Keep in mind that this was at a time when some games retailed for as high as $80 in 1990s money, so buying a $35 cartridge and then paying some 15 to 20 dollars on top of that to have a game written onto it was considered cheaper than buying the retail release of some games. To entice people to buy in, Nintendo released a number of games exclusive to the service, including Fire Emblem: Thracia 776 and Derby Stallion ‘98, in addition to Wrecking Crew ‘98. The Nintendo Power cartridge was the result of an experimental partnership between Nintendo and the Lawson convenience store chain and was effectively a Nintendo-sanctioned flash cartridge: for $35, you could buy a blank cartridge at any Lawson convenience store and then pay at the counter to have games written onto it for a lower price than buying a retail cartridge.
In September 1997, a full two years after the Nintendo 64’s Japanese debut, Nintendo of Japan launched the Nintendo Power Cartridge – a sort of prototype to modern downloadable game systems like the eShop or Xbox Live Arcade. It’s not a system-defining game the way Super Mario World or Mario 64 were, and it’s not hard to see why: it was released essentially as an afterthought to sell an obscure Super Famicom peripheral that came out two years after the Nintendo 64 and never saw a release outside of Japan.Īll of this adds up to a pretty good chance that this is the first time you’ve ever heard of it – I know that I hadn’t until I started following groups that dump unreleased SNES games for preservation purposes. Wrecking Crew ‘98 will probably never be seen as an important part of the Mario canon.