Absolutely. There was no other way at the time for homebrew to be done. Nobody in the scene at that time was making devboards (EPROM/EEPROM-based, etc.) probably due to what I discussed before (re: not a lot of hardware people involved). All you needed was US$350+ for a copier, some floppies (or a parallel cable w/ transfer software (the latter usually came with the copier)), and a 65816 cross-assembler.olddb wrote:1. So it could be said that the most important event for the snes scene to get going was the release of the copiers?
Not quite. I would say the time frames was something like this:olddb wrote:2. If I understood you correctly, the snes dev/emulation scene came before the nes. So snes emulators where ahead of nes emulators at some point? Is this correct?
1991-1995: SNES homebrew/demo scene through use of copiers; emulation really wasn't being considered
1995-1996: Beginning of emulation consideration -- primarily fuelled by great increases in CPU power (high-end 486s, Pentiums)
1996-1997: Four (4) things began happening simultaneously: SNES emulation, NES emulation, NES homebrew (mainly due to NES emulation), and romhacking (for pretty much any system)
I could be off by a year or so on the time frames. It's hard to be precise because everything was happening so rapidly during the mid-to-late 90s. Tons of things were happening within short periods of time. SNES and NES (for emulation) were getting equal amounts of focus.
Emulation and ROM dumps of games is what basically spawned the following things:
* NES homebrew (through use of emulators, since only people familiar with hardware were able to make their own devboards, and most of those were only NROM (32KB PRG / 8KB CHR))
* NES romhacking efforts (through use of emulators, tools, and cart dumps, since reverse-engineering a game became easier)
* SNES romhacking efforts (through use of emulators, since reverse-engineering a game became easier -- though to be clear, not a lot of SNES emulators had debuggers in those days (I was quite vocal about that being a problem), so disassembly-based reverse engineering was key)
I'm trying to avoid talking about the nesdev scene aspects because this is the SNESdev sub-board, but I'll try to keep it brief:
The nesdev scene was absolutely crazy. There was so much happening non-stop that you practically had to be part of it daily to keep up on it all. One thing that isn't often discussed is how we ended up getting ROM files of NES carts to begin with and who was involved in all of that. Marat Fayzullin's .nes file format wasn't the first file format, believe it or not. This is where folks in Asia come into play -- they were already dumping games somehow, and Japanese emulators like PasoFami used a different model consisting of 2 files: (.prg (PRG mask ROM) and .chr (CHR mask ROM)), and I think .sav or .srm if the game had battery-backed SRAM (I forget). Marat Fayzullin's .nes file format consolidated those into a single file, and added the 16-byte header that was key for handling more than just NROM (mapper 0) cartridges. I'm still not sure who pioneered NES cart dumping, but I know for a fact that DiskDude and MindRape were both involved in the very early days, then Kevtris and some others shortly later. The cart dumping "scene" was something I wasn't part of, so I know very little about it; there are much better people to ask (on the nesdev sub-boards). Once people had ROM files of games, reverse-engineering sometimes became easier, and it (of course) also spawned the romhacking scene.
Like I said before: a LOT of stuff started happening very quickly, all within maybe 1-2 years. It was a crazy time.
I have little to no idea. Sega-based systems (Master System, Genesis/MD, etc.) weren't systems I owned (I didn't get a Genesis until maybe 1995, and only had a couple games for it -- Super Hydlide and Herzog Zwei, the only 2 games I've cared about). There *was* some Genesis/MD reverse engineering going on in the early-to-mid 90s, because I remember seeing some docs floating around, but they made no sense to me). Any time I see the Genesis/MD discussed somewhere, my brain turns to mush; VDP, PSG, FM with PCM, an integrated Z80, blah blah. To me, it seems like the perfect console to have ports of arcade games. It probably doesn't help that I don't know 68K. :-) Genesis/MD ROMs were available as early as 1993, mainly due to multi-console copiers like the Multi Game Hunter (which did both SNES and Genesis).olddb wrote:3. To your knowing, what was the state of the emulation scene for the Sega consoles in the early 90's?
For emulation, you'd need to talk to folks like Icer Addis, Steve Snake, the folks who did Genem, KGen, etc. for some history. I simply don't know it.
I've split the next questions into sub-questions (4a, 4b, 4c) to make them easier to answer:
In the very early 90s: maybe? Kinda? Sort of? Not really? It's hard to put into words. This is a question you'd have to ask of every single person in that scene at the time, because I don't know who knew who outside of IRC and the famidev mailing list. So, my below answer is my own:olddb wrote:4a. Where there any interaction between the community and any official certified snes programmer(s)?
