I Am Error
by Nathan Altice · first published 2015
100% recommend
Why HN recommends it
Explores how the NES's hardware limits and technical choices shaped its games and cultural legacy, mixing technical detail with industry history; suits readers curious about how consoles work and why they mattered.
Summarised by Claude from recommending comments
In the 1987 Nintendo Entertainment System videogame Zelda II: The Adventure of Link, a character famously declared: I AM ERROR. Puzzled players assumed that this cryptic mesage was a programming flaw, but it was actually a clumsy Japanese-English translation of "My Name is Error," a benign programmer's joke. In I AM ERROR Nathan Altice explores the complex material histories of the Nintendo Entertainment System (and its Japanese predecessor, the Family Computer), offering a detailed analysis of its programming and engineering, its expressive affordances, and its cultural significance. Nintendo
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Indeed, nothing in this article has anything to do with how the NES worked. If you want a real introduction to the hardware, "I Am Error" by Nathan Altice is a great book about how the NES worked. It includes a chapter about how SMB1 in particular stored its level layouts.
on “Super Mario Bros. game was just 31 Kilobytes. How's that possible?” ↗> Also, the video has a lot of info about how levels are constructed in Mario in general, which I found very informative. If you'd like a lot more on this kind of topic, check out the book "I Am Error" by Nathan Altice (published by MIT Press; don't buy from Amazon). It goes into a bunch of detail about how the NES hardware worked and how specific games used it.
on “Super Mario Bros warp zones were intended to work slightly differently [video]” ↗Nope. I'd go with anything from MIT. Racing The Beam and I Am Error were transcendental for me. Some stuff from Boss Fight books is absurdly good. Final Fantasy V immediately comes to mind.
on “Former Nintendo employees reveal what it took to launch the NES” ↗I Am Error - Nathan Altice (about the NES platform)
on “Ask HN: Well-written Technical Books?” ↗Folks who found this article interesting will also appreciate Nathan Altice's book "I AM ERROR" which looks at how the NES's various technical decisions and limitations influenced the NES's lasting cultural legacy. The book contains a surprising amount of technical depth combined with history,…
on “What made the NES so interesting?” ↗…technique for games that have a "status bar". Super Mario Bros 3 is another obvious example, but even Super Mario Bros uses it long before then for its top status bar. I first read about it in the excellent "I Am Error" book by Nathan Altice, but googling around for "nes sprite zero split" turns up plenty of other articles, too.
on “Zelda Screen Transitions Are Undefined Behaviour” ↗I can recommend "I Am Error", Nathan Altice's book about the NES: https://mitpress.mit.edu/books/i-am-error
on “Great books on classic video games” ↗For those interested in the cultural and technical history of bringing the Famicom to the West, I can highly recommend "I am Error" by Nathan Altice. https://mitpress.mit.edu/books/i-am-error
on “The NES turns 30: How it began, worked, and saved an industry (2013)” ↗I Am Error was excellent, as was Racing the Beam by Montfort and Bogost. That's from the same "platform studies" series as the Altice book, but focused on the technical and social development of the Atari 2600.
on “Great books on classic video games” ↗