Questions tagged [nes]
For questions about the different versions and products of the NES (Nintendo Entertainment System)
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What could SID do that APU could not?
Two of the more famous and highly regarded sound chips in the 8-bit era were the Commodore 64's SID and the Nintendo APU. Which of the two was overall better, seems to be a matter on which there is a ...
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What EPROMs should I use to make my own NES cartridges?
I want to make my own NES cartridge, but I don't know what the correct type of ROM chip would be.
I am specifically thinking about the simplest PCB that works, an NES-NROM-128 which consists of a 16 ...
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On my NES, the color red displays as black. What could be the cause?
I have a NES, it is working normally, but one of the game colors appears as black. In the game Mario Bros 3, the name is in black, some blocks are black and the goombas too. What can it be?
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What's so different about Super Mario Brothers World T-1 that it doesn't look like level data at all?
Youtube video here: https://youtu.be/E6qRbk5Cscw?t=1127
Most of the glitched worlds are clearly ROM fragments of world data being loaded, most of them out-of-alignment and being rather messed-up.
This ...
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Why did my CRT TV back in the day have such noisy RF picture on the NES when a same-age one does not today? [closed]
Back when the NES was current, I got one for my birthday. I connected it using the RF thingie to my cheap noname 14" CRT TV bought a couple of years earlier, in the late 1980s or 1990 or so.
The ...
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Why did Nintendo name its console the "Famicom"?
The NES was known as the "Famicom" in Japan, short for "Family Computer".
But why was it given an English name in Japan, given (I assume) most people wouldn't know what the words &...
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How do retro supply stores prevent the controller rubber replacement parts from "expiring"?
My NES controller felt really awful. After ordering replacement rubber parts from a store, unscrewing my controller and replacing the original rubber parts with the new ones, it felt "like new&...
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Why did the NES not allow rotated sprites?
I'm taking a look at the chapter on sprites from a NES programming guide at famicom.party. There is a little table which describes what the different sprite attribute flags do:
Bit #
Purpose
7
Flips ...
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3
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What was the reason that the original Western NES console had a "cartridge bed" that had to be pushed down to play?
In Japan, they had the Famicom. You put in the cartridges on the top, just like with the later SNES and other consoles.
But for Europe and the USA (and the entire "West"), the "NES"...
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Why does the infamous "ENGAGERIDLEYMOTHERFUCKER" Metroid password break NES emulators?
For those who are unfamiliar, the original NES Metroid was one of many NES games to use passwords as a means to save progress.
Later, this password system was leveraged to create unusual effects in ...
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What is the purpose of mirrored memory regions in NES's CPU memory map? [duplicate]
[Please see answers to this related question as well]
I've started reading the "official" NES Documentation and in page ten, it says that "memory locations $0000-$07FF are mirrored ...
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How to assign code to different PRG-ROM banks on an NES ROM using ca65/ld65
A similar question was asked here but I read it and didn't really understand the solution.
What I'm trying to do here is make an NES ROM that uses Mapper 24, aka Konami VRC6 Version 1 (the one used by ...
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Were the classic game consoles *technically* able to play both NTSC and PAL games, if ignoring artificial region lock-in?
I'm not asking if they were region-free; I know they weren't generally.
I'm asking if, given an NTSC-supporting PAL TV, an NTSC game cartridge, and a PAL NES/SNES/N64/whatever, and also given some ...
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Did the PAL version of Super Mario Bros. on the NES really have faster music, and if so, why?
I have a real PAL NES hooked up to a modern TV with an AV-to-HDMI adapter (yeah, I'm working on finding a CRT). I bought an EverDrive cartridge for it because I'm a poor person who cannot afford to ...
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What is the "NES version" of the NES?
This text is displayed on many NES cartridges:
This Game Pak cannot be used with the Mattel or NES versions of the Nintendo Entertainment System
What is "the NES version" of the NES? Is it ...
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Is the only reason that my PAL NES is able to run NTSC/American games that it's doing it on an EverDrive?
I have an original PAL NES console. To the best of my knowledge, it is entirely unmodified.
