nesdev.org

I'm messing around with Nintendulator for the first time (via VMware), along with Donkey Kong and its disassembly (from romhacking.net). A fairly simple behavior is puzzling me: when you pause DK, it waits a few frames and then disables the sprites onscreen. I say 'disabled' with some certainty - ac...

Dwedit wrote:
The Megaman series is also known for boss fights against giant monsters which are entirely in the background. Sometimes they use split screen scrolling.

That explains the blank, black backgrounds. What are some examples with the split-screen scrolling?

Thanks. Here's a link to the dkong.c file for others interested.

I've spent the past hour trying to find some technical documentation for Donkey Kong on Google, but haven't been able to uncover much besides this pretty simple breakdown and the original arcade maintenance manual. I'm looking for something a little more in-depth, if possible. Any online (or book) s...

Why would anyone develop for an emulator only? I can think of several reasons, from general intellectual interest (e.g. 'I want to see what Objective-C is like) to experimenting with a platform. I've dipped into Intellivision and Vectrex dev simply to see what the tools are like. The consumption vs....

Tepples, I think you propose a much more reasonable set of disadvantages, though there's still a few points I'd say are worth noting. Nintendo is a weirder corporate case than most in terms of the 'renewable security' issues, as they aren't as prone to patching (as you mention with the Wii). This is...

No, Apple's PC market share is still under 10%. Isolating laptops changes the percentage considerably, but overall (business, server, PC, and so on), their market share is still comparatively low. I also hope everyone sees the irony of criticizing Apple for being a closed platform when we all develo...

Microsoft is interested in maximizing profits and sales, like any corporation. They're not in the market for charity. I don't understand your point about version numbers (the sentence isn't clear), so I can't really reply. You're comparing two different platforms. Windows is the dominant PC OS, but ...

You can't use an iPad to make a program for an iPad, despite the iPad having Bluetooth keyboard support and a faster CPU and more RAM than the 1999 laptop I was using when I was first getting into the NES. Nor can you use Free tools to make a program for an iPad, unlike my NES toolchain which is pr...

So if you're a collector you likely don't want a fake one in your collection... The actions of many collectors don't really support your argument. Very few people can afford Stadium Events or the Nintendo World Championship cart, so they purchase (a) near-perfect reproductions (like the 'April Fool...

I was playing Super Mario Bros. 3 recently and spent some time observing the right edge of the screen. I understand what attribute glitches are and why they occur, but I noticed three distinct types of glitches on the right side: 1. Color inconsistencies 2. A 'displaced' column of graphics from the ...

I can think of at least three other reasons to make a repro:

1. Technical curiosity, i.e. can it be done?
2. You want a cartridge version of the game in your collection but you don't want to pay a premium for the real deal.
3. You want to play it on real hardware. Yes, even if it's bad.

Absolutely love the graphic style and music. Looking forward to playing this.

Nice work!

Very minor copy/paste typo: it still says 'NES controller reading code' in the header of the main.s file.

Just to clarify what tepples said, you're actually feeding an address to the PPU one byte at a time via $2006. Thus lda #$21 sta PPUADDR lda #$08 sta PPUADDR is saying, 'Hey PPU, I'm setting the VRAM address to $2108.' Then you loop data into that address via $2007. See the relevant wiki section for...