NES graphics – Part 1

I love articles like this. It reminds me about a similar one about the Super Game Boy: <a href="http:&#x2F;&#x2F;loveconquersallgam.es&#x2F;post&#x2F;2350461718&#x2F;fuck-the-super-game-boy-introduction" rel="nofollow">http:&#x2F;&#x2F;loveconquersallgam.es&#x2F;post&#x2F;2350461718&#x2F;fuck-the-super-...</a>

Great, approachable introduction to how NES graphics work under the hood; looking forward to Part 2.<p>In the meantime, interested nerds can feast on the wealth of information available at [1], which, though a bit disorganized, goes deep into the implementation of the NES&#x27;s Picture Processing Unit and its programming interface.<p>[1] <a href="http:&#x2F;&#x2F;wiki.nesdev.com&#x2F;w&#x2F;index.php&#x2F;PPU" rel="nofollow">http:&#x2F;&#x2F;wiki.nesdev.com&#x2F;w&#x2F;index.php&#x2F;PPU</a>

During that time, Nintendo knew how to work with game studios. The color palette is one of the most powerful examples I remember, it encompasses the technical and the artistic domains, developers and designers. With the SNES they got even further by adding composition in a way that was incredibly intuitive. Glad you produced this article. So much memories.

To me it seems as if the PPU is the most poorly explained (or difficult to understand) component of the NES. Most documentation heavily glosses over details and specifics or doesn&#x27;t provide any reasoning as to why such a system was designed. This is a great guide.<p>If you have some spare time and want to tinker a bit, writing your own NES emulator is a great way to learn something new (or learn a new language if you&#x27;ve done it before)

&gt; Original NES developers probably had some sort of toolchains, but whatever they were, they have been lost to history.<p>&quot;Lost to history&quot;? Really? The developers are still alive, you could have, you know, sent them an email and asked.

What advantage is there to storing the high and low bits of the 2 bit depth CHR separately, as mentioned in footnote 2?

One way to think of it is basically as a text mode with customisable graphics for each character. It&#x27;s also possible to &quot;race the beam&quot; and change them between lines, giving rise to far more interesting effects.

Very well explained. I hope next parts will address screen scrolling, sprite animation, and &quot;raster effects&quot;.

very good read... pretty sure these knowledge have their place in our modern scenario, say like sensors?

Interesting. Looks like that it evolved from a text only video system, but using 2 bit shade per character and selectable palette per character. Indeed, very clever.

cool post! the development process must have felt so different then. constraints bring out creativity. today&#x27;s hardware is amazing, but there&#x27;s something special about knowing every corner of a system, working right on the metal. it might even be within reason to imagine building a system like this out of 74 series logic in the garage...

This is an amazing read. Thanks.

Very interesting