Nintendo 8 Bit Manual

							 
 
 
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. 
  
						

							 
 
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•  Static translation involves reading in the whole of the source program and translating it 
for the target system, producing a program that is executable on that system. However it 
is not always possible to determine how a program will execute from a static analysis of 
it. Branch instructions, for example, often depend on the contents of memory locations 
which can only be determined at run-time [20]. 
 
•  Dynamic translation works in much the same way as static translation but occurs while 
executing the program. This allows it to account for branch and jump instructions and to 
produce accurate code [20]. 
 
The NES is perhaps the most widely emulated console with a number of emulators already 
available of varying quality. Writing a NES emulator remains a very challenging project, 
requiring a detailed understanding of how the system works. A fairly comprehensive list of 
available NES emulators can be found at [21] although many of these have been 
discontinued. The basics of writing an emulator are described by [17] and [22], both of which 
focus specifically on the NES. 
 
1.4 Legal 
 
Emulation is considered to be something of a legal grey area. Emulators are not illegal, 
provided all the information used in the development is legally obtained and does not contain 
any proprietary code. However, it is illegal to run any software which you do not own a 
licence for. 
 
Copying NES games is possible with the correct hardware. Such copiers dump the contents 
of the game cartridges to a disk to enable access by a computer. There are a wide variety of 
copiers, which function in different ways. Figure 1-3 shows ChameleonNES which copies the 
contents of a cartridge to a PC via a USB port. Copyright law typically allows for a backup 
copy to be made, however this does not apply to games stored on permanent semiconductor 
chips such as those used by the NES. These copying devices are illegal. 
 
 
 
Figure 1-3. ChameleonNES cartridge copier [23]. 
 
Most emulator users download games from the Internet since they do not have access to the 
required copying hardware. These websites usually cover themselves with an agreement 
that you can only download a file if you own the original game or if you will delete it within 24 
hours. This may make the process look legal but, since the copies are illegal, it is clearly not. 
Even if the law allowed for making a backup copy of a NES game, copies can only be made 
and used by the original owner, so downloading files off the Internet would still be illegal. 
  
						

							 
 
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This only applies to games which were originally made for the NES itself. Many developers 
have produced games since which have been released freely on the Internet. Downloading 
these is acceptable. As for original NES games, using them will remain illegal until either the 
developers grant permission for their use or the copyright expires, which is 75 years after 
they were made. 
 
Nintendo are very much against emulation. The company acted against the developers of 
UltraHLE [24], an emulator for their Nintendo 64 console, which they claimed violated 
copyright. Nintendo’s objection was understandable as the console was still in use when 
UltraHLE was released.  The presence of Nintendo 64 emulators represented a threat to 
Nintendo’s income however, many believe that the law should make an exception for 
systems which are no longer in production and from which Nintendo no longer make any 
money. Despite emulation’s ability to keep old games alive Nintendo refuse to release the 
copyright on old games so their use remains illegal. 
 
For more information on the legal issues of emulation, the reader is directed to Nintendo’s 
own FAQ on the subject [25]. This is highly biased and ignores the legal uses of emulation. 
For a detailed response and clarification on this, the reader should look at [26]. 
 
1.5 NES Hardware Overview 
  
Hiroshi Yamauchi’s instructions to 
design a console which would be 
cheaper than the competition resulted in 
Nintendo deciding to use an outdated 
Central Processing Unit (CPU). 
Although a 16-bit processor would have 
coped with ease, to keep the price low 
they decided to use a variant of the 8-bit 
6502 processor, developed by MOS 
technology in 1975. The chip would be 
sufficient to run the programs but would 
be unable to generate the graphics 
required so the company decided to use 
a second chip as a dedicated Picture 
Processing Unit (PPU), responsible for 
calculating and displaying the graphics. 
Figure 1-4 shows the top of the 
motherboard with the CPU and PPU 
indicated. 
 
