An NES game is more than its program ROM. The cartridge board can add bank switching, extra memory or custom chips, while the console supplies the CPU, graphics and sound hardware. That division matters when identifying a game’s hardware, debugging it or trying to run it in an emulator.
This hub brings together our NES posts and outside resources, from the Famicom’s history and original development tools to cartridge boards, ROM hacking and homebrew.
Introduction
The Famicom’s release history and Nintendo’s approach to licensed development help explain why surviving tools and cartridges vary so much.
History of the Nintendo Entertainment System
The Family Computer (Famicom) was released in Japan on July 15, 1983.
How many NES games were released after its successor, the SNES launch?
The SNES did not end NES development overnight: 55 new NES titles were released in 1993 1. The older console’s price and installed base likely helped sustain that support.
Official Retail NES Game Source Code
Our source-code index collects officially released and leaked NES game code:
Home Alone NES Source Code
The Game History Org released the full source code for Home Alone. Our post describes the files in the release:
Hardware
The console’s CPU, PPU and APU set the baseline. Cartridge boards extend it, so identifying the board is often as useful as reading the game code.
Development Kit Hardware
Nintendo did not offer a public NES development kit; many third parties assembled their own tools. Our development-hardware post collects the kits we know about:
Retail NES Hardware
For a circuit-level tour of the console, Copetti.org explains the CPU, PPU and APU alongside diagrams of how they connect:
Retail NES Cartridges (Custom chips, Mappers)
NES cartridges can look alike outside but contain very different boards.
This is especially the case in Japan where Nintendo allowed third party developers to manufacture their own cartridges, which means they could add additional microchips inside, such as custom memory mappers.
However the same wasn’t the case in the west as described in this quote from MobyGames:
Nintendo didn’t normally allow developers to use custom mapper chips in western releases, instead requiring them to reprogram their games for Nintendo’s own MMC mappers. This is because Nintendo manufactured all cartridges in the west. Mr. Gimmick and Batman:Return of the Joker (which uses the same FME-7 mapper chip) are the only two official western NES releases to use custom mapper chips.
How does a ROM image describe its cartridge hardware?
A mapper is hardware on the cartridge board, not an invention of emulators. Nintendo’s MMC3, for example, switches program and graphics ROM banks and can generate scanline interrupts 2. An emulator must reproduce those behaviours as well as the console itself.
The cartridge has no iNES header. A .nes file adds a 16-byte header before the dumped ROM data; its mapper number tells software which board behaviour to emulate 3. NES 2.0 extends that description with a submapper field because one mapper number can cover boards with meaningful differences 4. If a dump behaves incorrectly despite having the right game code, compare its header with a known PCB scan in NESCartDB below. The header is a useful identification clue, but the physical board is the stronger evidence.
Punch-Out and the MMC2
Displaced Gamers explains how Punch-Out uses MMC2 for its graphics. The example connects cartridge mapper behaviour to what the game can display.
NESCartDB: NES Cartridge Database
Originally created by BootGod, NESCartDB catalogs PCB scans, mapper assignments, ROM checksums and chip details for NES and Famicom games. It is useful when a ROM header leaves the exact board in doubt.
Retail NES Controller Electronics
Have you ever wondered about how a NES controller actually works, such as the circuits and electronic components used to physically create it?
Well you are in luck, the YouTuber Displaced Gamers explains exactly how the electronics of the NES controller works and a few interesting facts along the way!
He opens up the NES controller revealing the physical wires, traces (green lines on the circuit), rubber membranes and the 8-bit shift register (HD14021BP).
The Controller as with all electronics has both a Power (High) and Ground (Low) lines, with 5V used for Power. Ground is connected to all of the buttons including the 4 D-pad buttons, whereas the Power lines go straight to the Carbon Printed Pull-Up resistors which then in-turn goes to each of the buttons.
When a button is pressed it completes the circuit at that point meaning it is pulled Low (Grounded) which allows the shift register to know that button is pressed. The resistors are used to make sure the power lines are always High, so we can ensure that when a pin is pulled low it has definitely been pressed.
Game Software Development for the NES and Famicom
There was an official software development kit provided by Nintendo/Intelligent Systems for the NES/Famicom but Nintendo didn’t distribute it to third party developers. Instead developers were required to either get an off-the-shelf 6502 assembler or write their own. Paired with a booklet covering how the NES handled graphics, input and sound, this was all that game developers got in terms of software for game development on the NES.
Nowadays there are many open source assemblers, IDE’s and even high level language compilers that can be used to create NES homebrew games.
How long did it take to develop games for the NES back in the day?
On average, NES game development could take anywhere from several months to a couple of years. Some simpler or shorter games might be developed more quickly, while larger, more complex titles could take longer.
