Interesting article if you haven't seen it already:
https://arstechnica.com/gaming/2017/04/ ... -keyboard/
Early Nintendo programmer worked without a keyboard
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Re: Early Nintendo programmer worked without a keyboard
It has already been posted here: viewtopic.php?f=5&t=15863
And I think this is a mistranslation, overgeneralization, or poor recollection (by the interviewee), because a) All the pictures that Sakurai provided show a graphics / BG editor on the Twin Famicom (not actual machine/ASM coding) b) This was for the 8080/Z80-based GameBoy, so a Z80 devkit that assembled on the 6502-based Famicom makes very little sense.
(On the other hand, early Fami devs did sometimes have to program their EPROMs using switches and a hexpad only...)
And I think this is a mistranslation, overgeneralization, or poor recollection (by the interviewee), because a) All the pictures that Sakurai provided show a graphics / BG editor on the Twin Famicom (not actual machine/ASM coding) b) This was for the 8080/Z80-based GameBoy, so a Z80 devkit that assembled on the 6502-based Famicom makes very little sense.
(On the other hand, early Fami devs did sometimes have to program their EPROMs using switches and a hexpad only...)
Re: Early Nintendo programmer worked without a keyboard
I think it's mostly a misunderstanding by whoever wrote the arstechnica article.
The original article says:
The original article says:
SourceGaming's translation is pretty accurate:最初から最後までの動きのデータを16進数の数値で入力していたことになる。 “開発ツール”はキーボードも付いていないため、数値の入力はトラックボールを使ってスクリーンキーボードを扱うようにポチポチと1つずつ行なっており
That portion of the article is only talking about inputting path data into the twin famicom dev tool, it doesn't really say anything about writing code.Basically, Sakurai wrote each enemy’s individual movement path, from the start to finish, [in] hexadecimal. Their development tools didn’t even have keyboard support, meaning values had to be input using a trackball and an on-screen keyboard.