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I Am Error: The Nintendo Family Computer / Entertainment System Platform

(Platform Studies)

Nathan Altice (Goodreads Author)

4.28 · Rating details · 127 ratings · 20 reviews

The complex material histories of the Nintendo Entertainment System platform, from code to silicon, focusing on its technical constraints and its expressive affordances.

In the 1987 Nintendo Entertainment System videogame Zelda II: The Adventure of Link, a character famously declared: I AM ERROR. Puzzled players assumed that this cryptic mesage was a programming flaw, but ...more

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Hardcover, 440 pages

Published May 1st 2015 by MIT Press

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Jul 10, 2015 Bob Mackey rated it really liked it

Most books on video games end up disappointing me. Outside of small and vanity press labors of love, too many of them simply regurgitate well-known facts for the sake of a breezy, accessible history. Of course, coming from MIT Press, my hopes were much higher for I Am Error, and Nathan Alice's work definitely left me impressed. Its biggest value can be found in its specificity; these 300 pages are slavishly devoted to explaining the inner workings of the NES/Famicom, and no single electron is ...more

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Oct 14, 2019 Thom rated it really liked it

Shelves: non-fiction

Very in-depth breakdown of the Famicom and Nintento Entertainment System (NES), covering hardware, software, and the development process. Chapters on the music chip (2A03) and emulation were particularly interesting. This book feels more like a series of essays than one narrative.

Chapters focus on particular topics, and often dig into a particular game to go along with the discussion. The back history and design differences between Famicom and NES were a welcome addition, as most of the Nintendo ...more

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Mar 15, 2016 Justin Liew rated it it was amazing

If you grew up playing NES games, and are a software developer, this is the book for you. I Am Error is a comprehensive history of the Famicom/NES platform, with a bent towards the platform and its place in popular culture. Japan's influence on the Famicom and how they brought the console to the USA is especially relevant given the recent controversy around Alison Rapp.

The technical explanations are in depth and clear, and for those with a technical bent there are some really interesting ...more

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Jul 25, 2015 Ken rated it liked it

Shelves: nonfic-topic

Great technical depth and cultural context, perhaps the second book (after The Future Was Here: The Commodore Amiga) to fully live up to the premise of the "Platform Studies" series. Nonetheless it's very very dry. It's a good read if you're technically oriented and interested in the subject matter, but not really otherwise (whereas I would recommend the Amiga book to literally everyone).

Best chapters are on the FDS and the 2A03. The 2A03 chapter might be a good standalone read for those ...more

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Jul 24, 2016 Mark rated it really liked it

This isn't your standard book and at times reads almost like a manual. If you ever wanted to know how the NES actually worked this is the book for you, with in-depth detail. I'm surprised there is a market for a book like this but I'm glad there is. This book isn't for everyone. However those who it is for will really enjoy it.

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Feb 10, 2018 ADAM rated it really liked it

A dense, meticulously-researched history of Nintendo's early years in the video game market, starting with Donkey Kong and ending with the retirement (and beyond, via emulators) of the NES and its Japanese cousin, the Famicom. This book is part of the MIT press "Platform Studies" series, which began in 2009 with the Atari study, "Racing the Beam." Unlike "Racing the Beam," which used six individual Atari games to explore six different mini-epochs in the technical and sociological history of that ...more

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Jan 13, 2019 Nathan Davis rated it it was amazing

I really adored this book. This is finally the one book that was every bit as technical as I wanted it to be. The book both analyzed the 8-bit Nintendo console as a technical platform and as an institution. Starting with how the hardware was designed and what games it was intended to implement. Then, what limitations did the hardware impose, how did that affect the games, and how did the designers work around those limitations?

It made me look the NES games differently then I had before and ...more

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Apr 22, 2017 Lucas rated it really liked it

Shelves: computers

I read this after going through online tutorials and instructional documents about the NES, mostly on nesdev.com, and creating a small example project using c with cc65 ( https://github.com/lucasw/nes_cc65_demo ) that runs at least in the fceux emulator. It's likely I won't go much further than what is currently there: moving player and enemy sprites around the screen over a scrolling background with a couple of sound effects, or go as far as to invest in flash cartridge to play it on a real ...more

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Jan 12, 2020 Nathan D. Riggs rated it it was amazing

I Am Error is by far the best book you'll find on the Nintendo Entertainment System as a Platform. There are books out there that off a better history of its development, the culture surrounding it, and so on, but if you really want to know exactly how ingenious some of the hardware choices were, as well as how the NES was able to start a side-scrolling revolution with extremely limited memory (spoiler alert: clever programming, at least in the beginning, wins the day), you definitely don't want ...more

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Mar 25, 2017 Julian rated it liked it

Shelves: programming, videogames

This book sits in a strange intermediary place. I guess I was hoping for more technical detail, and others might hope for more history and narrative context, but one gets a weird mix of both. I suppose it achieves what MIT's platform series sets out to do, although I'm not sure if I can recommend it even to those passionately interested in the NES (you probably know most of what's in this book already). It's good that it exists, though, since I feel like a lot of the details are things that have ...more

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Apr 15, 2018 Nick Massa rated it it was amazing

Extremely interesting hardware history of the NES. Approachable but complex writing style with detailed explanations that get very in the weeds. Didn't understand everything but will likely read this one again.

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Jul 17, 2015 David Dinaburg rated it it was amazing

I wrote a long preamble that covered much of my personal history with the NES before segueing into I AM ERROR’s laudable dearth of anecdote. I thought the juxtaposition clever, but while editing it seemed both trite and self-indulgent; satirizing tedium with tedium is still tedious to experience, no matter how amusing.

