Programming My Own 40KB NES Game

The Nintendo Entertainment System (released as the Family Computer in Japan) is the world's most iconic home game console. With a Ricoh 2A03 CPU based on the popular MOS 6502, it had 2KB of RAM, 2KB of VRAM, and with the built in Picture Processing Unit and Audio Processing Unit, was used to run some of the world's most popular games ever released.

Although early NES games were design for 40KB cartriges (32KB of PRG ROM and 8KB of CHR ROM), later advancements led to larger chips being used, and more game content being added, but the system itself remained the same. In order to bridge this gap, Mapper Chips were developed to allow the system access to certain parts of the PRG or CHR ROM sections.

Development help:

Further reading:

[soryabuscompany]

I've never seen a more thorough technical explanation of the NES in such a short time

[skylark.kraken]

0:02 I still find it remarkable how Golf on the NES became so popular that people started playing it IRL. They say that kids now adays go crazy over technology fads but they're the ones who created a sport from a game

[Arcadn]

The game boy color has one of my all time favorite visual styles for a retro console. Games like Mina the Hollower demonstrate how great it looks, it’s so appealing! Excited for that episode.

[JadeLombax]

I got into coding super tiny games a few years ago. I've made scaled-down Mario & Zelda games in about 1KB, working on some ideas for Metroid.

[stefanmilicevic]

The amount of effort you put into each programming project is truly inspiring. Keep up the great work!

[ego-lay_atman-bay]

The end really caught me off guard. It was such a scott the woz ending.

[bassguitarbill]

I love your NES videos, but as I actually have a bit of experience programming on the DMG, I'm looking forward even more to your future projects!

[StereoMadnessss]

Assembly is just amazing really on how small its code can be when it's compiled

[famitronic]

This is one of the best summarized explanations on how to build an nes game from scratch that I’ve seen! Thanks for the great video. 👍

[Sinistar]

Can't wait to see what game you make on the GBC. Its a personal favorite of mine to code on as well. And with how awesome GB studio is its now more accessible than ever to work with. And in case you're wondering my GBC game is called Eternal Memory.

[ETK_]

can't wait to see what you do on the gameboy. Love your videos!

[huskenator]

Love your videos dude, can’t wait to see you unpack the gameboy color. Also Scott The Woz jump scare

[alexandredecarvalho]

We need more of these!! :D thank you for your explanations!

[coolbrotherf]

It's so cool that Nintendo invented golf.

[dinaari-vgm]

ive been making a 32kb game for pico-8 and now i appreciate the wizardry that is needed to truly craft something playable within the limitations

[FloatingSunfish]

The NES will always be my favorite console.
It helped save the video game industry!

[douggiebee]

That was incredible. I was just thinking that something like this would be very interesting, and here it was, waiting for me to find it.

[JJisntHere.]

I like the microphone used here! really nostalgic sounding!

[IraKane]

I have been programming games for over 10 years now, C#, gdscript and back in the days of the NES I programmend in BASIC using an MSX....but I'm nobody! You are my hero!🤪

[williamdrum]

Later games used "bank switching" to fit more code/data than the NES's 64k address space would typically allow