
Making a SNES game in 2020 using modern tools - drludos
https://drludos.itch.io/yo-yo-shuriken/devlog/147478/making-a-snes-game-in-2020
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drludos
Hi everyone!

Here is an article I've just published about making a brand new game for the
Super Nintendo (SNES) console using today's technology. It starts with the
various steps to designing and program the game, and then details how me
manufacture new cartridges (with box and manual) for a console whose
commercial support ceased more than 20 years ago!

I hope you'll enjoy it, and don't hesitate to ask me if you have any question!

~~~
gwbas1c
When you made your own cart, did you do anything about the lockout chip? (I
think it's called 10nes?)

Or do you carts only work on a modded SNES?

~~~
thristian
10NES is the algorithm running on the CIC lockout chip of the original
Nintendo Entertainment System; the SNES had a similar lockout chip, but used a
different algorithm.

These days, the SNES CIC algorithm is fully understood, and you can program an
ordinary microcontroller to run either the "cartridge" or "console" ends of
the algorithm for every region, or even for a cartridge to detect at runtime
what region the console expects. See [https://sd2snes.de/blog/cool-
stuff/supercic](https://sd2snes.de/blog/cool-stuff/supercic)

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terrycody
People like you spent years of years time, effort, sleepless nights and a lot
more than talked to sharpen skills in one hardcore area very few people want
to try and then willing to share everything within a mere article, thanks so
much for sharing this and kudos to all the people like you.

~~~
drludos
Thanks a lot for your comment, it's really motivating :)

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zamadatix
See also Micro Mages
[https://youtu.be/ZWQ0591PAxM](https://youtu.be/ZWQ0591PAxM)

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petepete
This is amazing, it's the sort of content that keeps me coming back to HN.

For people interested in some of the tricks, tips and approaches that went
into building games at the time (mainly in the late 80s to late 90s), I can
highly recommend GameHut on YouTube.

[https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCfVFSjHQ57zyxajhhRc7i0g](https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCfVFSjHQ57zyxajhhRc7i0g)

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jokoon
I wish nintendo or any other hardware company would release a well-made
console, without the game licensing stuff.

The nintendo DS was such a success, and it did not have fast hardware.

Even if it's a little expensive and not fast, being able to run free games and
software would really be an awesome feature. People say there's no money in
it, but hardware is fast and cheap today, so any slow device would be cheap to
make.

The raspberry pi is really awesome, but I don't understand why they're not
making the final step of releasing a full device. Of course there are many
projects out there, but they're not produced in high quantities, meaning not
cheap, not well marketed, not always well designed, and often require non-
trivial additional tweaking.

~~~
ac29
Its because Nintendo isnt really a hardware company - they're a software
company. Game console hardware is generally sold close to at cost (sometimes
even at a loss), and profit is made by charging royalties to game developers.

The primary reason to lock down consoles is to prevent piracy, but also to
lock in those royalties. If the console was open, presumably most 3rd parties
would take advantage of that to reduce costs.

~~~
Shared404
IIRC, so take this with a grain of salt, the big N is the only major console
developer to consistently sell consoles at a profit.

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shultays
I am extremely jelly that you were able to build a cartridge of your game. I
have made a NES game myself and I am hoping that I will be skilled enough &
have necessary tools to make it a physical product (I can play it using
everdrive cartridge, which is close enough!)

~~~
drludos
Well, you're lucky, because there are a lot of people making very high quality
NES cartridge already (the NES homebrew scene is very vibrant compared to the
SNES scene).

I can recommend you to shopping at Infinite NES Lives, they are selling blank
cartridge (loads of mappers variants available) and a tool to "write" the game
on the cartridge:
[http://www.infiniteneslives.com/nessupplies.php](http://www.infiniteneslives.com/nessupplies.php)

(we actually used their flasher to write the SNES cartridges of Yo-Yo
Shuriken, as it works for SNES too!)

With that you can make your own physical release too! :)

~~~
shultays
That feels like a bit of cheating if you are not designing & soldering your
own cartridge :P

I wonder how this was like 40 years ago. Would developers use services similar
to this: find a company that makes the mapper you use, send them your binaries
and leave them to production details? Or would you design your own boards and
use a service to create and assemble them? Perhaps very large companies could
even afford build their own boards.

There are some complex/unique mappers out there which makes me believe at
least some companies out there were designing those mappers and building their
own boards

~~~
drludos
Well, for my project I did partner with someone to make the PCB, as I have
about 0 electronics skills (maybe someday...). People like INL or Catskull are
usually one-man operations, and they design their own PCB from scratch, so we
are still in the "homebrew" spirit ;). But I get your feeling of wanting to
build your own PCB on your own - I think you may find some schematics /
documentation online to get you started if you want.

During the 80's-90's, AFAIK, Nintendo was the only company authorized to
manufacture cartridges. So any publisher / developer would have to buy
hardware from them. And you wouldn't be able to make a small lot, but you had
to buy tens thousands or maybe hundreds thousands of units - this was a large
scale business!

From what I've read, the process was indeed: build the final rom, have it pass
a thorough QA session at Nintendo, pay for the cartridges and Nintendo will
build them for you.

For the NES era, several companies did manage to make their own mappers. For
example Konami designed a mapper to add extra audio channels in a NES cart.
But, for some reasons, Nintendo didn't allow third party mappers in US and
European releases. That's why only Japanese version of games like Castlevania
III have such mappers "not made by Nintendo".

And of course, many unlicensed companies did create their own cartridges from
the ground up, like Codemaster and Color Dreams/Wisdom Tree. They were not big
companies at the time. So I think even middle sized ones could create their
own cartridges and mappers if they had the skill inhouse!

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dillutedfixer
Awesome. Simply awesome. Such a fun, interesting and refreshing read. I really
needed to take my mind off the news for a while and this was perfect.
Congratulations, this is an amazing project.

~~~
drludos
Thanks!

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fomine3
NEKOTAKO is another new SNES game released in 2019 that uses original sound
driver.

[http://pagam.es/](http://pagam.es/)

~~~
drludos
Thanks, I wasn't aware of this one, it looks very cool! I love how they wrote
their full MML based driver! (my game use the SNESmod driver, that can take
Impulse Tracker (.it) files for input)

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anta40
I've seen some SNES coding tutorials with emulator. But you don't stop with
that, and also make the actual game cartridges.

Certainly very impressive :)

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kalium-xyz
infinite NES lives is super cool, have you seen his (with others) recent
efforts to get wifi for multiplayer on NES cartridges?

He live-streams his progress weekly:
[https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCZr5Jc9hj6z5mlAYxELq_xQ](https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCZr5Jc9hj6z5mlAYxELq_xQ)

~~~
drludos
Yes, I've seen this project, this is incredible! I can't wait to be able to
play a NES multiplayer game over the network! :)

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Shared404
Thanks for writing this! I just recommended the first half of your article to
a friend who's been wanting to get into game development. The second half was
super interesting to me, especially the manufacturing of the cartridges.

~~~
drludos
Thanks, I'm glad you enjoyed the article! :)

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flobosg
Thanks for the write-up! Glad to see that the SNES is still getting some love.

