4 ms·
When I was a kid in the 80s and early 90s I was fascinated with the process of making video games for my favorite console. But back then I didn’t really know ho
by breckinloggins 2y ago
When I was a kid in the 80s and early 90s I was fascinated with the process of making video games for my favorite console. But back then I didn’t really know how to research that topic (and much of it - unbeknownst to me - was behind NDA anyway).
One day I asked my friend if he knew how these games were programmed. He confidently claimed that they were made in a top secret tool called NPL - The Nintendo Programming Language.
Of course that kid didn’t know anything more about it than I did so this was just a wild rumor. Now I know that “NPL” was just 6502 assembly with the correct system documentation and some dev hardware, but kid me didn’t know that. Instead, he spent a lot of time dreaming up what this super secret language looked like.
When I checked out NESFab today I instantly saw something that looked very much like what 7 - 9 year old me would have imagined. So thanks for that.
- TriedWharf 2y agoFor me, it was the same but with the game boy. Turns out no-one knew the name of it. For some reason.
- jkestner 2y agoOne of my favorite Kickstarters was for a new NES game, because the updates were deep dives into different aspects of NES development and the tradeoffs on that hardware. https://www.kickstarter.com/projects/1101008925/lizard/posts https://www.kickstarter.com/projects/1101008925/lizard/posts
- ForHackernews 2y agoI think he was eventually sued into taking it all down, but the custom devkit work Brian Provinciano did in order to create his own GTA port for the NES was incredible: https://web.archive.org/web/20070125130745/http://www.bripro.com/low/hardware/devtendo/index.php?page=pics https://web.archive.org/web/20070125130745/http://www.bripro...