Most game development teams only hand a handful of people working full time on the game, mostly programmers. Artists and Sound Engineers were often working on multiple projects at the same time. Music was usually created and added to the game near the end of the development process when the game was getting ready to be shipped.
Some examples of the length of time it took to develop Nintendo Entertainment System games are:
- SOLAR JETMAN: HUNT FOR THE GOLDEN WARSHIP - Took 1 year with 4 developers (but only 2 developers for 60% of development time) 5.
- The Portopia Serial Murder Case and other ports by Chunsoft took about 4 months with a team of about 5-6 people 6.
- Guevara/Guerrilla War by SNK was ported from the arcade original in just two months by the main programmer Yukio Kaneda. This was an agreement in which he would accept the short deadline in return for being allowed to add a hidden minigame based on the orignal SNK game Sasuke vs. Commander 7
Who was the first NES game developers outside of Japan?
The British company Rare made gaming history by becoming the first non-Japanese licensed game developer for the NES, securing the license from Nintendo through an ingenious demonstration of their skills by reverse engineering the console and showcasing the game “Slalom” as a convincing demo to Nintendo in 1986 8.
They created their own development kits based on the PDS and you can find out more about it in our post on the NES Development Hardware:
What do we know about the Official Famicom SDK?
The Official Famicom SDK was created by Nintendo and Intelligent Systems in 1986, as revealed by a file leaked in the Nintendo Gigaleaks. The file, called HDT.EXE, was included with the source code to the Game Boy Zelda game.
It contains the NES/Famicom Debugger, a tool developed by Intelligent Systems between 1986-1989, which appears to read in three file formats: CHR (Character/Tile Data), SCR (Screen data or Source Data), and CGD (possibly standing for Character Graphic Designer, though this is uncertain).
What did a NES/Famicom Design Document look like?
Hardcore Gaming 101 has a video showing the design document created for the Famicom game Guardian Legend:
NES Emulation
What is a NES emulator and how does it work?
We have a specific post covering exactly how emulators work including tips for writing your own emulators:
When was the first NES emulator?
We have a specific post on the history of NES emulation:
NES Emulators with Debugging Functionality
When reversing or developing NES games it is vital to use a good emulator which has debugging support such as:
- BreakPoints - e.g can create a breakpoint at a specific code or memory location and execution will stop at that place
- Symbol File support - e.g supports loading a file with a list of known variable and function names
- Built-in Assembler - assemble code in real-time within the emulator to quickly create patches
- PPU Viewer - see the current state of the Picture Processing Unit such as the Nametable, Sprites, CHR Memory viewer etc
Here is a list of a few Open Source emulators that have some of these features:
- Mesen - SourMesen/Mesen: Mesen is a cross-platform (Windows & Linux) NES/Famicom emulator built in C++ and C#
- Nintendulator - quietust/nintendulator: NES emulator for Windows
Game Modding and ROM Hacking
ROM hacking starts with the parts a game exposes: code, level data, graphics and sound. The tools below range from contemporary Famicom disk editors to modern emulator-assisted patches.
Tonkachi Editor (Hammer Editor)
Released on the 1st July 1987 by I-2 Co. Ltd 9 the Tonkachi Editor was a Famicom Disk System Disk which allowed editing of other Famicom Disk System games. This is the earliest ROM Hacking software we are aware of and was sold in retail stores in Japan.
This was years before the first Game Genie’s were released and it was far more powerful than any chat cartridge that was ever released in the west.
How did Tonkachi Editor work?
Since Famicom Disk system games were written on re-writeable Quick Disks all the software needed to do was load itself into memory, ask the user to put the game they want to modify in and then allow the user to change bytes in HEX or ASCII format before writing the game out to a free slot on the card.
Although it was quite cumbersome as in order to test out the changes you would need to write the card and reboot the system into the written game. So some people used multiple Disk systems, so they could keep the Tonkachi Editor editor running on one of them and test out the changes on the other, without the constant restarting 9.
What documentation did Tonkachi Editor come with?
It came with a rather beefy 63 page manual in A5 format, printed in black and white. Apparently it even teaches some basic 6502 assembly language 9! It even documented how the original Super Mario Bros worked (although it is inaccurate), that would become the basis of our deep understanding of the game to this day.
Did Tonkachi Editor come with any ROM Hacks built in?
Yes there was a ROM hack of the original Super Mario Bros called Hammer Mario which may be one of the first ROM hacks ever created! 9.
Did Tonkachi Editor support cartridge based games?
Yes cartridge games were supported (on the twin fami) but only up to 320kb could be transfered on to the disk cards so when Nintendo started releasing larger cartridge based games they could not be edited 10.
The Tonkachi Editor magazines/news/booklets
Similar to cheat books that were published for cheat cartridges there was a magazine produced called the Hammer News, it had 6 volumes and was created by users writing in to i2 with their own findings modifying Famicom Disk System (and even ROM cartridges).
