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Nicole Express
Personal blog · nicole.expressgameshardware
Nicole Express is a personal blog at nicole.express about games and hardware. Since 2015, 41 different Hacker News readers have linked it 162 times, most often “Every Graphics at Once: Nintendo's Popeye”. It is still writing: the last post was on 2026-10-25, and you can follow it by feed.
Too few sampled comments (15) to say how often HN recommends it.?
Why HN links it
HN readers link this blog for technical posts on retro games and hardware, including 6502 and Apple II programming, Sega and NES systems, and CRT video modes. Commenters cite its posts as explanations.
- Recommended for · 3 comments
- Listed as a personal favourite for tinkering with old games and hardware; one commenter's classic-gaming favourite with technical depth; a post that fully answe
Summarised by Claude from a sample of 15 HN comments that link here. Each comment is marked recommending, critical or neutral (citing without judging); how this works.
Nicole Express: Hobbyist video game development, examinations into old consoles, and more!
Most-linked posts?
- Every Graphics at Once: Nintendo's Popeye4 people · 4 mentions · first linked 2023-02-26
- The games Nintendo didn't want you to play: Tengen4 people · 4 mentions · first linked 2022-04-10
- Apple II graphics: More than you wanted to know3 people · 3 mentions · first linked 2024-06-28
- Replacing the Bios on the Book 80883 people · 3 mentions · first linked 2023-07-06
- ROM Hacking in the 90s2 people · 3 mentions · first linked 2024-04-01
- Donkey Kong's Discount Replacement: Hero in the Castle of Doom2 people · 2 mentions · first linked 2022-03-13
- A System for the Sixties-and-a-Half: The Toshiba Visicom COM-1002 people · 2 mentions · first linked 2025-01-12
- The ESP-Rainbow: Flatter Than a Speccy2 people · 2 mentions · first linked 2025-08-17
- Sprite Scaling on the Master System: Building the New on the Ruins of the Old2 people · 2 mentions · first linked 2026-05-11
- The IGS PolyGame Master: A Even More Neo Geo?2 people · 2 mentions · first linked 2022-07-17
What Hacker News says?
6502 assembly was fairly easy to learn, but it didn't translate to being a productive assembly programmer on the Apple //e I had. In particular, I wanted to do fast 2D and 3D graphics (basically what Ultima III did) to write my own games. My goal was simply to implement SetPixel(x, y, c) which turns out to be tricky because the Apple screen was 280 x 192 so you had to deal with 16-bit math. See https://nicole.expres…
Comment linking /2024/phasing-in-and-out-of-existence.html
on “I believe 6502 instruction set is a good first assembly language”Submitted The games Nintendo didn't want you to play: Tengen as a story · 339 points
HN discussion> As I noted in the prior blog post, the Sega Master System has a tilemap that’s only 256 pixels wide, the same as the display area. Therefore, the image is slightly off-center For anyone else for whom this made no sense, the off-center image is a tradeoff to allow for smooth horizontal scrolling when the tilemap that is used as the source for the display is the same size as the available display area. This is indee…
Comment linking /2021/sega-system-1-system-1.html
on “Alf 2: Collision Detection Is Hard, Blog Posts Are Harder”Submitted What made the NES so interesting? as a story · 336 points
HN discussionHere's the article on Part 1: https://nicole.express/2021/remember-alf.html
Comment linking /2021/remember-alf.html
on “Alf 2: Collision Detection Is Hard, Blog Posts Are Harder”Submitted How I make graphics for retro systems and retro-styled games as a story · 203 points
HN discussionI reckon these official converters were instrumental in Tengen's work for reverse engineering the NES to run "unlicensed" games. It turns out that another blog post on this site explains exactly that: https://nicole.express/2022/the-center-point-can-not-hold.ht... "How did they do it? As it turns out, crime. Unable to reverse engineer the chip, Tengen convinced the United States Copyright Office to hand over the sou…
Comment linking /2022/the-center-point-can-not-hold.html
on “Cartridge Chaos: The Official Nintendo Region Converter and More”Submitted Yes, you can play Duck Hunt without a television (but I can't) as a story · 171 points
HN discussionI wonder if this one is using pirated software, too? https://nicole.express/2023/book-it.html
Comment linking /2023/book-it.html
on “Retro Pocket 386 Win 95 laptop sub $200, comes with 386SX40 processor, 8 MB RAM”Submitted Apple II graphics: More than you wanted to know as a story · 168 points
HN discussionFor that you'll need Apple II documentation - though that's device-specific information. It's easy to find online, e.g. https://nicole.express/2024/phasing-in-and-out-of-existence.... , but there's lots more with various levels of info. This one, for example: https://www.kreativekorp.com/miscpages/a2info/memorymap.shtm... For actual 6502 programming you'll need a dedicated 6502 assembly programming book, for example…
Comment linking /2024/phasing-in-and-out-of-existence.html
on “Ask HN: Books to learn 6502 ASM and the Apple II”Submitted Collision Detection Is Hard: The Story of Alf as a story · 160 points
HN discussionHaving introduced my younger siblings, who grew up with much later systems like the PS3 and Nintendo Switch, I would have to agree with this statement. The Atari 2600 is pretty graphically primitive (feel like I read somewherre that it was only designed to display 5 movable objects on the entire screen at once) even though its super impressive what they were able to accomplish with it. Another thing to remember: the…
Comment linking /2022/the-nes-as-an-artifact.html
on “A tribute to one of the best games on the Atari 2600”Submitted Nicole gets a real computer – the Microsoft Z80 SoftCard (2020) as a story · 144 points
HN discussionYes. It's the chip/socket to the right of the 8088 and 8087 sockets here - https://nicole.express/2023/book-it.html .
