Nintendo Entertainment
System Documentation
Version 1.0
August 2004
Patrick Diskin
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Preface
Abstract
The Nintendo Entertainment System (NES) was the world’s most widely used videogames
console during the 1980s. From its initial release in 1983 until it was discontinued in 1995 the
console brought gaming into more homes than ever before and paved the way for the
videogame industry as it stands today.
Although technology has improved dramatically since the NES, many excellent games were
only released on that format and so are unplayable on more modern systems. However
these games have been able to survive and continue to be played thanks to emulation, which
simulates the workings of one system in order to allow software created for it to be used on a
modern system.
This document describes both the hardware in the NES and some of the devices used with it.
It also briefly discusses emulation and issues relating to this. Much of the contents of this
document appeared earlier in [1].
The document makes use of the hexadecimal and binary numbering systems. The reader is
assumed to have some knowledge of these numbering systems but a brief explanation of
some issues is presented in Appendix A.
Acknowledgements
The information contained within this document is based on the work of the many others
involved in NES emulation. I would like to acknowledge the authors of all the documents
listed in the References section but particularly:
• Andrew John Jacobs for his invaluable information on the 6502 processor [2], [3] and [4].
• Chris Covell for ‘NES Technical / Emulation / Development FAQ’ [5].
• Firebug for ‘Comprehensive NES Mapper Document’ [6].
• Jeremy Chadwick for ‘Nintendo Entertainment System Documentation’ [7].
• Loopy for ‘The Skinny on NES Scrolling’ [8].
• Marat Fayzullin for ‘Nintendo Entertainment System Architecture’ [9].
• Everybody involved with nesdev.parodius.com.
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1 - Introduction
1.1 Nintendo Entertainment System History
In 1889, Fusajiro Yamauchi founded Nintendo Koppai and began manufacturing Japanese
playing cards, hanafuda, in Kyoto [10]. By 1950, when Hiroshi Yamauchi became president,
Nintendo was a successful manufacturer of both western and Japanese playing cards. In
1963, after several name changes, the company settled on Nintendo Co. Ltd. (NCL). By
1970, the company was producing electronic games and in 1973 they introduced a laser clay
shooting system which they hoped would replace bowling as a major pastime [11].
Nolan Bushnell was a student at the University of Utah when he first had the idea of a coin
operated computer game. Pong, which was released in 1972, quickly became a hit and
inspired the release of a wave of arcade games. Bushnell’s company, Atari, wanted to
replicate this success by releasing a system to play games in homes. By 1976 several
companies had tried, and failed, to release a successful console. Bushnell was aware that
Atari lacked the capital to produce a console and sold the company to Warner
Communications, retaining the position of chairman [12].
In 1977, Atari released the Atari Video Computer System (VCS), an 8-bit console which
succeeded in opening up the home console market, aided by the home version of Space
Invaders, released in 1980. Bushnell disagreed with the direction Warner were taking and left
the company in 1978.
In 1979, Nintendo made their first attempt to break into the arcade game market but by 1981
their success had been limited. Hiroshi Yamauchi asked Nintendo graphic artist, Shigeru
Miyamoto, to design a new game. The result was Donkey Kong in which players controlled a
carpenter called Jumpman and tried to rescue a captive girl from Donkey Kong, a large ape.
Jumpman was renamed Mario after the landlord of Nintendo’s newly created American
subsidiary, later to be called Nintendo of America Inc. (NOA), run by Yamauchi’s son in law,
Minoru Arakawa.
By 1982, third party development had led to several sub-standard games being released for
Atari’s VCS and competition with other consoles was leading to saturation of the market. By
1984 the industry was suffering enormous losses and most product lines were discontinued.
Nintendo, meanwhile, had enjoyed success in the arcade market and in the home market
with the Colour TV Game 6. The Japanese console market was still doing well and Yamauchi
felt that Nintendo could become the market leaders through a combination of quality games
and improved hardware sold at a lower price than competitors (profit would be made on the
games).
Figure 1-1. The Nintendo Entertainment System and the Famicom [13].
