Assistance regarding to rom hacking

[MarioNESS45fan]

So, I recently gotten into rom hacking a couple days ago, and wanted to try to rom hack an old nes (Nintendo Entertainment System) game. However, there are a few problems, and concerns I do have:

1. Finding the tools I need: I do understand that NES for it's time, there wasn't an official dev-kit released (If I can recall, it's likely due to the company not wanting to repeat the incident of the video game crash of 1983), meaning that for those developers at the time who wanted to make their game had to reverse engineer the entire console just to replicate whatever they could[/size]. I had seen and heard of a lot of tools that were available online before, but now all of those tools have either been DMCAed by Nintendo, or just suddenly went missing.

2. Safely installing available working tools without obtaining malware: I also want to avoid suspicious files, since the last times I had attempted to download a modding tool regarding to anything for Nintendo or Playstation games, however after scanning the files using a free scanner known as virus total, some files detected trojans and other malware. Some could've been just false positives, however, even running ones that are "false positives", my pc still got messed up.

3. Side-Related stuff: Aside from rom hacking, I do want to try to learn how to reverse engineer (although I can't find an good sources regarding to learn assembly, and the current languages I have a decent grasp of is HTML, and C++) [I am also unsure if asking for sources regarding of reverse engineering would break rule 2 of the forums, "No Piracy"], and I also wanted to try to learn how to create homebrew games as well.

[Jorpho]

Why are you formatting random parts of your post..? That's not useful.

those developers at the time who wanted to make their game had to reverse engineer the entire console just to replicate whatever they could

Not really. Licensed Nintendo cartridges included a "lockout chip" which did indeed give Nintendo a lot of control over who could release games for the system. Developers who wanted to release unlicensed games found various means of circumventing the lockout chip. This is a popular subject for amateur historians and is very well-documented all across the Internet.

But that's as far as it goes. If I'm not mistaken, there wasn't such a thing as a "dev kit" for the NES because the system is so primitive that programs can't afford any of the overhead that using a "dev kit" would involve.

I had seen and heard of a lot of tools that were available online before, but now all of those tools have either been DMCAed by Nintendo, or just suddenly went missing.

You're going to have to back that up with some documentation. I've never heard of official Nintendo NES tools in circulation, much less being DMCA'd.  Even if there are such official tools, they've probably been supplanted by unofficial ones.  (Besides, there are plenty of things that have been DMCA'd that are hardly impossible to find.)

however after scanning the files using a free scanner known as virus total, some files detected trojans and other malware.

Yes, to a virus scanner, a lot of tools for deliberately modifying program code happen to look a lot like tools for maliciously modifying program code. I think you will find that usually VirusTotal only reports trojans for something like one out of dozens of different scanners.

however, even running ones that are "false positives", my pc still got messed up.

I would be inclined to believe your PC getting "messed up" was just a coincidence. Again, you're going to have to provide some specific examples of programs you ran and how they "messed up" your PC.

I am also unsure if asking for sources regarding of reverse engineering would break rule 2 of the forums, "No Piracy"

That is not piracy, no.

and I also wanted to try to learn how to create homebrew games as well.

You should expect this to be extraordinarily difficult.

[MarioNESS45fan]

Why are you formatting random parts of your post..? That's not useful.

Ok, I apologize for doing that, just wanted to emphasize certain parts, but looking back, does seem a bit too random.

Not really. Licensed Nintendo cartridges included a "lockout chip" which did indeed give Nintendo a lot of control over who could release games for the system. Developers who wanted to release unlicensed games found various means of circumventing the lockout chip. This is a popular subject for amateur historians and is very well-documented all across the Internet. But that's as far as it goes. If I'm not mistaken, there wasn't such a thing as a "dev kit" for the NES because the system is so primitive that programs can't afford any of the overhead that using a "dev kit" would involve.

I meant for when people wanted to make unlicensed Nintendo games, they needed to know how to program the games, however, all Nintendo dev kits are private (for obvious reasons).

You're going to have to back that up with some documentation. I've never heard of official Nintendo NES tools in circulation, much less being DMCA'd.  Even if there are such official tools, they've probably been supplanted by unofficial ones.  (Besides, there are plenty of things that have been DMCA'd that are hardly impossible to find.)

I didn't really say anything about "official" NES tools, I was talking mostly about unofficial, which there had been a little more than what there is now.

Yes, to a virus scanner, a lot of tools for deliberately modifying program code happen to look a lot like tools for maliciously modifying program code. I think you will find that usually VirusTotal only reports trojans for something like one out of dozens of different scanners.

 I am well aware..

I would be inclined to believe your PC getting "messed up" was just a coincidence. Again, you're going to have to provide some specific examples of programs you ran and how they "messed up" your PC.

A few months ago, I tried learning basic programming, and found a thing called VCCE, Tandy Color Computer emulator. I found it on github, and decided to download. After a while however, my PC started to overheat the CPU, disk usage was high, and suspiciously lags and screen flickering to black for a couple seconds, and refreshing the windows desktop. I had to do a fresh clean reinstall of this system because of that.

That is not piracy, no.

Ok, good to know.

You should expect this to be extraordinarily difficult.

I am aware it will be difficult, that's what make challenges fun.

[thr]

NES hacking can be pretty easy nowadays, but it depends on the game. use Mesen's debugger and a hex editor.
homebrew will be much harder, work on your rom hacking first. good luck.

[Jorpho]

I meant for when people wanted to make unlicensed Nintendo games, they needed to know how to program the games, however, all Nintendo dev kits are private (for obvious reasons).

Well, the 6502 CPU (which isn't exactly what the NES used, but was close enough) was in wide usage at the time. So nothing magical there.

As for other specifics, I'm not entirely sure how dependent programmers were on documentation from Nintendo, or if it was particularly arduous to figure out the details from nothing. It's something else that's probably been written about somewhere or other.
 

I didn't really say anything about "official" NES tools, I was talking mostly about unofficial, which there had been a little more than what there is now.

You're suggesting Nintendo is using DMCA requests to take down someone else's unofficial development tools for a 40-year old console..?
 

A few months ago, I tried learning basic programming, and found a thing called VCCE, Tandy Color Computer emulator. I found it on github, and decided to download. After a while however, my PC started to overheat the CPU, disk usage was high, and suspiciously lags and screen flickering to black for a couple seconds, and refreshing the windows desktop. I had to do a fresh clean reinstall of this system because of that.

I thought you might have been talking about something ancient and mysterious and closed-source. The source code for something on Github is available for one and all to see and comment on. If you told the author for something as simple as a Tandy CoCo emulator that the program caused your computer to do all those things, I expect the author would be quite insulted.

I really can't begin to imagine how you think a program like that wold fundamentally alter your PC's operating system. I would much sooner expect that you accidentally stumbled upon malware from somewhere else at the time.