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Someone on the NESdev.com forum is making a real NES cartridge with 2 MB of RAM and an ARM Cortex microcontroller that appears to be comparable to the MMC900913 that this (fictional) product uses. Once that's ready, all we'd need to defictionalize this AFD story would be a port of an OpenStreetMap viewer, along with a USB cable to tether it to a PC or phone.

It's relevant for those Mac users who have PPC apps they want to keep using, and particularly so for those than have no upgrade path

What I'm saying is, before making a huge deal out of this, it would be useful or informative to actually quantify the issues. For instance, I would hazard a guess that 99% of current Intel mac users never use PPC emulation/rosetta. I don't know if that's true or not, but like I said, I would bet that for most users, it's a non-issue.

Photoshop CS is nearly 9 years old. Yeah, I'm sad it won't run on the latest computers, but it still runs just fine on my G4 Powerbook, our G5 Powermac, our Intel Mac Pros, and my Mbp. If you rely on ancident software, don't upgrade to the latest and greatest hardware. Just doesn't seem like that big a deal! Incidentally, I recently bought Pixelmator for $30 and it's a HUGE upgrade over Photoshop CS.

Why drop the PPC emulation at all? Wasn't broke. Didn't need fixing

It was broken for me. The one real "legacy" application (a server application) we have at my office doesn't run under Rosetta and needs a $4000 upgrade to support OSX/Intel. So we've kept several old G4/G5 computers around as spares and for parts. My guess is that there were several reasons for dropping Rosetta: 64-bit mode issues, limited usage in the wild, and the cost to continue testing and maintaining it. Same goes for classic mode. Same goes for dropping 68k support back in the day.

In a way it kind of goes back to an issue faced by OS/2. Not sure if you're familiar with OS/2 or not, but back in the day it was a really fine operating system. Excellent performance. I remember with my computer at the time I could run 7th Guest in DOS very choppily. In OS/2 it ran smoothly! I assume it had to do with caching, but I'm not sure. Anyway, with OS/2 Warp you could literally use your win3.1 install disks to have full win3.1 support in OS/2. Retrospectively, a lot of people think that this ended up hurting OS/2 by stifling the native ecosystem. People just relied on windows applications, so developers didn't want to develop just for OS/2. The end result being -- dead OS/2.

And what about Mame? it exists.. http://sdlmame.parodius.com/

For me to sit down and make a game like Supper Mario brothers

Supper Mario? Is that when he gets too close to one of those Venus flytrap things?

Being able to make games as fast as possible leads to making them as good as possible.

But making games for more capable hardware means the player will expect more eye-candy graphics, which creates more work for the artist compared to a game on something like, say, the NES, where players are more tolerant of simpler graphic design. See NESdev BBS discussion of the so-called "freeware complexity wall".

you can also get the kits to extract the data out of an old NES cart.

There is the Kazzo kit, but it has the extremely low production volume of a product hand-made by an enthusiast. Is there anything more widely available?

games that aren't very demanding of hardware, and don't change much over time. Card games, copies of classic arcade games, etc. are like this.

Which leaves a big hole in the middle: games that are "not very demanding", in that they could probably run on a phone or netbook or ten-year-old PC, yet aren't implementations of a tabletop game or clones of an 8-bit-era non-scrolling arcade game. I for one have been harassed in comments here on Slashdot for having too many clones of an 8-bit-era non-scrolling arcade game in my online portfolio. Is there a Free counterpart to, say, SNES/PS1/DS level stuff? For example, where's the Free counterpart to Street Fighter II or Spyro the Dragon or Pokemon? If not, what keeps it from happening? Is it something akin to the "complexity wall" that's been discussed on NESdev.com?

Gamers don't want to play something that's at the level of an early-2000s game when they can play a cutting-edge game instead.

Wii has a GPU comparable to a Radeon 9000. Is the only reason that gamers play Wii games the fact that the games have characters introduced in the NES and Super NES era (e.g. Zelda, Mario, Metroid series)?

Phone trumps Zelda I'm afraid.

Not for gamers too young to have a job, such as children in middle school or high school. They have no way to pay for a cellular voice contract. A salesperson I talked to in a Best Buy Mobile store told me that the carriers won't sell a data plan except bundled with a $40 per month or more expensive voice plan.

