In Hardware

If you were ever interested in making your own games for the classic 8-Bit we all know and love, here would be a great place to start and gather information:



There was also another thread around here about putting games onto cartridges, and there is a brief overview on this page on just that:



I'm sure getting into NES Programming isn't something that can just be jumped into, but if you have ever thought about it...

a friend of mine actually started learning to program for the NES last night, I think he's making great progress, he has sprites on screen that can be controlled to move in the 4 basic directions, and a background layer as well.

I'm not sure if I want to try and do some or not. It would definately be cool to be able to do it. I've always had ideas, but no knowledge. I've never messed with assembling languages.

it's something I'd love to do, but I can't seem to focus enough to acomplish anything when it comes to programming, that's why I'm more of a hardware guy I guess.

A friend and I used to make dumb little games for PC, and did Gameboy Advance development for 1/2 of a title (porting a PC game over). I know nothing about programming. He was the brains there, I just did art and design.

If you'd like to check out what we had going on our latest project, you can check out our now (sadly) defunct site:

programming for a console I think would be more satisfying, generally a game has to have some degree of quality to make it to a console, whereas any goon can make a PC game.

I'm not sure what it's like to program for the NES, but I remember reading at Atariage that programming for the 2600 was somewhat difficult. Can't really remember the reason, but it might have been the assembler used.

well, the NES and 2600 both use a 6502 CPU (basically. the NES is actually a 6508 but the instructions are the same, just added sound hardware as far as I know.) my friend who is programming the NES was originally working on stuff for the 2600, but it was much more difficult, so I suggested NES, and it seems to be going very well so far.

Does he have a site telling about what he's doing? If not, suggest to him that he gets one. I'm sure everyone around here would be interested to see what could be churned out by a newbie NES programmer! It might spark motivation in someone, you never know!

I'll talk to him about it tonight, he has some webspace. but I'm not sure he could host another page there.

Programming is too much for me. Way too difficult.
I'll stay with RPG Maker and such things.
But if you happen to make good games, send them to me, I'll testplay. But only the good ones.

Have you ever made anything with RPG Maker? What system do you have it for? I'd be interested in playing it, for sure!

I could never get anything I was happy with using RPG maker, the older versions I used were just very lacking in options.

I used to have RPG Maker on the PSone. I had developed the very beginning to a game called 'Candelabra.' I had finished the beginning story (for the most part) and designed the first boss. It was pretty cool, but again, time consuming in the long run...

I tried it with the Super Famicom version.

You're right. It takes lots of time. But programming it from the scratch takes even more.
I'm ok with lack of options.

Perhaps I should also try the PS version. The graphics must be a lot better than on the SNES. I maybe look for it when I'm in Japan again. Should be cheap by now.

also look at this site, sounds neat.

I ran across that site not too long ago. I was in the process of saving all the PDFs, but my connection is slow, and I keep getting timed out. I'll have to wait until I'm at the school to grab them I think. Yes, that is a very good site. A lot of good info!

Ever sense i read about overclocking an nes ive wondered if some cool, almost PC type stuff could be writen. Something as simple as a typeing program or low resolution picture viewer.

Picture viewers have been done, but the problem is that the image has to be within the NES ROM, the NES doesn't really have any kind of swappable media.

and a typing program would be rather useless, since the NES is lacking a keyboard, any way to print, and again, any kind of swappable media to move the typed information from the NES to be printed.

i was thinking along the lines something u could save to a cart, and could up load through one of the cart burners or what they r called. Typeing would be a plain with just the 2 button controler, but would be neat.