Nintendo designed the basic features required from the chips but found it difficult to find a 
company willing to produce such highly customised chips for the low price they were looking 
for. Ricoh agreed to manufacture the chips after Nintendo guaranteed them a three-million 
chip order. By the end of 1986 Nintendo was Ricoh’s largest customer, accounting for 
between 60 and 70 percent of the company’s semiconductor sales [10]. The functionality of 
the CPU is discussed in Part 2, that of the PPU is discussed in Part 3. 
 
Both chips feature their own internal memory, in the form of RAM. Games were usually 
stored on ROM chips within the game cartridges, which could be accessed by the CPU when 
the cartridges where inserted into the system. The hardware used for games is discussed in 
Part 4. 
 
The NES used memory mapped I/O to allow the processor to communicate with the other 
components, the PPU and the input devices. Memory mapped I/O is a technique where data 
PPUCPU 
Figure 1-4. The NES motherboard [27].  
						

							 
 
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can be transferred to a device via a write to a specific location in memory. Input devices are 
discussed in Part 5, the function of the memory mapped I/O is discussed throughout the 
document and specifically in Appendix B. 
 
 
 
  
						

							 
 
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2 - Central Processing Unit 
 
2.1 2A03 Overview 
 
Ricoh produced an NMOS processor based on the 6502, the 2A03. The chip differed from a 
standard 6502 in that it had the ability to handle sound, serving as pAPU (pseudo-Audio 
Processing Unit) as well as CPU, and that it lacked a Binary Coded Decimal (BCD) mode 
which allowed representing each digit using 4 bits. For the purposes of programming, the 
2A03 uses the same instruction set as the standard 6502 which is shown in figure 2-1. The 
6502 is a little endian processor which means that addresses are stored in memory least 
significant byte first, for example the address $1234 would be stored in memory as $34 at 
memory location x and $12 at memory location (x + 1). 
 
 
 
Figure 2-1. The 6502 processor [28]. 
 
2.2 CPU Memory Map 
 
Figure 2-2 shows how the CPU accesses memory using buses. The memory is divided into 
three parts, ROM inside the cartridges, the CPU’s RAM and the I/O registers. The address 
bus is used to set the address of the required location. The control bus is used to inform the 
components whether the request is a read or a write. The data bus is used to read or write 
the byte to the selected address. Note that ROM is read-only and is accessed via a MMC, to 
allow bank switching to occur. The I/O registers are used to communicate with the other 
components of the system, the PPU and the control devices. 
 
 
 
Figure 2-2. Processor diagram. 
  
						

							 
 
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The 2A03 had a 16-bit address bus and as such could support 64 KB of memory with 
addresses from $0000-$FFFF. Figure 2-5 is the CPU memory map used by the NES, 
showing the layout of memory. The left hand map is a simplified version showing the major 
sections, while the map to the right divides these sections further. 
 
Zero Page refers to addresses in the range $0000-$00FF, that is the first page in memory 
and is used by certain addressing modes to allow quicker execution [4]. Memory locations 
$0000-$07FF are mirrored three times at $0800-$1FFF. This means that, for example, any 
data written to $0000 will also be written to $0800, $1000 and $1800. The memory mapped 
I/O registers are located at $2000-$401F. Locations $2000-$2007 are mirrored every 8 bytes 
in the region $2008-$3FFF and the remaining registers follow this mirroring. SRAM (WRAM) 
is the Save RAM, the addresses used to access RAM in the cartridges for storing save 
games. 
 
From $8000 onwards is the addresses allocated to cartridge PRG-ROM. Games with only 
one 16 KB bank of PRG-ROM will load it into both $8000 and $C000. This is to ensure that 
the vector table is located in the correct addresses. Games with two 16 KB PRG-ROM banks 
will load one into $8000 and the other into $C000. Games with more than two banks use 
memory mappers to determine which banks to load into memory. The memory mapper 
monitors memory writes for a specific address (or range of addresses) and when that 
address is written to, it performs a bank switch. The details vary between different memory 
mappers and more information can be found in Appendix D.