Strider for NES is quite possibly the most requested game for the Behind the Code series. It feels like it will fall apart at any moment. Random sprites appear in random places on the screen as the frames roll by. What the heck is happening? A minor bug somewhere? Oh… it is MUCH worse than […]
I’m sure I’m not alone in my affection for the indie platformer, “Celeste”. Released in 2018, Celeste’s mix of easy to learn but difficult to master platforming, its driving soundtrack, and its timely narrative made it an indie darling that is still popular today. To wit, ROM hackers w7n, Morshu, StudsX, karmic, and Eden GT […]
Sprite limitations and flicker define what the NES is. They are a part of history. This video dives into Object Attribute Memory – OAM – to explain why the system is limited to eight sprites on a scanline as well as how both sprite limitation and sprite priority are used by programmers to add some […]
It’s no secret that the Sega Genesis has been receiving a slew of modern releases these past few years, but the NES is no slouch either. Perhaps the best example of how strong the NES homebrew dev scene is right now, can be seen in St1ka’s (that’s me) latest video. In this video I analyze […]
Retro Gaming is a funny thing, we’ve seen romhacks, homebrews, FPGAs and emulators, so you’d think we’d have exhausted all options by now. Turns out that’s not the case, because a new scene cropped up right under our noses: HD Graphics packs for NES games. That is to say, you take the original NES rom, […]
The NES needs a clock in order to function. Both the CPU and PPU use clock cycles to perform their duties. These chips run at different speeds, but each speed is derived from the same source – a 21.47727 MHz crystal on the NES motherboard. How do these components work in tandem? This video dives […]
Unique graphics. Giant sprites. No flicker. How on earth does this game work? The MMC2 chip contained in Punch-Out’s cartridge allows the NES to switch between two pairs of tiles for each half of the pattern table. While the MMC1 already allows bank switching for graphics, the MMC2 allows the switch to happen in the […]
Punch-Out!! has been on my list of games to investigate for a long time, and I finally have something to show after a crazy amount of research. This video covers how opponent data is used to determine where to branch and what to do in code, how to manipulate boxer behavior, secrets that you will […]
In December of 2019 after many years of runs, the speedrunning record for Castlevania on the NES was close to 11 minutes 24 seconds. In Summer of 2020, speedrunners took a new discovery for the implementation of scrolling for the game and used it to skip several screens at a time in various places throughout […]
RetroRGB gets down to business when it comes to measuring lag. That new wireless controller or fancy display might seem cool on paper, but what about performance? Modern devices and emulation of retro games can add to lag, but lag begins with the game code itself. Let’s hop into the execution time for standing attack […]