If you want Zelda on your phone, get an Android phone, the Nesoid emulator, and a Kazzo linker to dump your Game Pak.

I'd be impressed if Logitech actually spent some of that $80 on capacitors that don't emit audible harmonics. The replacement part described on that page costs (in single units) about $0.30. Supposedly Logitech's latest G9x flagship model is also affected by this problem (the site author tells me he gets mails about the G9x all the time but hasn't verified it himself). My point: ask yourself if the $80 is justified given the above.

Sorry to reply twice to the same comment, but I found some interesting technical discussion at http://nesdev.parodius.com/bbs/viewtopic.php?t=4407 - note that these people are not affiliated with Capcom. Everything in this comment after this sentence is quoted from a post on page 5 of that thread:


Note that background colors on the NES must be in 16x16 pixel blocks - you get to use 3 colors for every 16x16 pixel section. You can put sprites on top to add more colors but this gets costly. From looking around on Megaman 9 this limitation would probably be an issue in many places.

The fade transitions between menus and such are too smooth. If you play a regular NES game with a fade you'll be able to see 3 or 4 "tics" of fade, sometimes using awkward coloring.

It looks like there's too much color cycling going on. You can have machinery flashing smoothly from black to green on the same screen as blinking red lights as well as two enemies and Megaman each with their own colors. There are different ways to do color cycling; maybe the green one is an actual palette changing, and the red one is being bankswitched or edited CHR-RAM. The point is that this is present in many places and it would take a lot of careful observation and playing around to determine if it's even possible.

The swinging platforms in Jewel Man's stage mentioned by dwedit are indeed a problem. Large movement like that is usually achieved on the NES by scrolling a part of the background, but if that was the technique then we should see all the platforms swinging at the same time. They are also at different heights, making the scroll method even more unlikely. The alternative is sprites, and the platforms are made up of too many of them. They would flicker and look awful, assuming they didn't use up all available sprites in the first place (the NES supports 64 8x8 sprites, and that includes Megaman and the enemies and anything else small that moves). The chains would add to this as well. Besides all that, the platforms/chains look like they move too smoothly for NES calculations...they might use a big look up table, but that contributes to a huge game size.

You know that boss that's two big blobs, fights like the Yellow Devil? That would be extremely difficult to replicate on the NES. When the blobs move up/down independently, and the floor also stays still, you're talking about a vertical split scrolling in different directions that is also timed such that the bottom of the screen does not scroll. Rest assured this is pretty tough, if not impossible (considering you're also keeping track of the rest of the game engine). Again, you could try it with sprites, but an 8x8 tile blob uses up all your total sprites (half in 8x16 mode). And there would be so much flickering you'd barely be able to see it.

The only reasonable way to do that is with sprites, and there are simply too many of them. 8x16 sprites could come close I suppose but that introduces difficulty of its own.

And when they explode?

"So what?" you can say. "We'll tone down the explosions." But that's one isolated example of this sort of problem, what about the whole rest of the game?

It's true that quite a bit is possible on the NES with enough effort. Most MM9 problems that look undoable might be able to be solved through tricky timed code. However when you get into that, there's usually not enough time to process the rest of the stuff going on onscreen (enemies and such).

Sadly you're mistaken. This fellow has taken the time to find engineering/electrical design flaws in Logitech products, mainly focusing on mice, confirming the hardware inside of competitors mice (read: Microsoft) is quite a bit different.

http://jdc.parodius.com/logitech/

Apparently this problem with Logitech mice still exists today, and he can't bring it to Logitech's attention because of a shithead manager who was more concerned about his name being publicized (by his own Support staff) than actually working with the guy to fix the problem.

If the parts were the same, they should be interchangeable, which is not the case.

I tried decreasing the scope and got plenty of "you're better than that" complaints. Increasing the scope would require starting a proper business. Have you any tips on how to find the cash to do that?

I have an Atari 400 I still drag out from time to time when I get an itch to play the "definitive" (to me at least!) versions of Pac-Man, Donkey Kong and Defender.