I have an EverDrive N8 Pro inside on which I've put a bunch of European/PAL ROMs, but also a few NTSC/...
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Was the Japanese Super Mario Bros. 2 ever released in Europe?
The well-known story goes like this: When Nintendo had made Super Mario Bros. 2 in Japan, they for whatever reason decided to not release that game in the West. Instead, they reskinned an existing, ...
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Is there some simple way to avoid the artifact of "invisible" or "stuck" animation in old video games when streaming video?
I watch many live video + audio streams of people playing old video games, such as NES ones.
An extremely recurring annoyance is that, for example, when the main character is damaged and is supposed ...
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Was there anything about the "power of the NES" that made Super Mario Bros. have "realistic physics"?
If you look at older platformers, and even many later ones for other platforms and even the NES, there is typically no "momentum" and "realistic" physics for the main character ...
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please help me implement a 2C02 to use on my 6502 emulator [closed]
At the moment all i have is some arbitrary 6502 class(no audio yet). all instructions are working properly.
the nesdev wiki is confusing me way too much at this point.
All i know about the ppu is that ...
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How can you set the NES RNG to a known state?
The Classic Tetris World Championship uses original NES consoles that are modded to provide the same RNG for both players:
Players WILL have the same RNG
I am wondering how this was done. So, my ...
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What stealthy NES game had that profile-view darkness/searchlight area?
When I was a kid, probably around 1990-1992, I was at my cousins' house and they played NES. I vividly remember a side-scrolling stage which either was dark the whole time, or alternated between being ...
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Is the Raspberry Pi Model B (2014) technically inferior to an original Xbox (2001) in compute power/specifically for emulators? [closed]
(I first asked this in the Raspberry Pi section, but it received no responses. I think this, Retrocomputing, might be a better fit.)
I the year 2003, I had my Xbox chipped in order to be able to run ...
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Could a single NES ROM cartridge run on both PAL and NTSC systems?
Most ROMs are labeled with "(Europe)" or "(USA)", meaning PAL or NTSC. However, some are labeled "(World)". At first, I didn't think twice about this, just assuming that ...
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2
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Why doesn't Nintendo fire up the old factories and re-produce *exact* copies of many of their most popular games, controllers and consoles? [closed]
Let's suppose that Nintendo announce tomorrow that they are going to create exact re-releases of the American and European NES, SNES and Nintendo 64 consoles, exactly the same as when they were ...
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Did the original Shadowgate for the Macintosh (1987) not have "take" or "leave" command?
I'm very familiar with what I consider to be the "real" version of Shadowgate -- the NES port. Today, I noticed this screenshot from the actual original:
There is no "take" or &...
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0
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Does RetroArch have a PAL filter like the NTSC one?
RetroArch the emulator "wrapper" has an option to enable an NTSC filter over the image, simulating the visual look of a composite NTSC signal/TV. Here is a comparison between the "raw&...
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How does the Everdrive handle all the special chips and stuff that were put in cartridges?
An "Everdrive" is like a cartridge that looks just like a NES/SNES/N64/whatever cartridge, and is put into a real, original console. So you need the original hardware for it to work. And ...
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Why was "Flight Simulator II" never ported to the NES? Was it technically impossible?
In the magical mid-1990s, when we already had got our (second-hand) 486 PC and I had both a NES and SNES, I for some reason got my paws on an old Atari "XE Game System" (8-bit, 1987). It had ...
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Every single ROM in my collection has the wrong SHA1 hash according to No-Intros
I have a collection of ROM files for the NES, SNES, Nintendo 64 and others. These ROMs match exactly those games that I own or owned growing up.
Recently, I found out about the "No-Intros" ...
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Large number of Famiclones
I was looking the other day some NES clone footage, and I was surprised to find out that there is a ton of them. I am wondering, how could they be so many since Nintendo did not use standard off the ...
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Change color of the text written in PPU memory (NES-Super Mario Bros)
Let's say I want to write K to the top of the status bar in SMB. I can use the following set of statements to write to PPU memory.
memory.writebyte(0x2001, 0x00) -- Turn off rendering
memory....
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What is the reason of losing of save data in some NES games? How to prevent?