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The Famicom (Family Computer) became an enormous success in Japan and in 1983,
Minoru Arakawa offered Atari the chance to produce the system in America. When it became
clear that Atari did not have the resources to proceed the deal fell through. Atari was divided
up and sold by Warner while Nintendo decided to produce and market the Famicom in
America themselves under the name Nintendo Entertainment System (NES). The console
was also redesigned to appeal to western children as shown in figure 1-1.
Despite early resistance from retailers fearing further losses after the industry crash the
previous year, the NES became available in America in 1985. As a result of strict quality
controls on third party software, combined with Nintendo’s own games (including Super
Mario Bros., The Legend of Zelda and Metroid) the console became a huge success.
In 1987, the NES became the top selling toy in America, while The Legend of Zelda became
the first NES game to achieve sales of one million units. In America alone, revenues for
Super Mario Bros. 3 were in excess of $500 million with over 7 million units sold and 4 million
in Japan [14]. In 1991, Nintendo earned about $1.5 million for each of its 5,000 employees.
The company’s profit in the early 1990s exceeded that of the American film industry. Such
was Nintendo’s effect on American culture that a 1990 survey showed that Mario was more
recognized by children than Mickey Mouse.
Sega released the 16-bit Genesis (Mega Drive in Europe) in 1989 and, due to the success of
Sonic the Hedgehog, the console became very popular. That same year, Nintendo were
busy with the release of their handheld console, the Game Boy but would enter the 16-bit
market with the Super Famicom in 1990. The console was released in America in 1991 as
the Super Nintendo Entertainment System (SNES) and due to incompatibility with the NES
hardware, signalled a move away from the old system.
Figure 1-2. Redesigned NES
released in 1993 [15].
In 1993, Nintendo released a redesigned version of the NES (as shown in figure 1-2) but the
last NES game, Wario’s Woods was released in late 1994 and the system was officially
discontinued in 1995 [16]. By this time over 60 million NES consoles and 500 million games
had been sold worldwide.
The SNES featured a 65816 processor which was largely compatible with the NES’ 6502
processor. However the graphics and sound on the new system were incompatible [5]. This
made it impossible for games created for the old system to run on its successor. As a result
the software created for the NES could no longer be used by people who did not already
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have a NES, preventing many people from using the software. In addition, all hardware has a
limited lifespan and eventually there will be no working NES consoles to still play the games
on. The games themselves often featured battery backed RAM to enable progress to be
saved and Nintendo only predicted the battery life as five years. There are multiple options
which allow the continued use of NES games and these are described here.
1.2 Conversion
Although the exact implementations of computer systems is different, many of the principles
are the same. A PC cannot execute the instructions written for the NES because it does not
understand them. However, it is likely that comparable instructions do exist for the PC.
Therefore, it is possible to rewrite the software for a different system and to replicate the
graphics and sound of the original. Converting the software in this way is essentially
simulation [17]. The software appears to behave the same as the original but the
implementation may be quite different.
Converting the software has the advantage that the resulting software will perform well, since
it is produced for the target architecture. However, the process is time consuming and needs
to be done for each game individually.
1.3 Emulation
Emulation is the process of simulating hardware to enable the software developed for it to be
used on an otherwise incompatible system. The following definition is by the British
Computer Society and is taken from [18]:
“Emulation is a very precise form of simulation which should mimic exactly the
behaviour of the circumstances that it is simulating. An emulator may enable
one type of computer to operate as if it were a different type of computer.“
Emulation is often used by the videogame industry to allow developers to begin writing
software for a new system before it is released. However, it can also be used to allow the
continuing use of old systems.
Hardware emulation involves producing a system with hardware compatible with the original.
In the case of the NES it would be possible to produce a system using a compatible
processor and to allow it to play the original game cartridges. This technique can also
provide good performance, provided compatibility is ensured, but few people have the skills
and resources required to construct the system.
Using hardware simulation software it is possible to half implement this technique. Software
is available which allows simulation of a detailed hardware design and this can be used to
recreate the system from a design without having to produce a real implementation. Such a
system is described in [19].
Software emulation requires producing software which will emulate the functions of a given
system. There are three approaches to software emulation [17]:
• Interpretation involves reading in the next instruction for the system being emulated,
translating it to an instruction (or a number of instructions) for the target architecture and
executing it. Though this is accurate, due to translating during execution the process can
lead to noticeable degradation of performance compared to the original system if the
speed of the target system is low.
