One interesting bit about early Nintendo was that the recently departed CEO was a self taught programmer on the Commodore 64.
At the time Nintendo made card games and such, and he basically brought the C64 over, and demoed various stuff.
Give it a few years and the guy is running the company that may well have rebooted the gaming console market.
Thing about those early consoles was that there was basically no firmware or OS. Every game had full run of the hardware, much like any software had on the early microcomputers.
Even funnier, the 'games' were as much software than hardware extension. The main system was often designed to have an external loop to hook in optional chips in the cartridge.
Yep. As i recall this was the case for both NES and SNES, with SNES making a bigger marketing fuss about it (SuperFX mostly). I think they stepped away from direct bundling with the N64 and dropped the concept when moving to discs with the Gamecube.
At the time Nintendo made card games and such, and he basically brought the C64 over, and demoed various stuff.
Give it a few years and the guy is running the company that may well have rebooted the gaming console market.
Thing about those early consoles was that there was basically no firmware or OS. Every game had full run of the hardware, much like any software had on the early microcomputers.