Quick Hunter Parameter Software (Game Analyzer Group Club)
Despite the success of Tonkachi Editor, we have not found another comparable retail editor. The closest example we know is the Quick Hunter Parameter software (クイックハンター) for the Famicom Disk System 9.
It’s not quite clear what the Quick Hunter Parameter software did. Since Quick Hunter itself was an unlicensed disk copier, perhaps the Parameter Disks allowed small modifications such as inserting cheat codes.
There was at least 3 Parameter software disks released in japan 11.
Although I can only find photos of the main software and two parameter disks:
Game Genie Cheat Cartridges (1990+)
The main cheat cartridge available for the NES was the Game Genie created by Codemasters (Distributed by Galoob & Hornby Hobbies). This was a physical connector that would sit between the NES and the Game Cartridge you wanted to cheat on. It would alter the signals based on which memory addresses were being read/written to in real-time based on the Cheat code that was loaded into the system.
Game Genie Code Format
The Game Genie used a special encoding format for its codes which can be encoded and decoded using this handy online tool: Game Genie Encoder/Decoder
Making Game Genie Codes Permanent
If you want to permanently modify one of your NES ROM files with a certain cheat code there is a Windows Only tool to do this created by rdurbin: Romhacking.net - Utilities - Permanent Game Genie
NES Memory Corruption
Corrupting the memory of a ROM has become very popular over on Youtube with creators such as Vinesauce regularly using ROM corruptors on popular games to produce some interesting results.
If you want to try it yourself we recommend the Real-Time Corruptor Vanguard (RTCV) available on Github: redscientistlabs/RTCV: Real-Time Corruptor, Vanguard, CorruptCore, NetCore2 https://redscientist.com/rtc. It is written using DotNet so it should work on Windows and MacOSX/Linux via Mono.
For more information we have a specific post on the topic of Game memory corruption:
Deliberate NES Memory Corruption by Javidx9
The Youtuber Javidx9 has created a system that randomly corrupts the memory of a NES game (every 5 seconds) as it runs just for the fun of seeing the chaos that follows. The interesting part of this is that his system is somewhat smart in that it tracks the most common memory addresses used per frame (excluding screen memory) and changes those at a higher rate compared to just random memory locations.
Apparently the source code was once linked on the twitch page, but it is sadly so old now that the link has disappeared, it would have been really interesting to see it!
HD Texture Packs
You can easily replace the 2D Sprites and Tiles from a NES game with HD/4K alternatives using specific emulators such as Mesen and HDNes. The gameplay is unchanged as it overlays the HD Graphics on top of the game and doesn’t have any of the colour limitations of the NES hardware. These modifications as emulator specific and will not modify the original ROM.
Mesen even comes with a HD Pack Builder Tool to create your own texture packs, for more information: HD Packs :: Mesen Documentation
Gamester81 demonstrates HD graphics for NES games. The showcase provides a visual companion to the texture-pack tools in this section.
Homebrew NES Development
NES Assembly Programming
Programming the Nintendo Entertainment System
Levi D. Smith provides a deep dive into the NES architecture, specifically detailing the 6502 CPU registers, PPU and APU memory mapping, and cartridge components like PRG and CHR ROM.
The presentation extensively covers writing 6502 assembly, translating high-level programming constructs like loops and subroutines into opcodes, handling hardware interrupts (NMI), reading controller I/O ports, and utilizing the five audio channels.
Finally, it demonstrates the practical application of these concepts by assembling a custom homebrew title, “Space Dude,” using the NESASM3 assembler and YCHR sprite editor.
Nerdy Nights NES Programming Tutorials
The best 6502 Assembly tutorial for the NES has to be Brian Parker’s Nerdy Nights tutorial series which goes from the basics all the way up to writing a version of pong!
It stats with basic architecture and moves through PPU graphics (sprites, backgrounds), APU sound engine creation, and advanced mappers like MMC1.
The original posts have been taken down but you can find a mirror here:
Writing NES Games! With Assembly!!
Coding Tech presents a talk by Christian, a web developer who spent three months learning 6502 assembly to build a game for the NES. The presentation walks through the technical hurdles of retro development, from understanding ROM board architecture and the Picture Processing Unit (PPU) to writing low-level code for sprite movement and controller input using the CC65 toolchain.
How are NES games so small (40KB)?
The game developer Morphcat Games has released a video on how they created an impressive game called Micro Mages in just 40KB without using a mapper (NROM board):
It mentioned Metatiles and techniques for optimizing tile usage (removing duplicates and using mirroring).
Graphics & Rendering
For an introduction to how the NES renders graphics to the screen checkout Austin Morlan’s excellent article on his website: An Overview of NES Rendering - Austin Morlan.