Since when is the Atari 400/800 version of Donkey Kong the definitive version? In this page, compare the "Atari 800 Donkey Kong" sprite (first in the "Early Home Ports"; the second is from Mario Bros.) to the "ColecoVision" sprite (third), and then compare the "ColecoVision" sprite to the first sprite in "Mario 1.0". Nintendo thought the ColecoVision port of DK was so authentic that when it designed the Family Computer/Nintendo Entertainment System, it based the PPU's architecture directly on that of TI's TMS99xx VDP in the ColecoVision and Sega Mark I.

the Master System from which all their little consoles derived.

Both the Sega Master System and the Nintendo Entertainment System . The ColecoVision had a Z80 CPU and a TMS9928 VDP (picture generator). The Japan-only Sega SG-1000 by Sega was Sega's clone of the ColecoVision. The Sega Master System was an SG-1000 with more RAM and more color depth in the VDP. And the designers of the PPU in the Nintendo Entertainment System were inspired by the design of the TMS99 series VDP, especially the way it handled processing of the sprite display list.

Just wanted to point out making NES games would probably be much easier nowadays. Compilers have become very good so the developers could probably move up from assembly to C.

There are people on nesdev.com/bbs who are trying to make some support libraries for programming the NES in C, but it's not practical so far, for two reasons:

1. The widely available C compiler targeting the 6502 CPU fails at optimizing. Do you know of a better free or semi-free C compiler targeting the 6502 CPU?
2. The NES has 2 KiB of RAM; cartridges can have 8 KiB more at an additional cost (address decoder + SRAM chip). This makes typical C programming idioms, such as a stack bigger than 256 bytes, look inefficient.

I'd have a lot more respect for Logitech products if their QA and Support Managers would actually give a shit about resolving hardware/engineering flaws in their products, specifically mice, that have existed for years.

As an afficianando of both the scene and free software, I have to say it's conflicting. On the one hand, many people, Demi included, have taken wonderful games like Picross and made something similar. On the other hand, I recall hearing that shopping Drymouth around to publishers eventually wound up getting him screwed as someone basically took the work for free, so I can see why he'd take a new approach this time around. (I could be remembering a different guy's troubles, but the scene was small enough that even if it wasn't him, Demi's probably aware of who it did happen to).

Wouldn't it be sad if Apple beat him to the punch? They've got the resources, and they're not keen on sharing. Or if Nintendo took the DS Motion Card up and used his concept as a pack in? Its a tough battle hacking on closed platforms like these. The big guys have a huge advantage; in the time it takes for you to convince someone to take you up on it, they can have a game out and ready, slap a brand on it and suddenly half the world think's you're the copycat. To resolve this, does the GPL allow you to grant rights to the patent for a specific GPL'd piece of software? Perhaps its best not to eliminate software patents, but to reduce their lengths to a year or two.

Of course, this game is also very similar to a Nintendo Bit Generations game, so it's not at all clear he will be awarded the patent.

http://nesdev.parodius.com/

The NES is one of the hardest consoles to program for EVER.

Bullshit. NES is easy. Atari 2600 is hard.

Without an active community of developers

So what are we? Chopped liver?

This thing is cheaper than a toploader, and it plays famicon games.

If you want to play famicom games, get a cheap famiclone. That's what the Generation NEX seems to be. In many places, you can buy one at the mall and throw the included pirate multicart away.

there is already a company bringing an NES clone to market right away here, and it's supposed to have 100% compatibility with both the NES and the Famicom.

If it's the "Generation NEX", then the claims are BS.

There are a few hardware projects out there, for increasing your enjoyment of your NES. One is a special game cart that lets you write ROM images to a NES cart, called the FunkyFlashCart, and then you can play ROM on a real NES. Because it uses flash for holding the ROMs, ROMs can be written many times to the cart. Similarly, it uses a CPLD in order to recreate the many different circuit-board types used in NES games. This is necessary because NES games lack a strong distinction between hardware and software common in modern games, i.e., NES games each include their own circuit board and ICs which must also be accurately recreated along with the game's ROM image in order to play the game. Note that the FunkyFlashCart is still under development, but will soon go on sale. No longer will you be stuck playing your NES games on a crappy inaccurate emulator!