I personally had interaction with people who *became* official SNES developers (read: working for companies that released official/approved SNES games on cart). I knew them as Apple IIGS folks, who around 1993-1994 or thereabouts got jobs at companies that were producing SNES games (and in one case, also Genesis/MD games, but that fellow is particularly incredible because he's worked on compilers and all sorts of other stuff -- remarkably intelligent). Once they started working at those companies, their interaction with me became virtually nil, probably because of time (work sucks up most people's energy/time) and maybe a little bit had to do with me doing my SNES docs (the less interaction with me the better, re: job safety). This gets into personal matters etc. that I should cover in separate thread/post.
Outside of my own experiences, I would say that yes, there must have been some degree of interaction between select/certain members of the snesdev community and professional SNES programmers in the early 90s. It's been suspected for some time that someone in the scene knew someone who had access to the SNES developers manual, i.e. they knew someone who worked at a game studio. I'm being honest here: I have no idea who those persons were/are. But I also mentioned that I knew some people in the scene who would drop me little "tips" once in a while, like "for register $21xx, try setting bit 4 to 1 and then play with this other register. Good luck!" It was stuff like that which made me wonder if some people had additional knowledge through official documentation or through other people they knew. I never asked them because I felt that would've put them into a difficult position. I hope this makes sense.
All of those who contributed to my SNES docs, to my knowledge, *were not* "certified SNES programmers" as you call them. None that I know of worked for any gaming companies. If they did, I didn't know about it. Remember: a lot of people went by monikers, so who they were behind the scenes would always remain a mystery. Some folks were a bit more open once you got to know them, others remained very anonymous. I don't think there's anything odd about that either -- people online today are still this way.olddb wrote:4b. Did any ever contribute to the documentation?
So to answer the question directly: to the best of my knowledge, no.
Yes, absolutely! I would even put myself into that same category (hoping that by learning how the SNES worked, it might land me a job at a company doing commercial SNES games). I had several people over the years tell me that they hoped that they could use my docs to (effectively) do some homebrew, and that might get their foot in the door at a company. Most comments like this came from folks in their teens or early 20s.olddb wrote:4c. On the other hand, did any member of the scene ever communicated his aspiration to use the documentation to somehow become an official Nintendo developer.
Did anyone *successfully* do that? Not that I know of. If they did, they never told me. :-)
Not in the same fashion (doing a "port" or "upgrade" of an existing/old Nintendo game). Most snesdev folks were doing demos (there are tons of those), some did picture slideshows (often of porn), others were just fooling around learning the system for fun. But there *were* some actual homebrew games that came out. Her'es some I have laying around:olddb wrote:5. In the 90's, did any other game/demo surface that did something similar to what you did with Super Kid Icarus?
- Nuke Your Mom by Paradox, 1994. A Minesweeper clone
- Pacman by RTS, Dizzy, and The Doctor, 1993. A Pacman clone
- Rape Games by Romkids, 1993. This one is... uh, yeah, best just skip it. It was made as a joke at the time (got some laughs/chuckles), but if something like this was made today people would be throwing a fit
- Shoot Your Load by Anthrox, 1994. An Asteroids-like clone that was multiplayer (up to 4 people using the Multitap) -- quite well done
- Tic-Tac-Toe by Tinysoft, 1993. Self-explanatory
- Tic-Tac-Toe by Timsoft, 1994. Nearly identical to the aforementioned game, but a bit more refined, different music, etc..
- What a Chess by CrazyBee, 1994. A 2-player Chinese board game done by a fellow out of the Chinese University of Hong Kong. Kind of like Go/weiqi, but kind of not. May be the authors own invention
The two tic-tac-toe games are incredibly similar, to the point where it almost looks like the latter might be an early 90s romhack (and improvement) on the former. Or maybe they were done by the same person/group and they changed names, had a falling out, etc.. Don't know. Still homebrew either way.
One thing you'll notice about a lot of these homebrews, aside from ones done by high-end groups, is that they tend to use ripped music from commercial games or other groups, else no audio at all. This is because pretty much nobody really understood the SPC700 at the time. I would go as far as to say understanding the SPC700 was almost a "coveted" thing, i.e. you held a kind of elite status if you do anything with the SPC700. A lot of demos/things would usually include a note like "Looking for musicians!" -- now you know why.