It covers the following topics related to NES Graphics:
- Tiles - 8x8 pixel graphics used to make up the background of a game
- Block - A set of 4x4 tiles (used for colour indexing)
- Frames - Background made up of 32x30 titles (256x240 pixels)
- Nametable - Big blob of bytes, specifying which tile is placed where in the frame (Like a Room in GameMaker)
- Pattern Table - Contains the actual pixels for the 8x8 tiles as either a 1 or a 0 (no colour information)
- System Palette - A Palette of all the 64 colours a NES can output to the screen
- Frame Palette - A dynamic subset of the System Palette of just the colours used in a single frame. Palette 0 to 3 are for background tiles, and 4 to 7 are for sprites.
- Attribute Table - A look up table of which Palette to use for that Block (set of 4x4 tiles)
- Sprites - Graphics made up of tiles but are rendered above the background tiles
NES Graphics Explained - The PPU
NesHacker provides a technical deep dive into the Nintendo Entertainment System’s graphics architecture, focusing on the Picture Processing Unit (PPU). The video explains the four critical memory sections used to render 8-bit graphics: Pattern Tables for raw tile data, Name Tables for background layouts, Palettes for color management, and Object Attribute Memory (OAM) for handling foreground sprites.
What’s Beyond the Screen Borders of the NES?
100th Coin presents a technical analysis of the data and rendering artifacts hidden within the overscan regions of Nintendo Entertainment System games. The video explores how the PPU handles off-screen sprite management and scrolling seams, highlighting specific emulation challenges such as OAM cycling and scanline zero behavior.
Reverse Engineering Famicom and NES games
If you’re interested in exploring the inner workings of classic video games, reverse engineering is a process that can help you uncover the secrets of how these games were designed and programmed.
Super Mario Bros. 3 memory visualisation
Bisqwit visualises memory use in Super Mario Bros. 3. The display provides a concrete companion to memory maps and the process of identifying game state in a running NES program 12.
The Basics of NES Reversing
In this section, we’ll provide an overview of the basic techniques used to reverse engineer NES games, including disassembly, debugging, and memory analysis
What games have already been reverse engineered or are under active development?
If you are interested to see existing reversing projects for the NES check out our other post specifically on this topic:
What does it mean to reverse engineer a NES game?
Reverse engineering is a process that can help uncover the inner workings of these games and reveal how they were programmed, designed, and even uncover hidden easter eggs.
For more information on the basics and benefits of reverse engineering games in general check out our introductory guide:
What are the different File Formats for the NES and Famicom?
When reversing NES games you will come across a variety of file formats, this section will try to cover all of the most common formats you will encounter.
The formats for NES ROMS (virtual cartridges) are:
- .NES - This is the most common format for NES ROMs to be in, it is also known as the iNES format, most emulators will play this format (For More information: INES - NESdev Wiki)
- .UNIF - The Universal NES Image Format was a competitor format to iNES 1.0 but has largely been replaced by iNES 2.0
- .FDS - Famicom Disc System backup format created for the fwNES emulator
- .NSF (NSF2/NSFe) - NES Sound Format for playing music ripped from NES games can be played back in some emulators and specific NSF tools.
- .TNES - Official Format by Nintendo used on the 3DS Virtual Console and also supports Famicom Disc System games
How can I reverse engineer a NES ROM with Ghidra?
Ghidra is an excellent tool to reverse engineer NES games but there is a lot to cover so we have moved this section to its own post which you can view here:
NES and Famicom Reverse Engineering Guides
This section aggregates many of the excellent guides and write-ups of the process of reverse engineering NES games.
Ghidra Plays Mario: Emulating NES games in Ghidra with pCode
Ghidra uses pcode as an intermediate representation of machine code, enabling more abstract analysis and manipulation of binary instructions across different processor architectures during the reverse engineering process.
Ghidra provides a built-in emulator that can execute pcode, which has been put to good use in the ghidra-plays-mario Github project. Where they have taken the cpu emulation out of smolnes emulator and replaced it with the Ghidra pcode emulation and it plays the first level of Mario!
This isn’t a realistic way to play the game, it uses pre-recorded inputs, but it is an excellent want to test Ghidra’s pcode emulation! Allowing bugs to be found which when fixed will benefit all NES reversing projects.
Adding Hard Drops to NES Tetris
The website Grid Bugs has written an excellent article on reverse engineering the NES version of Tetris to add functionality to the game called a Hard Drop. Check it out here: Reverse-Engineering NES Tetris to add Hard Drop
Nestadia CTF - Reversing a Cloud-based NES Emulator
The security blog segfault.me has an excellent write-up of a Capture The Flag (CTF) challenge called Nestadia. The challenge involved reverse engineering a cloud-based NES emulator to find a flag hidden inside a game’s ROM. It is a fascinating read on a modern twist to classic NES hacking.
