. My name is Jonathon Orsi. I am 23 and I currently live in Toronto, Canada attending University of Toronto for a major in Latin and a minor in Philosophy/English. I've been playing games since 1990, when my grandma first bought me a Nintendo like every other kid's did at the time. My interest of games has sparked my curiosity in pretty much everything I've learned about computers now that I think about it. I started my first Geocities website because of my love for Final Fantasy 3 and Chrono Trigger and that taught me a lot of HTML the good ol' notepad way. Later on, I started playing Ultima Online which stole a year of my real-life because it was sooo addicting (for those of you who played it during its early years, you know...). From Ultima though, I became interested in trying to make my own game like any other eager kid wanting to make the 'perfect' game, and started reading up on Javascript (haha, ya I know). Nothing really came of it except some basic knowledge of how programming languages work: variables, functions, etc... Fast forward a little less than a decade, about two years now I've been casually spending my free time reading up on Java, C#, and finally, Assembly for NES. I've found my calling.
That itch to just create something, if not the 'perfect' game of my naive youth, has come back. Mostly it has been sparked by the dissatisfaction of recent games I've played. I haven't played many games in the past few years because of being involved in school, work and music too much, but nevertheless no game has really stood out that I wanted to play. I just got a PS3 a few months ago that came with Bioshock and it seemed like one long repetitive grind. The funny thing is, the first games I actually bought for the PS3 were the PSOne remakes of FF5/FF6 and FF4/Chrono Trigger. They just never get old.
Something about the old NES games have to be more than just nostalgic. Today, games seem to me all style, no content. Too much focus on graphics, sound, formulas; not enough on the gameplay or, to simply put it, fun. Sure, in GTA4 you can speed around in a car, beat some random people on the street, fly a helicopter and everything else, but those things just don't hit me the same way Battletoads did from level to level. One minute you think it's a side-scrolling beat 'em up game, next you're trapezing down a tunnel avoiding killer crows, next you're speeding across the land in a space vehicle, and next you're... well, I never did get past that part lol. Without the expectation of amazing HD graphics, you can really see how these old games were forced to vary up what you'd expect out of the gameplay, which makes them infinitely more fun to play for me.
Well to wrap it up now, I've been absolutely seduced by the prospect of writing little NES games for myself. For the past week I've been devouring any tutorial I can get my hands on to learn how to understand 6502, Assembly, the NES architecture, the PPU and iNES headers. The real motivation though is knowing that making a NES game is actually possible. When I see Pong, or Tetris, or even Super Mario Bros I think, "man, with a little time and energy, I could probably make a game that looks and plays just as good." No more over-inflated expectations about making the 'perfect' game with crazy graphics, beautiful orchestrated soundtrack, complicated plot and intricate skill systems. Sometimes the simplest games are the funnest to play.
I look forward to asking many, many questions in the future, and I hope I can make a lasting contribution to the homebrew scene
. My first idea is to write "A Newbie's Tutorial for NES Programming by a Newbie to NES Programming." It will explain aspects that I find difficult as a newbie currently and hopefully enlighten others as they take the same course I am. To end it off, I leave you with this question: What has inspired you to learn and write games for the almost two decade old Nintendo? Jonathon Orsi
