My NES experiment of October 2004 is the bizarro of PC 3D Accelerators! The NES PC2C02 Video Card gives a PC NES video acceleration using the original 2C02 Picture Processing Unit (PPU) found in Nintendo Entertainment Systems. It operates just as in the NES, but is controlled by x86 code instead of the original NES 6502.
Imagine an NES game running natively on a Pentium CPU! Imagine the complex game play, collision detection, virtually unlimited program code and RAM, and everything else fast PCs can produce, fueling an NES game! The NES PC2C02 Video Card makes it possible! It gives the ability to create the most unbelievable NES games you could ever imagine. As well, with a 6502 emulator running on the PC, an NES game can be run/debugged very easily with 100% accurate video rendering.
Why?
It all started when I was experimenting with designing hardware for NES cartridges which would allow the NES to produce more detailed graphics. To fully tap into it, I built a device to reverse engineer the PPU, a monitoring tool similar to the Bit Scope 64 device. It allowed me to manually clock the PPU and read in all of the data flowing through it's lines as it ran. While doing this data reading, I realized I should be able to do writing as well, so the idea of a PC controlled NES PPU was born.
I feel that 3D games came along too quickly, far before 2D games were fully pushed to their potential. 2D games still had a huge amount of room to grow, but before they could, the 3D consoles were pushed forward. The beautiful 2D SNES games were replaced with horridly rigid Sega Saturn and original Playstation 3D graphics.
But why mess with old NES video? It's fun! It's also fun doing something that's never been done before, it makes the time more well spent.
My NES experiment of October 2004 is the bizarro of PC 3D Accelerators! The NES PC2C02 Video Card gives a PC NES video acceleration using the original 2C02 Picture Processing Unit (PPU) found in Nintendo Entertainment Systems. It operates just as in the NES, but is controlled by x86 code instead of the original NES 6502.
Imagine an NES game running natively on a Pentium CPU! Imagine the complex game play, collision detection, virtually unlimited program code and RAM, and everything else fast PCs can produce, fueling an NES game! The NES PC2C02 Video Card makes it possible!
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Document and Information By Brian Provinciano
October 14th, 2004
Updated October 22nd, 2004