Super Mario Bros Reverse Engineering
The original Super Mario Bros was the game that revolutionised platformers, with its smooth scrolling and excellent game design there was bound to be many reversing projects related to it. This section covers projects specifically targeted towards the classic platformer.
Super Mario Bros Annotated Disassembly
If you are interested in how Super Mario Bros works (or to really get an insight into how any NROM Mapper 0 game works) you need to check out A Comprehensive Super Mario Bros. Disassembly by doppelganger.
Super Mario Compiler
The website neilb.net has created what it calls a Mario Compiler which takes in the original Super Mario Bros ROM and disassembles it. The disassembled code is then shown to the user and can then be modified and re-assembled back into a working NES ROM. All from within the web application!
You can also view the source code for the project here: nbarkhina/MarioCompiler: A Super Mario Compiler written in JavaScript
Super Mario Bros in C
Mitchell Sternke has created an impressive port of the original NES Super Mario Bros, he has written a tool that converts most of the 6502 assembly code into its equivalent C code. He has then written a PPU, Controller and APU emulation layer in C to make it all work into a portable C application running natively on the target hardware (No 6502 CPU emulation required!).
You can find it on Github here: SuperMarioBros-C/README.md at master · MitchellSternke/SuperMarioBros-C
Extracting Super Mario Bros levels in Python
Matthew Earl has an excellent post on how he managed to extract the level data for Super Mario Bros using the disassembly project and python scripts: Extracting Super Mario Bros levels with Python - Matt’s Ramblings
ROM City Rampage (Grand Theftendo) for the NES
The developers of Retro City Rampage (V-blank Entertainment) created a limited NES port of their game for the NES and documented some of the major changes that they needed in order to get it to run on the real console:
The port shows what had to change to fit the NES hardware.
How to get the ROM
According to RomHacking.net13 they were not allowed to release the NES ROM created for Grand Theftendo or even some of the documentation that they wrote while creating it. However the ROM is in the final game, so if you own the game it is possible to extract the NES ROM and play it in an emulator!
You need to use a tool called BFP Extractor to extract content from: the file gamedata.bfp at addresses 0x747E67D6 and 0xC87FC3A3 then create a iNES ROM Header for it with the following Hex values:
4E 45 53 1A 20 20 50 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00
Then simply join the header with the content from address 0x747E67D6 and 0xC87FC3A3 together and name it as a .nes file.
All Posts
The 6502 Microprocessor The 6502 microprocessor was an 8-bit microprocessor that was incredibly popular for 8-bit home computers (e.g Apple II) and consoles (e.g NES) due to its low cost.
Released by MOS Technology in 1975, the 6502 was designed...
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Home Alone 2 NES Source Code The Source Code for “Home Alone 2” was kindly released by Frank Cifaldi from GameHistoryorg (@frankcifald).
Games on the same engine The same Game Engine seems to have been used in at least 5...
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Introduction Game corruption has become a hot topic recently due to many you tubers playing through games that have in some way had their memory corrupted.
This practise can cause the game to produce some weird and wonderful effects which...
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Sprite Tile editing with Tile Layer Pro If you have ever wondered how graphical rom hacks are made this is for you!
This should work for most early games such as NES and Game Boy.
Future generation games start to...
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Introduction The Nintendo Famicom was released in Japan on 15th July, 1983 at a price of 14,800 yen.
Development for the machine was strictly controlled by Nintendo as they didn’t want a repeat of the US “Video Game Crash” which they...
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The History of NES Emulation The Birth of Emulation and the NES In the early 1990s, as personal computers became more powerful, a new frontier in gaming culture emerged: emulation.
Emulation involves mimicking one system’s hardware or software on another...
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Introduction This page walks you through using Ghidra to reverse engineer NES ROMs using the Ghidra-Nes-Rom-Decompiler-Plugin.
This plugin currently only supports a handful of the most common mappers but it adds up to quite a large number of games supported....
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Since Nintendo controls manufacturing of all official games they have a process called Lot Check that ensures the games quality before manufacturing.
Every game ever officially released for their platform has had to go through the Lot Check process in...
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Introduction To get started the 8-bit Guy on Youtube has an excellent video covering how early computers and game consoles played sound and music 1.
The gives a good overview of the different types of Audio available in retro games:...
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Have you ever wondered what exactly is inside those retro game Cartridges (ROMs)?
In this post we will find out the purpose of ROM cartridges and how they worked.
Advantages of Cartridges Cartridges are not the only format available to...
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The 8-bit Guy on Youtube has an excellent series of videos covering how early computer graphics were implemented with the limitations of the hardware in mind.
Graphics pipeline overview Branch Education introduces how video-game graphics work.
The overview supplies context...
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Introduction This page will give a brief overview of how Super Mario Bros for the Nintendo Entertainment System (NES) works.
