6 replies to this topic

[IrishFarmer]

I was on eBay, when I just happened to see a guy selling a CD that apparently had the SDK for the Nintendo Gamecube. Which got me to thinking. Since apparently people can get their hands on console SDKs for cheap, does anyone know where I could find the Super Nintendo SDK? Or Gameboy Advance SDK?

I don't think I would like to get into anything from the Playstation/Nintendo64 or up because that might be beyond me. But I thought it would be interesting to check it out and see what its like to look at a console/handheld from the perspective of a developer. I doubt I'd ever actually program a game, but it might be good experience for me to at least get my eyes on one of them.

And a little tech demo might be something good to put in portfolio.

Thanks.

[TheNut]

Console SDKs cheap?! I wish =)

For newer systems, they are very expensive and sell on a per-developer basis. So if you have to equip several developers with the hardware and software, you have to pay for each one. It’s really expensive. I don’t know about discounts on legacy consoles like the SNES, but I would imagine such packages would be difficult to find though a legitimate source. I don’t think Nintendo offers them anymore either, and if they did you still need to be a creditable source before they will sell you one.

PS2 (http://ps2dev.org/) and GBA (http://devkitadv.sou....net/index.html) have unofficial SDKs that you can use to work with. If you’re interested in console development, this is a good start. PS2 doesn’t have reputable emulators yet, so you may need to invest in the hardware (cables, hard drives, etc...) in order to take advantage of the PS2 SDK. In my opinion it's not worth the investment.

Keep in mind that developing for the PC is equally as good as developing with consoles. In either case you’ll gain the experience.

[bladder]

For the game boy you can get the dev kits for free. I programmed for the game boy before. You get an emulator as well so you can see what you application looks like without having to burn a cartridge for the gameboy.

Check out: http://www.gbadev.org/
Go to the docs section then the tutorials section and you can take off from there.

Dunno about snes.

[IrishFarmer]

Awesome. I'm suddenly blushing when I realized I could have found this information myself. But thanks, regardless. I appreciate it.

[NomadRock]

I'd love to develop gameboy games for myself, but what use is it if I cant make carts?

Edit: I went looking out of curiosity and apparently you can buy flash based carts that can store 512MB for 100 USD from http://www.totalgba.com While not cheap, this makes development actually affordable. Neat!

[Methulah]

That is cool. I've wanted to get into mobile development, but Java programming reminds me of dreaded C#.

Oh dear, I fear I may have started a flame war. Please, NO!

[IrishFarmer]

While the idea of GBA development would be cool because it can impress people around you, I don't know how useful it'll be to actually do it. But I'm planning on getting a little know how anyway because it can't hurt. GBA sounds the like most agreeable platform, too and there's still an active community developing for it.