for every console: the game decides the cartridge's shape and label. Copy, erase, and import or export .sav battery saves.

Screens

• A CRT TV that warms up and collapses to a dot, Flatscreen TVs, a Large Flatscreen, and Display Panels that join into video walls up to 8 × 6.
• One console feeds up to eight screens through AV Cables (yellow, white and red).

Play together

• Right-click a plugged-in pad to play; F opens a big view; Esc lets go. Keyboard or gamepad (Xbox, PlayStation, Switch Pro and most others, no other mod needed), every button rebindable per console.
• Multiplayer just works: pick up pad 2 and you're in. No ports to open, no lobby. Rollback netplay hides the lag; the Pixelon 64 plays in lockstep.
• Everyone within 32 blocks sees and hears the game, perfectly in sync, from the TV's position.

Saves

• Battery saves travel with the cartridge. Memory Cards hold a savestate with a screenshot of the moment.
• Leave and come back, or restart the server: the console resumes where it was.

Survival-friendly

Everything is craftable from vanilla materials, with a "Hold Shift for details" how-to on every item. Server settings cover upload sizes, the storage quota, who may upload, and the reach of cables and spectators.

Arcade cabinets

Cartridge: Arcade is a separate add-on with MAME arcade cabinets: cartridge-arcade.