This page wouldn’t have been possible without the excellent work by doppelganger on their Comprehensive Super Mario Bros.
Disassembly.
Cartridge...
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Magazine Interviews
The magazine index collects developer interviews tagged for this system across all indexed magazines.
| Magazine | Issue | Pages | Developer | Platforms | Description |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Retro Gamer | 11 | pp. 69-71 | Jon Valesh and Roger DeForest | Nintendo Entertainment System | Former Color Dreams staff discuss the company’s unlicensed NES games and its later Wisdom Tree releases. |
| Retro Gamer | 20 | pp. 69-73 | Greg Rice | Arcade, Nintendo Entertainment System | Former American Technos executive Rice discusses the company’s arcade and home-game releases. |
| Retro Gamer | 36 | pp. 42-47 | Alfred Milgrom | ZX Spectrum, Commodore 64, NES | Alfred Milgrom discusses Melbourne House and Beam Software, part one. |
| Retro Gamer | 37 | pp. 42-47 | Beam Software developers | NES | Beam Software developers discuss Melbourne House and Beam Software in the second part of the company profile. |
| Retro Gamer | 37 | pp. 84-87 | Ste Ruddy | Commodore 64, NES, SNES, Game Boy Advance | Ste Ruddy discusses his game programming career. |
| Retro Gamer | 38 | pp. 88-93 | David Foster and other conversion developers | Arcade, Amiga, ZX Spectrum, NES, SNES | David Foster and other conversion developers discusses home conversions of Dragon’s Lair. |
| Retro Gamer | 41 | pp. 48-51 | Will Harvey | Apple II, NES, Mega Drive | Interview about the making of The Immortal. |
| Retro Gamer | 77 | pp. 70-73 | David Crane | NES | Interview about the making of A Boy and His Blob. |
| Retro Gamer | 79 | pp. 54-61 | Andrew Graham and other Micro Machines developers | NES, Sega Mega Drive | Interviews about the making of Micro Machines. |
| Retro Gamer | 81 | pp. 54-59 | Ste Pickford | NES | Interview in the history of the Wizards & Warriors series. |
| Retro Gamer | 82 | pp. 28-37 | John Carmack, David Braben, Trip Hawkins and Ralph Baer | NES | Developer memories of Mario in the 25th anniversary feature. |
| Retro Gamer | 97 | pp. 70-79 | Yuji Horii | NES | Interview in the 25-year history of Dragon Quest. |
| Retro Gamer | 113 | pp. 60-67 | David Darling and Andrew Graham | NES, Mega Drive | The Codemasters co-founder and series developer recall making Micro Machines games. |
| Retro Gamer | 117 | pp. 6-7 | David Yu | NES, Super Nintendo, Mega Drive | The Hyperkin developer discusses the emulation and cartridge support in the RetroN 5 console. |
| Retro Gamer | 122 | pp. 74-79 | Software Creations staff | ZX Spectrum, Commodore 64, NES | Former developers discuss the studio’s arcade conversions and original games. |
| Retro Gamer | 125 | pp. 88-91 | Kevin Bayliss | NES | Bayliss discusses Rare’s original Battletoads. |
| Retro Gamer | 133 | pp. 24-31 | Punch-Out developers | Arcade, NES, Super Nintendo | Nintendo developers discuss the series’ arcade origins and console sequels. |
| Retro Gamer | 134 | pp. 84-85 | Brian Provinciano | NES, PC | Provinciano explains the NES roots of Retro City Rampage. |
| Retro Gamer | 135 | p. 82 | Jerry Momoda | Arcade, NES | The former Nintendo of America staffer discusses the arcade and NES versions of Duck Hunt. |
| Retro Gamer | 148 | pp. 6-7 | Andrew and Philip Oliver | NES | The Oliver twins discuss finishing the lost game Wonderland Dizzy. |
| Retro Gamer | 148 | pp. 38-41 | Andy Walker | NES | Walker explains how Digger T. Rock evolved from the arcade game The Pit. |
| Retro Gamer | 149 | pp. 44-51 | Greg Fischbach and Acclaim staff | NES, PlayStation, Nintendo 64 | Former staff discuss Acclaim’s publishing and development history. |
| Retro Gamer | 150 | p. 40 | Shigeru Miyamoto and Takashi Tezuka | NES | The Nintendo developers discuss designing the first level of Super Mario Bros.. |
| Retro Gamer | 150 | pp. 85-87 | Paul Machacek | NES, SNES, Nintendo 64 | The Rare developer discusses the studio’s work with Nintendo. |
| Retro Gamer | 152 | pp. 62-67 | Chris Shrigley and Eurocom developers | Commodore 64, NES, Nintendo 64 | Former staff discuss Eurocom’s origins, licensed games, and development practices. |