Another interesting device is actually a hardware modification for your NES called the "CopyNES". It has recently been redesigned, upgraded, and put into another round of production. Basically it is a device for ripping ROM images from carts, but it is also a ICE debugger for the NES, and it can even transfer ROM images to a RAM cart in the NES via a parallel port. The CopyNES has many other features, a favorite being the ability to play NSF files on the NES. NSF files are music ripped from NES games. Hence you can listen to your NES tunes on a real NES, as opposed to a NES emulator with poor emulation of the system's actual sound. The CopyNES is basically a circuit board that is placed between the NES's CPU and the NES's motherboard. This is how it is able to accomplish the ICE debugger features, as well as universal cart dumping, as it can force the CPU to do whatever you want. Here is the original site for the CopyNES. However, it shows an older version of the hardware. The creator announced in this thread that he will begin selling kits to mod your NES with CopyNES, and he will also provide a slightly more expensive service so that people can send their NES systems in for professional modification.

http://nesdev.parodius.com/ is a center for NES development. I highly recommend it! 6502 assembly can be a lot of fun once you get the hang of it.

Final Fantasy 4 has a great fantranslation of the Japanese vesion which has all the stuff that was taken out for the English version (abilities and items) and has a better translation and no censoring! Though, hey, without the original, we'd never have "You Spoony Bard!" which has to be one of the best lines ever.

Amen to DQ5 being a good game, though. I didn't like some elements of it (3 people in your party? Bah!), but the plot of the game was incredible. I loved how it spanned a generation and worked off that.... Though I really shouldn't say some of things I was going to, as I'm not sure how far you are... DQ6 is a very fun game too, and I found it overall better than 5.

This is a great site for fan translations of games. I prefer having the original game and patching it myself instead of relying on ROM sites doing it for me, as who knows about the quality or freshness of their patch job. IPS patching is pretty easy stuff. Zophar used to be where I got most of my stuff from, but they've REALLY been slow on updates as of late.

The NES used a 2A03
which is a 6502 with the decimal mode not working, and some sound registers added.

I think the BBC, VIC-20 and Apple 2 were plain jane 6502s, but some later models might have used the 65C02.

IIRC lots of optomechanical PC mice used a SunPlus 8 bit chip which was a cut-down 6502.

but a game for an 1.8MHz microcontroller won't be very complex as far as design.

I'm sure you didn't realize it, but you just insulted NES developers and retrogamers everywhere.

This raises an interesting point. This has been around for a while now, as well as a simmilar project (see below), and only now gotten smacked. Makes me wonder if they might be planning a re-remake of Chrono Trigger on the GBA or other platform(s), which a lot of fans have been pining for (Personally, I'd rather have a new Chrono game, or better yet, a new original game, than a third or fourth iteration to a game I pretty much mastered in middle school).

As I said above, there was another simmilar project called "Chrono Master" being worked on by Demiforce, which wasn't a 3D remake, but a true-to-the-original remake with full modding tools and editors included. Simmilar projects have been done with the original Super Mario Brothers and Legend of Zelda games, and have been pretty interesting. I doubt this is still in the works, though, since the project page for it has been a broken link for nearly a year, and Demiforce's website hasn't been updated in over eight months, and that was a very minor fix to an unrelated project. Even if it was, this would be bad news for it, most likely.

I'd also love to see a NES synth.

Then you might want to have a local computer engineer build a MIDI interface that plugs into an NES's cartridge slot. The people on the forums at nesdev may be able to help you.

A better VG translation site would be The Whirlpool.

If you want to teach somebody 6502 assembly language, then find somebody on the forums at NESdev who's struggling.

These are some of the first new NES games developed in years

Hardly some of the first...There have been tons of homebrew NES demos and full games developed within the past few years. Well-polished games like Chris Covell's Solar Wars and Kent Hansen's Bombsweeper are polished games that put Bob Rost's own self-proclaimed 'NES game of the century', Sack of Flour, to shame - if not on code complexity and dev team size, on well-polished game design and playability. Not to mention the promising Megaman: Vengeance homebrew game being (slowly) developed by the folks at Dragon Eye Studios. The rom hacking community has produced plenty of other high quality rom hacks that do amazing things with the NES.

Either way, I think it's a cool project. I first discovered the student class webpage a month or two ago, and I'm glad that the class ended successfully.

