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game cartridge
A game cartridge (abbreviated "cart") is a data storage medium similar to a flash drive, but requiring a dedicated access port. A cartridge is the Read-Only Memory device holding the game data (and perhaps a few secondary microchips, up to and including a RAM stack), and is slotted into the top of a console. The device may be designed to not fit into a slot of a different console (a Nintendo cartridge will not fit into a Genesis slot, for example, nor will a NeoGeo cart fit into a Jaguar slot).
Carts were largely phased out in favor of CD-ROM discs, and later DVDs and Blu-ray Discs, for reasons of storage capacity (one CD can hold a hundred games it takes an entire cartridge to store) and cost (a cartridge requires several expensive components to manufacture, leading to games that cost 40-50% more than CD games, which simply require a single piece of plastic). However, cartridges had a loading time measured in microseconds (due to their solid-state construction) and no DRM (as nobody outside the manufacturers had the machinery necessary to write blank carts; nor could a cart be re-purposed — except, perhaps, as a coaster or paperweight—once written).
The Game Boy series of hand-held consoles never split from carts.
The Nintendo Switch also uses a modernized form of cartridges (Save-Data or SD cards), due to their fast loading times, while still having games on-par with its contemporaries in terms of both length and graphics.