| Retro Gamer | 155 | pp. 18-27 | Masayuki Uemura | NES | The Nintendo hardware designer explains how the NES was created. |
| Retro Gamer | 163 | p. 39 | Anthony Ball | NES | Ball discusses coding the NES conversion of Cabal. |
| Retro Gamer | 163 | pp. 92-97 | Satoru Okada | Game Boy, NES | Okada discusses his work at Nintendo, including the Game Boy. |
| Retro Gamer | 164 | pp. 66-71 | David Darling, Richard Darling and Ted Carron | NES | The Codemasters team explains the origins and development of the Game Genie. |
| Retro Gamer | 167 | p. 8 | John Faciane | NES | Capcom’s Faciane discusses The Disney Afternoon Collection and its NES games. |
| Retro Gamer | 169 | pp. 94-99 | Nobuo Uematsu | NES, SNES, PlayStation | Uematsu discusses his videogame music career and Final Fantasy. |
| Retro Gamer | 170 | pp. 28-33 | Shinji Hashimoto | NES, SNES, PlayStation | The Square Enix brand manager reflects on 30 years of Final Fantasy. |
| Retro Gamer | 181 | pp. 44-51 | Dan Kitchen and Garry Kitchen | NES | The brothers discuss making The Simpsons games for NES. |
| Retro Gamer | 182 | pp. 94-99 | Matt Gray | Commodore 64, NES | Gray discusses his career writing videogame music and programming games. |
| Retro Gamer | 183 | pp. 20-29 | Alexey Pajitnov and Henk Rogers | Electronika 60, Game Boy, NES | The creator and publisher revisit the history and worldwide success of Tetris. |
| Retro Gamer | 185 | pp. 70-73 | Zach Manko | NES, SNES, Mega Drive | The Mega Cat Studios cofounder discusses making new cartridge games for classic consoles. |
| Retro Gamer | 188 | pp. 58-61 | Foo Katan and Bits Studios developers | NES, SNES, Game Boy | Former staff discuss the history and games of Bits Studios. |
| Retro Gamer | 191 | pp. 91-95 | Chris Shrigley | Commodore 64, NES, PC | Shrigley discusses his game programming career in Britain and the US. |
| Retro Gamer | 202 | pp. 46-51 | Minoru Kidooka, Toshimichi Mori and Daisuke Ishiwatari | NES, PlayStation, Arcade | Arc System Works staff trace the studio’s path from conversions to fighting games. |
| Retro Gamer | 203 | pp. 18-27 | Ste Pickford and Chris Sutherland | NES, SNES | Game developers contribute to a discussion of the design of 2D Mario platform games. |
| Retro Gamer | 205 | p. 36 | Steve Turner | NES | Turner answers questions about the NES version of Uridium, released as The Last Starfighter. |
| Retro Gamer | 209 | p. 13 | Philip Oliver and Andrew Oliver | NES, Evercade | The twins discuss preserving and reissuing their Dizzy and other NES games. |
| Retro Gamer | 210 | pp. 80-85 | Tony Pomfret | Commodore 64, NES, Amiga | Pomfret reflects on his programming career at Ocean and Special FX. |
| Retro Gamer | 211 | pp. 82-85 | Richard Igros, Josh Fairhurst, Jon M Gibson and Amanda White | NES, Mega-CD, Nintendo 64 | Retro reissue producers explain sourcing, restoring and modifying game ROMs for new physical releases. |
| Retro Gamer | 212 | pp. 80-85 | Dan Kitchen | Atari 2600, NES, Game Boy | Kitchen reflects on his programming, design and production career. |
| Retro Gamer | 215 | pp. 62-63 | Karu_Gamo | NES | The homebrew programmer discusses creating the firefighting game Blazing Rangers. |
| Retro Gamer | 215 | pp. 70-73 | Jason McGann | Game Boy, NES | McGann recalls developing Alfred Chicken and his work at Twilight Software. |
| Retro Gamer | 224 | pp. 52-55 | Garry Kitchen | NES, Mega Drive, Commodore 64 | Kitchen recalls creating The Simpsons: Bart vs the Space Mutants and its home versions. |
| Retro Gamer | 228 | pp. 20-29 | Colin Nicholls, Joel Beardshaw, Mark Neesam, Paul Perrott, Steve Holley and Toby Eglesfield | NES, Mega Drive, PlayStation, PC | Developers trace the design and evolution of the Micro Machines games. |
| Retro Gamer | 229 | pp. 38-43 | Kevin Bayliss, Paul Machacek and AJ Grand-Scrutton | NES, Game Boy, Arcade, PC | Developers trace the design and changing styles of Battletoads. |
| Retro Gamer | 230 | p. 100 | Chester Kollschen | NES, Commodore 64 | Kollschen discusses converting Sam’s Journey from the Commodore 64 to the NES. |
| Retro Gamer | 236 | pp. 12-13 | Daniel Crocker | Dreamcast, NES | Crocker discusses WAVE Game Studios’ Dreamcast releases and game publishing. |