I disagree because video games are a hybrid of different artistic mediums(artwork,music,writing,drama) that give you a lot of leeway to express yourself. The problem is, video games are difficult and time-consuming to produce, and homebrew movement aside, the only finished work comes from well-funded teams that are trying to create a product to sell. That's why I think the various homebrew console-hacking movements are so neat and important. I also think that the first games to fully qualify as 'art' wont be very state-of-the-art, but 2d style on antiquated systems like the NES.

Go to this site to see some interesting NES coding work.

Is there an equivilent hacking/programming culture for the NES? That'd rule big time.

Indeed there is. The NES hacking community has done amazing things with classic games such as Metroid and the Mario, Zelda and Megaman series. The community has evolved from simple graphics and text hacking to recreating entirely new challenging levels, intricate assembly code modifications (ever wanted to play Megaman in time-attack mode, or Mario 3 with a day/night system?), and there are even some interesting homebrewn games in development. Check out The Challenge Games Community for a good starting place. Be sure to check out Mario Adventure and Zelda Challenge as two good examples of high-quality hacks.

There's also an older community dedicated to producing translations of Japanese console games that do similarly intense hacks to NES games, but with a more practical objective. The Whirlpool is a good starting point here. Check out FFII,III,IV (hard type),V, Star Ocean, Seiken Densetsu 3, Tales of Phantasia and Dragon Quest V,VI for some of the completed translations of high-profile games.

Try here.

Yeah, 6502 is easier to learn, because it's so simple. Of course, students aren't going to want to write code for an Apple II or a C64, but give them a good NES emulator, documentation, and an assembler, and they'll have a lot of fun coding for the 6502. (although I must admit, the NES is a weird little machine. The PPU's oddities might cancel out the 6502's simplicity. :-)

Once you know the 6502 it's easy to learn the 65816 (SNES or Apple IIGS) or any of the other popular 70s or 80s microprocessors.

I learned SPARC assembly in college. A very elegant machine (with only a few oddities to learn, such as filling that delay slot after a branch instruction) which teaches you lots of stuff about modern computer architecture. Last semester they used 386 assembly language instead, which the students (and instructors!) found much more difficult.

[Karma Whore]

DemiForce Final Fantasy (and other) translations, or, for other games/parties, why not try Zophar's collection of translations?

[/Karma Whore]

these games are entirely legal, they were developed without using the official development kits (esp without pirated devkits). there are no lockouts for homebrew carts on any gameboy system (as far as I know). there should be no problem with making your own carts and selling them. I know of a few trackers that ppl sell on the net for making gb music... homemade carts and everything... no legal probs.

some homebrew games eventually get published... esp for gameboy systems. Genetic Fantasia's PD version of Yar's Revenge (an updated clone/remake of the 2600 classic) was later revamped and got published by Telegames. Maybe Genetic Fantasia = Digital Eclipse? not sure...

Check this guy's story out:
"In the spring of 2000 I released a freeware Gameboy Color ROM, that was an identical clone of the old Q*bert arcade game. You can read the story behind its creation and obtain the game below. Shortly after I put the ROM on my website something amazing happened...someone in the Gameboy developer community came across my version of the game and passed it on to Majesco Sales. Majesco had the rights to do the Gameboy Color version of Q*bert, and they contacted me to see if I'd be interested in enhancing what I'd done and making it a commercial product."

And the guy who cloned Ultima 3 by reverse engineering the original talked a bit with the original company. But they said it wasn't commercially viable =(

All of those instances DID violate copyright tho, so they're not good examples. BUT, they didn't get into legal trouble.

Drymouth ALMOST got published... clone of Picross... no legal probs there.

I'm sure the list could go on.

Yeah, that would be cool. The easiest solution we've been able to come up with for communication would run through the controller port to a host program on the PC. There's posts about it on the nesdev.parodius.com forums. But I'm not sure if that can work with Contiki, maybe it can somehow?

I'd like to find out. I've got the commucication schematic already, it just needs to be tested. My kingdom for a devcart! heheh.

If anyone has any ideas, or is just interested, feel free to stop by the NES hardware forum.

