Fabien Sanglard wrote an interesting essay on the humble SNES cartridge and what all the components do, from its copy-protection mechanism (or CIC) to its various enhancement chips, including the Super FX chip. But here’s something I didn’t know about—some unofficial games bypassed the CIC using official game cartridges:
Not every SNES cart has a CIC. Unsanctioned games such as “Super 3D Noah’s Ark” don’t have one. To play the game, one needs to first insert the game in the console and then plug an official cartridge on top. The CIC bus lines are forwarded from Noah’s towards the official game’s CIC!