| Retro Gamer | 239 | pp. 56-61 | Howie Rubin, James Higgins, Chuck Romberger and Mark K Jones | NES, Amstrad CPC, Commodore 64, PC | Developers discuss home conversions and sequels of Arkanoid. |
| Retro Gamer | 239 | p. 100 | Angel and na_th_an of Mojon Twins | ZX Spectrum, Amstrad CPC, NES | The Mojon Twins developers explain their reusable game engines and 8-bit projects. |
| Retro Gamer | 241 | pp. 18-27 | Thomas Church, Chris Kohler, Stephen Frost and Charles Murakami | Arcade, NES, SNES, Mega Drive | Digital Eclipse and Konami staff discuss the history and preservation of Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles games. |
| Retro Gamer | 241 | p. 100 | Alastair Low | NES, Playdate | Low discusses developing Flea, Tapeworm Disco Puzzle and other homebrew games. |
| Retro Gamer | 243 | pp. 44-49 | Mark Greenshields, Richard Naylor, Andy Swann and Darren Melbourne | ZX Spectrum, Commodore 64, Amiga, Atari ST, NES | Former staff recount Enigma Variations’ licensed games and console conversions. |
| Retro Gamer | 244 | pp. 46-51 | Andy Swann and Stuart Cook | ZX Spectrum, Amiga, Atari ST, NES | Twilight developers recall forming the studio and making licensed games and conversions. |
| Retro Gamer | 244 | p. 100 | Matt Hughson | NES | Hughson discusses learning NES development and making homebrew games. |
| Retro Gamer | 246 | pp. 18-31 | Connor Patrick Quinn, Scott Sulcher, Rob Maher, Greg Lobanov, Melos Han-Tani and Nicolas Cannasse | NES, Switch, PC | Indie developers discuss how The Legend Of Zelda has influenced their own games. |
| Retro Gamer | 246 | pp. 98-99 | Antoine Fantys, Roy Fielding and Cout Games | NES, Commodore 64, Amstrad CPC | Homebrew coders explain creating Wordle variants for classic hardware. |
| Retro Gamer | 246 | p. 100 | SJ and Dale of SJ Games | NES | The father-and-son team discuss creating the NES platformer Skate Cat. |
| Retro Gamer | 247 | p. 100 | Nathan Tolbert and Jordan Davis | NES | Team Sword’s developers discuss the design of The Storied Sword. |
| Retro Gamer | 248 | pp. 18-29 | Paul Machacek, Kevin Bayliss, James Deighan, Nicolas Bétoux, Julius Riecke and Mikael Forslind | NES | Veteran and contemporary NES developers discuss hardware limits and development tools. |
| Retro Gamer | 250 | pp. 18-43 | Rare developers past and present | ZX Spectrum, NES, SNES, Nintendo 64, Xbox, Xbox 360 | Rare veterans trace the studio’s game-development history, from Ultimate to its modern projects. |
| Retro Gamer | 251 | pp. 98-99 | Joe Granato IV | NES | Granato discusses Mystic Searches and the NESmaker development tool. |
| Retro Gamer | 252 | pp. 20-21 | Daley Johnson | NES, Switch | The Playtonic designer discusses Mario’s enduring character design and appeal. |
| Retro Gamer | 252 | pp. 22-23 | Philip Oliver | NES | Oliver discusses Mario’s level design and its influence on his own NES game projects. |
| Retro Gamer | 252 | pp. 24-25 | Chris Sutherland | NES, Nintendo 64 | The former Rare programmer examines how Mario’s movement and abilities shaped platform games. |
| Retro Gamer | 252 | pp. 40-47 | Richard Spitalny | Atari 8-bit, Commodore 64, NES | First Star Software’s cofounder shares firsthand memories of its games, including Boulder Dash and Spy Vs Spy. |
References
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Game Developer Magazine April 1994 Page 24 ↩
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Retro Gamer Issue 96 page 55 ↩
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Chunsoft 30th Anniversary – 2014 Developer Interview - shmuplations.com ↩
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Ikari Warriors, Guerilla War, and The SNK Golden Age - shmuplations.com ↩
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Retro Gamer Issue 84 from December 2010 pages 34–35. ↩
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Hammer Editor (Eye-2) Famicom modification tool code page ↩ ↩2 ↩3 ↩4 ↩5
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Hammer News Hammer Editor (Eye-2) Famicom Modification Tool Code Page ↩
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Buy Quick Hunter - Parameter Disk No. 3 (Unlicensed) Nintendo Famicom Disk System Video Games on the Store ↩