-Memblers

He is now known as "koitsu" and he "maintains" parodius.com.

oo..You mean a Nintendo Entertainment System? Me too! We're like brothers! ;)

C64 used 6510. The C-1 uses a 65c816 and the 6510 special features are cored into the FPGA (I think)

The problem here is that the C64's 6510 processor had the full set of 6502 instructions, including the undocumented ones. Lots of programs, especially games, used the undocumented instructions. The 65C816, on the other hand, doesn't have the 6502's undocumented instructions, and it would be da*n near impossible to put those instructions in an FPGA without putting the whole 6502 core there as well.

C64 used 6510. The C-1 uses a 65c816 and the 6510 special features are cored into the FPGA (I think)

The problem here is that the C64's 6510 processor had the full set of 6502 instructions, including the undocumented ones. Lots of programs, especially games, used the undocumented instructions. The 65C816, on the other hand, doesn't have the 6502's undocumented instructions, and it would be da*n near impossible to put those instructions in an FPGA without putting the whole 6502 core there as well.

The NES had a 6502 family processor. The joke in this case would be

lsr...lsr...sta...jmp! jmp!

To learn how to program the NES, go to nesdev.

>I'm all for companies clamping down HARD on people that make and sell illegal products which have the sole purpose of leeching off the success of those who actually do the legitimate, hard, creative work.

After reading what you've said, I still fail to see where these products should be illegal.

Suggesting modchips should be illegal because they may be used to pirate is silly. Turning it around you're saying that someone with the skill to reverse-engineer a system and make money doing it doesn't deserve to do it because a coder might get discouraged in making software. Funny thing is, this might be a good thing. Pressure needs to be put on what is clearly a broken system (the current model of software sales) to change it into a system that can generate money without limiting the rights of others to make money (hey, I'm not an economist, just a realist, I don't know how to fix the problem).

You know what, this happens in a lot of other industries. Example: 3rd party car parts. Guess what, when you buy one of these, your car company "loses" a sale, even though they originally put the effort in to develop the product. But you don't see anyone whining about that, however the effects of these third party parts is identical to the effects of a 3rd party modchip being used to pirate software: The original developer of a product (may) make less money.

Fortunately, we don't have laws that give people a right to make money in any capitalist country (beats me about China, though).

I'm all for companies making it easier for smart people to make a living by designing products that benefit the consumer.

Oh, here's an interesting fact: Chips that break console security actually _increase_ the diversity in software. Look up info about Tengen and their clone lockout chip. And, of course, the break Tengen had allowed all sorts of cool things. Camerica's Game Genie being one of them, IIRC, and another being cool things like clone Nintendos (pushing the price of the "real thing" back down to earth, and adding cool addons, like keyboards), and "1e6 in 1" game cartridges with 16 of each game using different colour palettes (all stupid, crappy games that totally sucked, for which the developers were the ones originally ripping off the consumers).

But, alas, people usually only think in the small, short term, which is developers getting the squeeze, and not the long term, which is competition and overall coolness.

Just my 2 cents.

Is there such a thing [as a respected emulation site]?

Other than this? What about this or this?

Re: Dumping cartridges, you can only do that if the EULA (in the back of game manuals) explicitly allows it.

What do you mean? 17 USC 117 permits a US-resident owner of a program cartridge to dump that cartridge for use on a computer. Because I didn't see any EULA when I handed over my con$ideration, I see no reason why it becomes a binding contract.

(That section doesn't in and of itself permit what these people are doing.)

Is a somewhat popular practice. Usually its something as mundane as replacing Mario with a giant walking penis, but occasionally you'll see someone with a clue, or maybe someone who knows more japanese than you. Supposedly there's going to be a large announcement on the first site on the 23rd of july. Maybe they'll announce something cool like a Crystalis Improvement.

Interestingly enough, though, in the old days, unlicensed games happened every so often. I recall that Taito reverse-engineered the NES cartridge and put out their own games...

That wasn't Taito (a licensed publisher of Arkanoid and Bubble Bobble); it was Atari, under the Tengen brand. (By the way: Tengen's NES port of Klax had some of the best music on the NES. They were able to squeeze bass out of that system that not even Nintendo probably knew was there.)

Most of the independently published games published by companies other than Tengen sucked. Color Dreams/Wisdom Tree games really weren't all that playable, except for Crystal Mines (aka Exodus) and the "King of Kings" 3-in-1. Hacker/Panesian had only one hit, Bubble Bath Babes (aka Soap Panic), and it was a puzzle game somewhat similar to Kirby's Avalanche.

