What does "complete on cart" mean?
Everything is on the chip. Put it in, play it, forever — no network involved.
What it means
This is the best outcome for a physical game, and it's the reason to buy physical at all. The cartridge holds the complete, finished game. No day-one patch, no mandatory download, no account check. If the servers were switched off tomorrow, and every download vanished, this cartridge would still work exactly as it does now.
One thing to watch: "complete on cart" describes a printing, not a game. Publishers re-press cartridges over time, and the first run often shipped before the game was finished. A game can be complete on revision 004 and require a download on revision 001 — same box art, same barcode, different chip. That's why we track the revision stamped on the cartridge.
A game can be complete on cart and still have quirks — community play tests are a separate signal, and where testers found problems we say so in the label. It can also be complete on cart and still ask for an account, which we label separately as DRM.
Before you buy
- Check the revision number on the game's page — if it says "rev 004+", earlier printings are a different product.
- The revision is stamped on the cartridge itself, not the box, so you can't always tell sealed. Buying loose is sometimes the safer bet.
- Regional printings differ. A EUR cart and a JPN cart with the same code can carry different builds.
How we know
Sourced from Nintendo Revised, the community cartridge-revisions sheet, and confirmed by collectors who own the cartridge. Each cartridge page shows who verified it and when.
Browse games that are complete on cart →Common questions
Does complete on cart mean there are no updates?
No. It means you don't need them. A patch may still exist and may still fix things — it just isn't required to play or finish the game.
Can a complete-on-cart game stop working?
Not from a server shutdown. Online modes would stop; the single-player game wouldn't.
How do I check the revision on a cartridge I already own?
It's printed on the cartridge label, usually a three-digit number near the cart code. Our cartridge pages list which codes and revisions we've documented.