Comment linking /2023/book-it.html
on “Hacking the Book8088 for better accuracy”Submitted A floppy disk MIDI boombox: The Yamaha MDP-10 as a story · 132 points
HN discussionI have a long list, so I'll choose a few personal favorites that may be of interest to HN readers: https://nicole.express/feed.xml (tinkering with old games and game hardware) https://shumplations.com/feed (translations of Japanese game developer interviews) https://www.loc.gov/collections/global-legal-monitor/?fo=rss (summaries of legal news from around the world) https://reason.com/people/josh-blackman/feed (legal…
Comment linking /feed.xml
on “Ask HN: What are your favorite RSS feeds?”Submitted Isn't she just Misunderstood? The Casio Loopy as a story · 132 points
HN discussionAdmins: I initially published the blog post at the linked URL, but then realized I had gotten the slug wrong, and had to move it. It redirects so it's not a huge deal, but is it possible to have the post changed to the correct URL https://nicole.express/2024/no-screen-no-cpu-one-problem.htm... ?
Comment linking /2024/no-screen-no-cpu-one-problem.html
on “Yes, You Can Play Duck Hunt Without a Television (But I Can't)”Submitted It's a bird, it's a plane, it's Super Cassette Vision as a story · 127 points
HN discussionIt's kind of amazing how many hard computer problems from the olden days were solved by having more memory. When I got started in computer graphics, there was a lot of research work on how to render images a scanline at a time, since that's all the memory you had. Once you could get enough memory to hold the entire image, you could use a Z-buffer and rendering became kind of trivial. Another example is the post on H…
Comment linking /2023/yes-popeye-the-sailor-man.html
on “A Spellchecker Used to Be a Major Feat of Software Engineering”Submitted Reviving a Dead Audio Format: The Return of ZZM as a story · 125 points
HN discussionglad to share. it's such a fun topic! I just thought of this conversation when I saw this video this morning! https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Ei1RJ19IriU it runs through a variety of Sega Model 2 arcade system games. theoretically there were about a dozen "Model 2" games. buuuuut, as the video details, the "Model 2" moniker refers to an entire generation of Sega arcade boards and there were significant hardware upgr…
Comment linking /2023/yes-popeye-the-sailor-man.html
on “Most Video Game Artwork Will Never Be Seen”Submitted Converting from the Game Gear to the Master System as a story · 117 points
HN discussionHe is a treasure. His CPS1 book is outstanding. If anyone knows other classic-gaming blogs, where there is technical depth, please do share. https://nicole.express/ and https://sudden-desu.net/ are my other favorites.
Comment linking /
on “Commander Keen's Adaptive Tile Scrolling”Submitted Pump up the charge: Getting -5V from a 5V power supply as a story · 108 points
HN discussion>240p is fake and a lie, but close enough for us I want to know more :) and my googling skills are failling me. But I didn't even realize you could do 240p/60hz on a CRT. To be honest I even assumed that CRT more or less means interlaced for some reason... Edit: ok, I should've clicked the links in the article! This page pretty much completely answers my questions! https://nicole.express/2021/interlace-me-not.html
Comment linking /2021/interlace-me-not.html
on “Sega 3-D Glasses: How did they work?”Submitted Taito's Mini-Vaders: Why Should Dottori Have All the Fun? as a story · 98 points
HN discussionhttps://nicole.express/2020/super-ultra-mega-tera-grafx.html > That makes a grand total of six exclusives, plus Darius Plus and Darius Alpha, a limited-release special edition of Darius Plus that seems to exist primarily to make it hard to collect a complete set of SuperGrafx-compatible games > It’s not surprising that the SuperGrafx wasn’t very successful. With 6 games total? Yes.
Comment linking /2020/super-ultra-mega-tera-grafx.html
on “The Sega System E: The Master System Supergrafx”Submitted The Memories of Z80 Past: Zaxxon and Future Spy as a story · 89 points
HN discussion
