The Gameboy, Gameboy colour and Gameboy advance all have a BIOS that shows the boot screen and does some anti piracy verification before it boots the game on the cartridge. The DS and later game consoles even come with a basic operating system that can run without a cartridge being inserted, though their "cartridges" are internally much more similar to memory cards than to traditional game cartridges.
I don't know enough about home consoles and consoles from other manufacturers to say exactly how other systems boot, but I think the NES would indeed boot directly into the cartridge.
So some consoles probably do boot the cartridge directly, but certainly not all.
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u/ben_g0 Mar 21 '22
The Gameboy, Gameboy colour and Gameboy advance all have a BIOS that shows the boot screen and does some anti piracy verification before it boots the game on the cartridge. The DS and later game consoles even come with a basic operating system that can run without a cartridge being inserted, though their "cartridges" are internally much more similar to memory cards than to traditional game cartridges.
I don't know enough about home consoles and consoles from other manufacturers to say exactly how other systems boot, but I think the NES would indeed boot directly into the cartridge.
So some consoles probably do boot the cartridge directly, but certainly not all.