Does anyone know what things were included in the official NES devkit? Or anything else about how things were done for official NES development?
Most development was done on inhouse kits I believe. What exactly the Nintendo one looked like, im not sure if many (or any) people really know
Why do you assume there is one? What do you mean by "devkit" even? Any way you look at it, official NES development was little different than today's homebrew development; the difference was Nintendo's support through licenses and manuals. Here are the facts: -Nintendo had manuals for licensees -Nintendo did write assemblers (an assembler is an assembler, everyone outside Nintendo probably used other commercial ones, even free assemblers weren't hard to find/write) -IS did make a console, it's purpose is unknown at least to me. While it could be a "devkit" (ROM emulator + HW debugger (ICE)) that is very unlikely since VLSI silicon would have to be made for such an occasion and this apparatus was made at the end of the console's service. Educated speculation: -Nintendo (Ltd) wrote at least one pattern table editor/name table layer. This would be for DOS/V (either PC-98 or PC/AT) Rumors: -Some licensed development was done on MSX.
I think he is wondering if there was a unit that was specificly used to develop nes games. From what I read in game over, nintendo was very scarce about giving out details, in fact after rare reversed enginered the nes and found some features that werent even documented, nintendo simply told them to make their game and show it to them when its done, without using any nintendo tools or docs. So there might have been a standard kit, but it seems it wasnt really given out to 3rd parties. My guess based on nes protos were that most of it was done on certain pc's at the time with games being tested on a dev board. Dont forget that in japan nintendo alllowed licnesed comapnies to make their own cartridges,so they probably didnt have to go to nintendo to really make test carts. Even U.S. protos are most of the time crammed into a regular cart with a board that has sockets for eeproms.
I also was curious about how exactly games were developed. So you guys are saying the development cycle ended up mostly being writing the program in assembler, burning to rom, putting rom on test cartridge, then playing it on a regular nes? Seems like a major PITA. I mean, I remember learning c++ long ago and relishing the fact that on a medium sized program it would take 5+ minutes to compile and link just to see if one line of code broke your application. Seems to me like developing for the nes trumped that. Any of the licensee manuals ever make it into the wild? It would make an interesting collectors piece.
Why do you think it took so long to make such simple games? Cause it wasn't so simple. Nowdays anyone can throw together a program to do something that on the NES would require alot more work and organization. If you're actually interested in writing a game for NES, the public domain should have everything you need.
To be honest I never really knew. Always wondered about it as a kid, but this was way before the information superhighway was available to teach me about stuff like that. I'm not really interested in writing any programs, just interested if that documentation was in the hands of someone outside of nintendo. I know that the documentation relating to sgi based n64 devkits is available publicly. I don't really have much interest in obtaining a copy, just curious if it existed.
Having been a popular system since 1983 there is surprisingly little information available on Famicom/NES developer setups that were used to develop commerical games. There must have been several systems in use over the years. Check out the NES development timeline: http://www.gamersgraveyard.com/repository/nes/history/nes_timeline.html CF
? There are so few registers to programming the NES, there couldn't be anything left undocumented except for NMOS 6502 illegal opcodes which aren't suitable to use anyways. There isn't a standard kit as in integrated hardware, who knows what 3rd parties made due with though. Certainly little was developed for *NES* since fact very few NES localizations were even done outside Japan and all original NES software was third-party. All developers of course would have used ROM emulators (SRAM with PC interface) for insignificant build testing, each fixed to a specific MMC. Again, these wouldn't be comprehensive hardware debuggers. They are actually special PCBs with JEDEC ROM pinouts for EPROMs. Retail PCBs of course have Nintendo mask ROMs which have a proprietary pinout. Yes, and it while it would make an interesting collection piece, it would sure be a shame for it to fall into the hands of a collector. While there's nothing left unturned in NES RE, it would be great to have if just for Nintendo terminology. What many collectors naively don't realize is that obtaining dev crap will not enlighten them, they still need a formal education and years of dedication.
