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Comment by ChrisRR | Hacker News Reader

This is interesting. I wonder why some genuine carts have a quiescent current and tetris doesn't

Edit: I remember, Tetris is one of a few games that don't use MBCs. The quiescent current is probably that of the MBC

I hadn't looked into GB flash carts, but for GBA I was warned away from the EZ Flash Omega because apparently it used more power than the equivalent (more expensive) Everdrive. I'd be interested to see the numbers behind that.

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makho has a video on the power usage of the EZ Flash Omega DE versus some other flash carts.[1] He's also put together a spreadsheet with his results.[2] Essentially the EverDrive would result in a runtime about 90% of an original cart, with the EZ Flash Omega DE coming in at 80%. The original EZ Flash Omega would last about 70% of the time of an OEM game.

[1] https://youtu.be/HrGTzSrdCyA

[2] https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/u/0/d/1baIDOZlUjERhOsmc...

Tetris just has a ROM chip. The other official carts have ROM, a bank switching chip, static RAM and a power switching chip (to switch the SRAM from the internal battery to Gameboy power). So there's just more stuff on the board that can drain power.

Edit: Dang, you remembered whilst I writing my reply...

Yeah, incidentally I've written a gameboy emulator and only remembered because I never implemented any MBCs and so it only played Tetris and Bubble Ghost

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