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Does anybody have or know of a comprehensive summary of every iNES mapper assignment? The lists I've found are all 5-10 years old.

Probably look in the source code of a recent emulator, like FCEUX or Nestopia.

I don't know of any full list, but there are a few good almost complete lists. They are Comprehensive NES Mapper Document v0.80 by \Firebug\, Disch's mapper docs, and a section of Martin Korth's everynes. I would suggest reading all of these and looking at the sources of current emulators as mentioned already to create your own comprehensive list.

I have actually been wishing there was a list like this (and more complete and reliable documentation about other aspects of the NES), as I am currently developing an NES emulator. Because of this, I will be writing a new completely comprehensive NES document as I work on the emulator. But until that's done, I have a little bit more info about mappers. The following mapper numbers are those that I am NOT familiar with any game using; I have some information about all the others from 0-255: 28, 29, 30, 31, 35, 39, 54, 55, 59, 63, 81, 98, 102, 104, 109, 110, 123, 124, 125, 126, 127, 128, 129, 130, 131, 135, 144, 153, 154, 155, 157, 158, 162, 166, 170, 174, 179, 181, 190, 192, 194, 195, 199, 207, 208, 218, 223, 224, 236, 237, 247.

I hope this helps you. If anyone has information on the above listed mappers, please let me know. One last question I have for everyone that's related to this post: where did emulator authors (like those of Nestopia and FCEUX) get their information about uncommon mappers? There are many mappers that some emulators support that I have found no documentation about other than the source codes of those emulators, and I was just wondering how they got their information.

To the best of my knowledge, roughly half of the alphabet has been covered with mapper family(?) names. The ones remaining are: IxROM, JxROM, KxROM, LxROM, MxROM, OxROM, QxROM, RxROM, VxROM, WxROM, XxROM, YxROM and ZxROM.

Any idea why the others were selected as they were? I presume the MMC5 family was dubbed "ExROM" due to the ExRAM functionality...

JSROM and JLROM exists (FME-7), and so does MHROM (SMB + Duck Hunt).
Also RROM (variant of NROM) exists I don't know if it counts as a RxROM board or not.

I think there is no particular meaning in those letters, exept the "ROM" part which means the boards were means to be used by mask ROMs, while prototypes ends in "EPROM" which means they were meant to be used by EPROMs....
However, in cases where the pinout is the same for both (for ROMs smaller than 128k) they used just "ROM" boards for prototypes.

About the information, you should check Dish's excellent doccumentation on RHDN here.

if it's still not there then I guess emulators got this by dark magic. It's exactly how are SNES emulators able to emulate the Super FX and SA-1 when the only doccumentation about those is the emulators source code... argh.

Just wanted to add that not all boards are named in the XxROM format. However, all those that are I think were originally made by Nintendo.

I'll go ahead and cross JxROM and MxROM off my list (and bestow provisional legitimacy upon NxROM and RxROM).

I'm still a bit miffed that MMC3 was assigned to Mapper #4. It always causes grief when explaining the whole "NES couldn't run most of its own games" saga to casual retro gamers. I illustrate the Big Three by relating them to automotive parallels (MMC1 = Chevy Cavalier; MMC3 = Acura TL; MMC5 = Cadillac). But because "emm-emm-cee" is rhetorically clunky, I default to just saying "mapper", which then forces me to choose between:

1) Saying "Mapper 1/4/5", thus interjecting confusion over where the 4 came from?

2) Saying "Mapper 1/3/5", which flows better but is technically inaccurate.

And what's the matter? Casual users don't care what mapper a ROM is anyway!

3gengames wrote:And what's the matter? Casual users don't care what mapper a ROM is anyway!

One would certainly think so... But then they go and ask about all that "stuff" on my kitchen counter and I feel obliged to tell them!

Dr. Floppy wrote:But because "emm-emm-cee" is rhetorically clunky

Nintendo Power magazine didn't think so in the classic article Why Game Paks Never Forget. It described the progression from NROM to UNROM to the MMCs.

tepples wrote:

Dr. Floppy wrote:But because "emm-emm-cee" is rhetorically clunky

Nintendo Power magazine didn't think so in the classic article Why Game Paks Never Forget. It described the progression from NROM to UNROM to the MMCs.

Far be it from me to find fault with my first issue! To the contrary, I was referring strictly to the spoken word. Perhaps "audibly clunky" would've been a better parsing of the vernacular?

Bregalad wrote:It's exactly how are SNES emulators able to emulate the Super FX and SA-1 when the only doccumentation about those is the emulators source code... argh.

http://en.wikibooks.org/wiki/Super_NES_ ... X_tutorial

Back in the day, it was a lot of guessing and reverse engineering work. IIRC there was some information on the processor at the time - although I can't find it anymore. For the longest time, it didn't work at all.

6T4 wrote:The following mapper numbers are those that I am NOT familiar with any game using; I have some information about all the others from 0-255: 28, 29, 30, 31, 35, 39, 54, 55, 59, 63, 81, 98, 102, 104, 109, 110, 123, 124, 125, 126, 127, 128, 129, 130, 131, 135, 144, 153, 154, 155, 157, 158, 162, 166, 170, 174, 179, 181, 190, 192, 194, 195, 199, 207, 208, 218, 223, 224, 236, 237, 247.

I overlooked a few that I do have information for. I have information for mappers 81, 154, 192, 194, and 207. So that's 210 in total out of the possible 256 that I have at least some information about (although in a few cases, this may only be what game uses the mapper). If anybody knows anything about any of the other 46 that I listed, let me know.