However, in the modern era (post-NESticle), a new NES scene has sprung up. (Read More...)

I should Like to build one of these adapters. any good links you could give me?

Try this journal article of mine. For SNES pad to NES console, just look up the schematics for the NES pad (from nesdev) to see which wires are clock, strobe, power, and data, and then bastardize a couple Super Extendo cables.

About the icon: Seems every time I make reference to one of Slashdot's topic icons, they change it. For example, games was originally a Nintendo 64 controller, but they had to go and make it an Atari 2600 controller instead. Spam was originally a can of SPAM® brand canned pork until I started making a fuss about Hormel's product image; then they changed it to a sculpture of a pig made out of said luncheon meat.

Without the experience I had with 6502 assembly language on the Apple II trying to get a gambling game suite called "Place Your Bets" to respond to keypresses and draw graphics faster than Applesoft Molasses Basic, I never would have had the knowledge of the 6502 processor necessary for NES development.

That's funny... the last computer I owned that I didn't write a Tetris clone for was an Apple II.

FF I (NES) -- simplistic, but still fun.

Lots of fun, this is the game that got me hooked on Final Fantasy in the first place. Even though every one is different, they all have that much in common.

FF II (Famicom, get an emulator and a translated version)

Might as well give a link to a translation...

FF III (again, emulate)

Translation again.

FF IV (II on the NES, see FFC on the PSX for the "hard" edition) -- I absolutely love this game.

I didn't like the US easy version when it first came out, but the translation of the Japanese hardtype version was a lot better. Better characterization, characters say "Well, i'm off to die!" instead of "I'll see you later" before they go sacrafice themselves for the greater good, and so on.

FF V (emulate, or see FFA on the PSX)

From what I've heard, the fan translation is actually better than the playstation version, fewer WTF moments in the dialog and such. As far as I've been able to determine, the original translation group doesn't have a website anymore, but the patch is all over the net. v1.10 seems to be the latest.

FF VI (III SNES, FFA on PSX)

Definately a good game, but not that much better than the other SNES FFs. No translation needed, unless you're like this guy (slashdot doesn't seem to like the underscore in 'sky_render'... check that if it says the page can't be found) and think the translation could've been done better (Nintendo does have this thing about strong language, 'sex', death, and so on). Too bad he has such bad taste in fonts sometimes...

FF I (NES) -- simplistic, but still fun.

Lots of fun, this is the game that got me hooked on Final Fantasy in the first place. Even though every one is different, they all have that much in common.

FF II (Famicom, get an emulator and a translated version)

Might as well give a link to a translation...

FF III (again, emulate)

Translation again.

FF IV (II on the NES, see FFC on the PSX for the "hard" edition) -- I absolutely love this game.

I didn't like the US easy version when it first came out, but the translation of the Japanese hardtype version was a lot better. Better characterization, characters say "Well, i'm off to die!" instead of "I'll see you later" before they go sacrafice themselves for the greater good, and so on.

FF V (emulate, or see FFA on the PSX)

From what I've heard, the fan translation is actually better than the playstation version, fewer WTF moments in the dialog and such. As far as I've been able to determine, the original translation group doesn't have a website anymore, but the patch is all over the net. v1.10 seems to be the latest.

FF VI (III SNES, FFA on PSX)

Definately a good game, but not that much better than the other SNES FFs. No translation needed, unless you're like this guy (slashdot doesn't seem to like the underscore in 'sky_render'... check that if it says the page can't be found) and think the translation could've been done better (Nintendo does have this thing about strong language, 'sex', death, and so on). Too bad he has such bad taste in fonts sometimes...

Now though they do things a little differently they used to with respect to loading memory, it still doesnt matter. Unless game makers start ENCRYPTING all of their code (not just pieces as they do now for copy protection), the dmca simply doesnt apply.

As many have mentioned earlier, these types of devices give replay power and could possibly even sell more games by giving people who suck at games a chance at beating them. Why would any game company be against that?

Anyway, 26,000 words is tiny for a legal document.... I found the DMCA an easy read compared to many other copyright documents...