Sorry, the book of adventure #1 is disappeared. --Dragon Quest III
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Understanding Mario and screen position in "NES-Super Mario Bros"
Objective - Play Mario game and record the score and position, and later map it to level map png (https://nesmaps.com/maps/SuperMarioBrothers/SuperMarioBrosWorld1-1Map.html)
Method - I can get the ...
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Would having the console's CPU help in emulation hypothetically?
If I had a hypothetical computer just like nowaday's computers, but it had an NMOS 6502, would it provide me with a better emulation experience than if I were to emulate the 6502 inside software? Also,...
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How does the "Small fire-Mario" glitch in SMB1 work?
There's a glitch in the original Super Mario Bros on the NES. That causes Mario to become an unused sprite(Little Fire-Mario). I'm unsure how the glitch works, but I'll show the instructions on how to ...
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Were all NES games 16 kibibytes or less?
While searching on the Internet and Quora, I found disassemblers for Pac-Man, Galaxian, and Super Mario Bros. The thing that puzzled me, was while Super Mario Bros was arguably quite a complex game ...
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How does the "backwards bump method" of SMB work?
In Super Mario Bros, the screen automatically starts scrolling once you are past X position 112. However, a strategy employed by many speedrunners of the game during level 4-2 is the "backwards bump ...
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"Genesis Lock-On Technology" to change the language of a Famicom game
I want to create a cartridge similar to Sonic & Knuckles or a Game Genie so that the text files loaded from the ROM or DEPROM of an original Famicom cartridge can be replaced with alternate ...
7
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3
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Original NES from UK, that I want to work in the US
I have an original NES from England that I bought in the early 90s. I just found it again in the attic, and I want to hook it up and start playing it again. However, I now live in the USA and it's ...
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NES chips usage
I am curently studying NES architecture to create a NES emulator. While looking up the NES motherboard schematics (https://console5.com/wiki/Nintendo_NES-001), some of the chips usage are not clear to ...
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Self-modifying code in commercial games for the (S)NES, Gameboy, Genesis/MD, PC Engine, Atari, etc
I'm curious if there are any extant examples of commercial games for classic consoles (let's say, pre-32-bit era here) which make uses of self-modifying code. As far as I know, all the systems I've ...
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Why are NES cartridges grey while Famicom are rather colourful?
I've parsed a lot of websites and can't find answer anywhere. But still wonder to know why famicom cartridges are so colorful and different, but American and European cartridges grey only?
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100-pin connector to FPGA/SOC, can I auto-detect if attached to NES, SNES, Genesis, N64, GB, GBA?
If I have a 100-pin connector that may be connected to any of several known devices (NES, SNES, Gameboy, and so forth), can the device somehow auto-detect which device it's connected to?
For some of ...
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What was the point of the label on the bottom of the NES?
The original NES has a label printed onto it that the device would not "cause harmful interference". Why would they write that? Did people think the NES might be dangerous? Is this some kind of legal ...
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What is a subpixel in Super Mario Bros, and how does it relate to wall clipping?
What are "subpixels" in Super Mario Bros on the NES? How does it relate to wall clipping?
At 4:42 in the following video, the notion is mentioned in the context of how it relates to "wall clipping":
...
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How did Elite on the NES work?
Elite was one of the earliest 3D games, wireframe only of course but still a remarkable accomplishment on 8-bit computers. Originating on the BBC micro, it was ported to many home computers, as well ...
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Why didn't Famicom games use the Konami SCC for expansion audio?
There were a handful of Konami games on the Famicom that had additional sound chips (VRC6, VRC7, etc.) to enhance the audio of the games they were used in. Considering that the Famicom got many Konami ...
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386SX, NES and how much did data lines really cost anyway?
In 1988, Intel introduced the 80386SX, most often referred to as the 386SX, a cut-down version of the 80386 with a 16-bit data bus mainly intended for lower-cost PCs aimed at the home, educational, ...
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How did Super Mario Bros. 3 create this tunnel vision effect?
In a certain section of World 8's map, the screen is black except for a small circle surrounding Mario (as seen below during this speedrun).
After doing a little research, I discovered that the game'...
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