NES Developers
So I'm doing some research about NES developers.
As far as I'm aware, to become a developer for the NES, one had to pay Nintendo a large sum of money, and they received some (apparently not good) development documents.
However, I'm looking at Bitmasters - https://www.giantbomb.com/bitmasters-inc/3010-4162/ - the developer of Rygar, and Championship Pool, for the NES.
The company unlikely obtained a license from Nintendo. There are other companies whose first games were NES games -- unlikely to get a developer's license.
So, were licensed required only early on, and they relaxed the policy later on? Or did these small companies really get licenses? Would Nintendo not have accepted games developed by unlicensed developers, with licensed publishers?
As far as I'm aware, to become a developer for the NES, one had to pay Nintendo a large sum of money, and they received some (apparently not good) development documents.
However, I'm looking at Bitmasters - https://www.giantbomb.com/bitmasters-inc/3010-4162/ - the developer of Rygar, and Championship Pool, for the NES.
The company unlikely obtained a license from Nintendo. There are other companies whose first games were NES games -- unlikely to get a developer's license.
So, were licensed required only early on, and they relaxed the policy later on? Or did these small companies really get licenses? Would Nintendo not have accepted games developed by unlicensed developers, with licensed publishers?
Comments
Pretty sure your info above isn't entirely correct. I have it on good knowledge that GB developers never paid a cent to register as a licensed developer. NES Developers may have had a few more hoops to jump through, but typically to register, they would fill out a bunch of paperwork, agree to terms, and viola! Access to development tools and docs! Buying dev hardware wasn't outrageous either.
Getting your hands on dev equipment and docs really isn't that hard. Developers go out of business everyday and typically sell off their equipment to recoup costs (its supposed to be returned back to Nintendo). Some just dump it in the trash though or it gets repossessed through bankruptcy. Since assets are usually distributed by who is owed the most first, a bank may have ended up with a dev system and just tossed it. I remember hearing a few months after the launch of the Wii, that a dev system was found on the side of the road.
BTW- Publishers didn't have dookie. They were licensed separately as a publisher. If they wanted access to dev tools and docs, they would have to register as a developer as well. Its conceivable that they could register on behalf of "Tiny Joe's House of Hack", but they'd also be held liable if "Tiny" did anything nefarious with the dev tools (i.e. the slew of unlicensed "R" rated games).
My understanding is that the publishers were the ones that had the licenses. That's how we ended up with games from Atari being published by Mindscape, for example, like Paperboy. This is just my understanding though, so I could be wrong!
From https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Krome_Studios_Melbourne
"In 1987 Nintendo granted a developer's licence for the NES and Beam developed games on that platform for US and Japanese publishers."
I have it from two people from that company, one being the Owner, the owner one of the higher up programmers, that a developer license was around 20-25k AUD at this time.
Paperboy was indeed an Atari game. However not for the NES. Eastridge Technology (NES) developed the game for the NES.
Are you researching this for a book?
Pretty sure your info above isn't entirely correct. I have it on good knowledge that GB developers never paid a cent to register as a licensed developer. NES Developers may have had a few more hoops to jump through, but typically to register, they would fill out a bunch of paperwork, agree to terms, and viola! Access to development tools and docs! Buying dev hardware wasn't outrageous either.
Getting your hands on dev equipment and docs really isn't that hard. Developers go out of business everyday and typically sell off their equipment to recoup costs (its supposed to be returned back to Nintendo). Some just dump it in the trash though or it gets repossessed through bankruptcy. Since assets are usually distributed by who is owed the most first, a bank may have ended up with a dev system and just tossed it. I remember hearing a few months after the launch of the Wii, that a dev system was found on the side of the road.
The NES never had any official development kit. Rare play the game was forced to create a demo game before Nintendo would support them, despite the desire to develop for them. Beam software went to Nintendo and asked to become an accredited developer, but they denied. But after trying to sell their dev kit they had made to Acclaim, Nintendo agreed to let them develop if they didn't sell their dev kit. It seems most developers reverse engineered the NES instead of using official development documentsz
I'm leaning towards Nintendo not charging for developers licensed after a few years.
And yes yes it's for a book. Apologies for all the formatting errors, I'm typing this on a phone and the text box doesn't play nice