Ressources for NES development. Currently focusing on assembly language but looking into C, too, nesasm and development on Mac.
The NES uses the 6502 processor and was programmend in assembly.
- Easy6502 - Start writing 6502 assembly in the browser.
- Assembly in One Step - This is a nice and short quickstart guide for assembly and I really like the explanation of the different addressing modes. Combine this with the Easy6502 and you are good to go.
- Programming the 6502 - This is an ebook which you can read online or download about 6502 programming. It is a full fledged book and not a quickstart guide.
The commands for the 6502 are called opcodes. An example opcode is INXwhich increases the value in the X register. Don't worry if this sentence doesn't make sense. After reading Easy6502 it will make sense 😊.
- 6502 Opcodes
- 6502 Opcodes - Instruction Reference
- Opcodes MNEMONIC - Summary of the meaning behind the opcodes
- Nerdy Nights - Assembly and nesasm - THE tutorials for getting started with NES development, everybody is refering to them.
- NES Basics and Our First Game - Assembly and nesasm, unfortunatelly stops before it gets really interesting - but it is a great starter
- Famicom Party - Another great introdcution into the NES system and assembly. I really hope this series continues.
- NES Doug - I haven't read this series yet as I am focusing on assembly currently, but it looks very promising including a platformer tutorial. It uses the CC65 C compiler.
Another fun way to start your NES development can be ROM hacking. You learn some basics about how the NES works and you learn how to use the tools like viewing sprites or nametables. John Riggs has a YouTube series and teaches you the basics about hacking ROMS for the NES.
Just look at how many ROM hacks are available for Super Mario Bros at romhacking.net. Just some suble graphics and color changes can give the whole game a new look.
- How video games were made - part 1: Graphics - This is a nice overview video about the components of the NES and stuff like pattern tables and alike. Other systems are covered at the end of the video. I highly recommend watching this video!
- How video games were made - part 2: Workflow - This video features different consoles and techniques and it is very informative. Really interesting to see the development setup many years ago.
- Writing NES games! With Assembly!! - This is a very cool overview talk about the NES components you need to know for programming and the excitement of this guy of his first sprite on the screen is really amazing!!
- Programming the Nintendo Entertainment System - This is a dry run of a talk and this guy goes over the basics of the NES and assembly and he niecly compares assembly code and with high level language coding. Also the audio examples of the different channels are really cool
- Scrolling on the NES - In this video you see how the nametables are used when scrolling and how they are mirrored and it also explains the reason behind the flickering (seam) at the right edge of Super Mario Bros. 3. The whole channel has a lot of retro game mechanics explained and is very interesting to watch.
- Fitting a NES game into 40 kilobytes - Micro Mages is my absolute favorite NES homebrew game and it is so much fun to play it with other people. I really loved their video were they go into the details and how they made the Micro Mages game with just 40 kilobyte and show you some cool tricks. The game itself has such great graphics and I am a big fan of their pixel art.
- The New 8-bit Heroes follows a guy who wants to make his childhood dreams come true and develop a game for the NES. He struggles with assembly so he hires another programmer to create a kind of a game maker for NES games nesmaker. I really enjoyed this documentation, it was really heart-warming and so relateable.
- Making Games for the NES - In this book you are using the CC65 C compiler and and online IDE and in the end the book also goes over assembly. I bought it but I haven't read it yet.
- Retro Game Dev - Currently there is an C64 book available which also uses 6502 assembly. On his website you see that a NES book is in the making. I bought the C64 book to see what I can learn for NES development.
- Programming the 6502 - If you are serious about assembly programming you can look into this book. You can also download it in various formats.
- Dev Cart - This magazine focuses on the NES and has interviews with people doing homebrew, they also have development 6502 assembly tutorials (except in the 0th Introductory Issue) and other related NES news.
- NES Programming - Hardware overview, CPU memory addresses, PPU addresses and so on
- NES Dev Wiki - A lot of information about the NES and all its technical details
I am currently using Sublime Text 3 to write my code and compile the game on the command line with the nesasmcommand (see the NES Basics and Our First Game for the setup of nesasm).
I found a nice Sublime Text assembly syntax highlighter from nesrocks.com inside their demo game. I copied the file to my repo with credits inside the file (.sublime-syntax file).
I am using a Mac and did not setup wine yet. The recommended editor seems to be YY-CHR.
I am currently doing my first steps with this online NES Sprite Editor written in JavaScript which is also open source and he blogged about it. You can upload CHR files or create your own files.
8bitworkshop offers an online IDE for various retro systems including the NES and has also books available which I listed in the books section.
My favorite emulator to play NES games is openEmu. It has also a section for homebrew games were I found this funny Lawn Mower Game.
My biggest problem while developing on the Mac was using a debugger (Nametables, PPU Viewer and alike). On Windows you would use Mesen for that. On the Mac I first stubmled upon Nintaco but somehow it didn't go that well, like everything was frozen, maybe it was just my mistake in using it.
However there is hope :-D! I guess since 2021 FCEUX also has a debugger for the Mac!! You can also install it via brew.
If you are using a Windows machine you could have a look into the nesmaker. They have a very active Facebook group and have competitions every year. I didn't try to run it on a Mac via Parallels or so. I have a Windows laptop but didn't really have the time for trying it out.
There are a lot of great pixel art tutorials and videos out there but I didn't find any comprehensive book which you can use as a reference until I found the Pixel Logic book. It is worth every cent and I can highly recommend it.
Nesrocks.com has a really nice overview about the graphic limitations of the NES.