First steps

I started out with a guide that I recommend to anyone wanting to program for the NES. Nerdy Nights is a series of forum posts that has info about the NES hardware, the 6502 assembly language, and sample code for making a very simple pong-like game. I have studied this guide and taken notes to help remember everything. There is so much to take in, so I suggest doing the same or something similar to help remember it all.

I only have one word of caution for new developers, there is one guide that I started out with and regret it. GBAGuy's NES ASM Tutorial was pretty alluring as it gave info in small chunks at a time. The problem is that some things that need explanation are not explained and the code is not tested. I got quite far into it before I noticed the notes at the end of each lesson asking for email from people to let him know if the code worked at all. If you take the time to write the code, you should take the time to make sure it compiles.

I like to have some general reference info around just for situations where I have questions about what exactly this or that does. The 6502 processor is very well documented and one site I like to go to is 6502 Reference. There are features and instructions that the NES does not have, but it's not a bad idea to keep this info around.