hugemikeyd wrote:
Just curious what it was like for a company like Capcom to develop licensed games on the NES.
How would we know? :-) If my memory serves me right, there's only one person here on the forum who did NES development (specifically music, and AFAIK only music) back then. Everything else is just speculation. There are articles/interviews online with Famicom (not NES) developers if you want to read those; they're about as good as it gets. There are some articles/interviews on NESWorld as well, but with smaller developers.
hugemikeyd wrote:
Did Nintendo provide any hardware/software for this? How about any manuals/documentation?
I'm under the impression Nintendo did give out some kind of software (I think I read somewhere about them providing an assembler and that's it) -- not sure about hardware -- but it was very sub-par in quality, causing the majority (80-90%?) of companies to write their own. Since you mention Capcom, it's safe to say you're wanting to know about the "big boys" -- all developed their own tools.
Regarding manuals and documentation: yes, documentation was provided. I have only seen a single page of the documentation issued to developers in the United States, and it was atrocious (a very, very bad Japanese->English translation job; I'm under the impression it was done by Nintendo of Japan, by someone of Japanese descent who had a very basic (and bad) grasp of English). Remember: everything back then tended to be done hastily and with severe monetary focus (especially when it came to hardware: ICs were expensive).
hugemikeyd wrote:
I know folks have reverse engineered several processes to homebrew today, but I was curious what it was like back in the day.
Many companies did reverse-engineering back then as well, and I'm not just referring to Color Dreams, Tengen, etc.. I imagine there was a **lot** of "try this and see what happens" type of development as well -- similar to reverse-engineering but by trial and error.