‘Nintendo’ Tag Archive


June 8, 2015

I AM EXTRA: Manic Compression

How Donkey Kong's programmers used compression to save ROM space. The following section is one of I AM ERROR’s oldest—it appeared in the initial drafts of ...

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June 6, 2015

I AM EXTRA: The Super C Helicopter Boss

How Konami's developers used the MMC3 scanline counter to create large moving enemies. The following section was originally intended to directly follow the Mega Man 2 ...

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January 9, 2014

Major League Baseball vs. Retro Criticism

Via Twitter, friend of the site Cameron Kunzelman recently introduced me to Eric Bailey, proprietor of Nintendo Legend, a site dedicated to ...

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May 12, 2013

Spatial Vectors in Videogame Design: Part IV

You know the drill: if you've landed here first, you'll likely want to read Part I (at ...

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May 8, 2013

Spatial Vectors in Videogame Design: Part III

If you haven't already, please see Part I and Read More


May 7, 2013

Spatial Vectors in Videogame Design: Part II

In Part I, I introduced the concept of spatial vectors as they apply to the opening screen ...

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April 28, 2013

Spatial Vectors in Videogame Design: Part I

A design study Poring over NES and Famicom games for the past year and a half has led to a lot of thinking about game design ...

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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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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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