Gaming Average size?

[KT_Cobra]

...oh my goodness! Get your mind out of the gutter!

I'm talking about the average size of an NDS Rom. What would you say is the average size in megs? I've only downloaded one so far and there's no way to see the file size from the original cartridge.

 

[emigre]

I can't really say there's an average size for NDS roms. NDS roms tend to be 8, 16, 32, 64, 128, 256 and 512mb in size. There's no real rule regarding the size of roms but you will find the bigger games tend to be released more recently as the price of flash memory has decreased.

 

[DarkStriker]

Depends.
Currently the carts range from 8MB to 512MB.
Shovelware are usually 8MB-16MB
Standard games are usally 32MB
RPGs & all those imba looking games is 64-248MB
Very few that is 512MB.

So averagly it would be 64MB each game. Though if you have no intentions of playing RPGs, then i will pretty much say 32MB averagly.

 

[chris888222]

For NDS, average is 64MB - 128MB.

Shovelware (not all) are normally 8MB.
Longer ones are normally 16MB.
Many early RPGs (those in 2005 - 2007) are normally 32MB - 64MB.
Later ones go to as high as 256MB (Pokemon Black/White for example)

Very few go to 512MB, but there are some.

 

[Apex]

6 inches.

 

[bahamut920]

DS ROMs can range anywhere from 8 MB to 512 MB in size, although ROMs of both of those sizes are somewhat rare. Earlier games tend to be around 64 - 128 MB, whereas later games usually end up averaging about 256 MB. However, most ROMs have a sizable amount of junk at the end of the image, because the game isn't large enough to fill the entire cartridge's ROM memory, which leaves a large amount of empty space after the actual data. When somebody captures the ROM image, they get all this empty space, which just gets turned into a bunch of 0's (or whatever). You can use a ROM trimmer to remove the extra data and save space.

 

[wasim]

as said above NDS rom can be 8 - 512 mb

most of the games are 64 mb

 

[Keram]

I'm gonna jump on the bandwagon and also post that the games range from 8 to 512 mb, just to up my post count.

Just kidding, on the contrary, here's a little something you should keep in mind, especially when it comes to the 512 mb fat games.
It's true that depending on the size of the chip of the cartridge you always have rom sizes with 2 power n (2 power 1 =2, 2² = 4 etc.)
but the real romsizes when looking on the actual code of the game are rarely the full size of that.
So when you have a game which actual size is actually 9 mb, you are forced to take the 16 mb sized chips so the whole game can be stored, 8 is obviously not enough. The wasted space then will be just filled up with garbage.
Of course this is true with all games, but the bigger the size the more likely they tend to have more wasted space because the actual size of the game is smaller but you just went a tad over the 256 mb mark and don't want to scratch anything out so you grab the 512 mb ones.

On a side info, that's what rom trimming does if I am not mistaken, it cuts the wasted space away that got along with dumping the full rom chip.

This aint gonna change anything to the thread openers original question, but I just felt like adding information.
So even when you hold an impressive 512 mb sized rom in your virtual hands, its quite possible that not all of the mb is playable fun.

But this is just a natural progression that went on when developers started to dish out games with lots of content, but I doubt there will be normal DS games that will break the 512 mb mark, DSi games would make this more likely and 3DS games definitely are bigger than that.