‘NES’ Tag Archive


October 5, 2012

The Legend of Zelda Cold Run

Wherein I describe the cold run project I never owned The Legend of Zelda. When your parents are in charge of your game library, it tends ...

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September 12, 2012

The Famicom Cart Swap Trick

Replicating a Japanese glitch While researching my chapter on the US NES launch and subsequent game localizations, I came across Mato Tree's site. Mato does ...

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June 15, 2012

Dendy: The Unofficial Official Famicom of Russia

In Soviet Russia, Famicom plays you. Most avid fans of the Nintendo Entertainment System know a bit about its international lineage. The console released in late ...

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April 6, 2012

Interview: Paul Robson, programmer of the NESA emulator

The first Famicom/NES emulators began to appear around 1996. By most accounts, PasoFamicom, developed by Nobuaki Andou, was the first. Unfortunately, it wasn't user-friendly ...

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March 24, 2012

Porting the Kill Screen

Dissecting the code behind an error The 2007 film King of Kong popularized much of the minutia of high-level arcade play. One scene showed underdog ...

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March 15, 2012

Emulate the Emulators

How will we play NES/Famicom games 10, 50, 100, or 1000 years from now? We can imagine a not-so-distant future where all of the playable Nintendo ...

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February 12, 2012

Whence Came the Famicom’s Brain?

The MOS Technology 6502 was a landmark microprocessor. It was powerful, easy to program, and cheap, debuting for an astounding $25 in 1975. In its ...

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February 2, 2012

Slow Television

This morning's Famicom research focused on the video half of videogames. In other words, I was looking at the oft-neglected world of cathode ray tubes, ...

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January 2, 2012

‘TV Game System Having Reduced Memory Needs’

A Lengthy Tour of NES Patents If you've ever seen a Famicom alongside an NES, you might be shocked that they're the same system. The NES's ...

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December 6, 2011

Tool-Assisted

Console Emulation and Platform Plasticity Since the early 1990s, a special subculture of play, called speedruns, has pushed the limits of videogame skill, performance, and technical ...

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