I AM ERROR elucidates the functional, physical aspects of the Famicom and applies that knowledge onto the end product; it is why Mario looks the way he looks, or moves the way he I wrote a long preamble that covered much of my personal history with the NES before segueing into I AM ERROR’s laudable dearth of anecdote. I thought the juxtaposition clever, but while editing it seemed both trite and self-indulgent; satirizing tedium with tedium is still tedious to experience, no matter how amusing.

I AM ERROR elucidates the functional, physical aspects of the Famicom and applies that knowledge onto the end product; it is why Mario looks the way he looks, or moves the way he moves; why the bushes and clouds in Super Mario Bros. are made from the same tiles (did you recognize they were palette swaps of each other? I didn’t.)—form following function in a restrained medium of expression:

If the Famicom only had four colors total, the two stacked bits from the pattern table bitplanes would be sufficient to describe any tile. However, the Famicom allocates thirty-two bytes of VRAM to eight individual palettes—half devoted to sprites and the other half to background tiles—containing four colors each. Every sprite and background tile onscreen may select only one of its four allotted palettes at a time. However, the first color of each four-color block must be identical—shared across all palettes—limiting the PPU to rendering twenty-five individual colors onscreen simultaneously.

Though the shared color may seem like an arbitrary constraint, it is actually a clever means to “erase” portions of sprite tiles that are meant to be transparent. When a sprite is on top of a background tile, any color bit set to the shared color will permit the underlying background tile to show through. Mario’s constituent sprites in Super Mario Bros., for instance, use only three colors: red for his hat and overalls; a muted brown for his hair, eyes, sleeves, and boots; and olive for his skin and overall button. All other pixels in the Mario tiles are set to sky blue, but they render transparent, permitting the background to pass behind his body as he moves.

I AM ERROR handles the density of the material in an impressive way, slowly ramping up the technical details until you are comfortable distinguishing between OAM cycling and VRAM attribution. The Famicom is unique in having a split PPU architecture, but honestly, without the book sitting in front of me, I cannot recall a more detailed breakdown. I AM ERROR is, much like a videogame begets multiple playthroughs, a book that calls for repeated readings.

It never takes the shortcuts upon which the vast majority of books about videogames thrive—tales of the author’s personal experiences—the type of tales that I had to forcibly excise from this review. This is a scholarly work that has eschewed the profligate memoir genre and stripped away the cobwebs of sentimentality; it provides an actual look at what powered the movable images that pepper the collective childhood memories of my generation. Much of the target audiences for early videogames are now adults, but videogames remain a nascent form of entertainment. Under all of the nostalgia creeps a haunting truth; our generation takes the cultural ubiquity of gaming history for granted; fluency in videogames’ genesis tale is slowly ebbing away. It will dissipate back into the ether, and soon. Written records are required as the creator generation passes away; that point is eloquently made though easily missed in I AM ERROR as it is inexplicably buried in the second appendix:

One problem facing videogame bibliography is the medium’s relative youthfulness. Commercial videogames have only been with us since the 1970s. Generations of consoles and games still litter yard sales, attics, pawnshops, and thrift stores. Our familiarity with and access to videogames is taken for granted, since many of us are old enough to recall first-hand experience with the entire history of videogames--a claim that cannot be made by scholars of other media. There is an implicit assumption that we all know what a Super Mario Bros. cartridge looks like, so why bother with thorough descriptions?

The lack of directed personal narrative creates an uncluttered playground for the mind to explore, a landscape over which to drape one’s own videogaming history. By contrast with the modern style of non-fiction writing—letting the author tells stories to convey facts—the text here offers historicity and authority to a device representative of an industry often treated as frivolous. I AM ERROR is wonderful to read, a needed piece of academia that anyone with the memory of holding a controller can come away from richer. And it is likely that most readers will come equipped with their own personal stories of the NES, content to act as their own Virgil through the surfeit of technical details. Just don’t write another Nintendo memoire, okay?
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Dec 26, 2016 Enno rated it it was ok

Shelves: library

Fine, but not as compelling a read as the first book in the series.

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Jun 29, 2015 William Anderson rated it it was amazing

Shelves: favorites

Delving into not just the technical affordances, inspirations and quirks of the NES, but also looking at its predecessors (arcade cabinets), aspirational software and more, "I Am Error" is a tome of knowledge.

Enlightening in many ways, this book covers, the language of the NES (6502 asm) in brief to give better context of the inner working of the machine.Business decisions on production (hardware/software) are also covered at a distance to which does not obscure other aspects.

Masterfully ...more

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Sep 11, 2015 Koen Crolla rated it liked it

Shelves: platform-studies, vidya

Decent effort. The Famicom and NES have been taken apart and obsessively studied in ways that the other subjects of the Platform Studies series haven't, over the years, but even if he doesn't bring anything particularly new to the table, Altice at least manages to put everything together. He indulges in the series' usual habit of occasionally vomiting near-meaningless humanities buzzwords onto the page, but it's honestly not as bad some of the others in that respect.

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Jan 01, 2017 Jonathan Chan rated it liked it

It's a pretty quick read when you're able to skip over the low level details on how the Nintendo works. The bits of information as to why developers did x, y, and z and how various machines came to market was super interesting.

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Jun 19, 2015 Brian rated it it was amazing

If you're at all interested in the workings and impact of the NES, this book makes it fascinating and accessible. Altice manages to straddle the line between impenetrable technical detail and hand-waving half-explanation.

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Jul 02, 2015 Bret Lowe rated it it was amazing

Very interesting book about the NES and all things surrounding it. It sure have a lot of technical details for those interested.

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Feb 18, 2016 Manuel Sanchez rated it really liked it

Dont expect a light reading, this book comes with a lot of technical aspects, you got plenty of programming explanations but also a good description of the era of the NES console

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