Family BASIC [Programming & Tech]
ฝัง
- เผยแพร่เมื่อ 13 มิ.ย. 2023
- Without Family BASIC, neither Kirby nor Super Smash Bros. would exist today! In this video, I'll introduce this special peripheral from 1984 by recording myself actually using it.
This really takes me back. I had lots of fun with this thing. - เกม
![Development Secrets of the Original Kirby [Grab Bag]](http://i.ytimg.com/vi/ZUY2AtBD6Sk/mqdefault.jpg)
![Development Secrets of the Original Kirby [Grab Bag]](/img/tr.png)
I love how proud he is of his repainting job on the keyboard.
Yeah that's so cute xD
Well, yellowing on the white plastic can easily be fixed, so I think he just wanna see how it goes and proud of the result.
He’s so wholesome I can’t
What a nerd
a little nitpick but he likely didn't repaint but retrobrited it
You can tell he really loved making this episode.
This is one of the coolest videos Sakurai has made yet, in my opinion. As a programmer myself, it's awesome to see him write his own acceleration code on such an ancient device. What an incredible video. I could barely stop smiling.
Watching Sakurai-san flex his knowledge on a 40 year old computer application and turn that into encouragement for creating your own games was just so awesome to see.
This might actually be the most coverage Family BASIC ever had for English-speaking audiences, especially in a TH-cam video. Most English-speaking people treat Family BASIC as a footnote, and not something to play around with. Thank you, Sakurai, for showing us what it can actually do, and how it potentially works.
By the looks of things, it also seems to use some of the standards that regular BASIC has, which could range from REM (for "remark", meaning "comment"), CLS (Clear Screen), IF/THENs, and other stuff. The vocabulary is easy to find, though every computer has their own variation. For example, the TI 99/4A had the capabilities to create your own graphics with a series of hexadecimals, and that thing had a graphics system about as good as the old MSX and ColecoVision.
I saw a video of a TH-camr that covered the Famicom BASIC, he lives in Japan, so he understood the commands and programmed something on it as well. He gave a good look at the functions of the BASIC, that went further into turning the Famicom into a personal computer.
there's actually a lot more coverage than you think
I highly recommend RndStranger's FamiDaily series where he not only covers Family Basic and Family Basic V3 but also the entire Famicom library one day at a time
And now I've learnt through this comment that the Windows Batch language is based in part on BASIC! I know it also has CLS/REM commands.
Haha funny that you mention that, the English documentation for this is really bad. The Wikipedia article claimed it was Microsoft basic until I fixed it haha
Sakurai Let's Play videos are the best. Even as a non-programmer, this one was really interesting to see where he got started.
The fact you could turn your Famicom into a Japanese programmable computer was always so fascinating to me. The 80s Japanese computer scene I found interesting because of the company's that made a name on the likes of the MSX, such as HUDSON and Konami.
They don't call it Family *Computer* for nothing (though at the time the word "console" wasn't in the Japanese lingo)
Yeah, also reminds me of british programmable home computers like the BBC micro.
Dude that thing literally had an add on for reading Floppy Disks. The original Zelda was released for it, that's how it originally had the ability to save I believe. (I mean that's how it did before the cartridge with the save batteries arrived.)
And to think that none of us who actually were kids when the NES was new knew ANYTHING about what you just said. Hell, we were so busy just enjoying what we had we didn't even know to capitalize every letter in HUDSON!
@@costelinha1867 one yes the Family Computer Disk System used special floppy disks and would save on them zelda was the first game on it as was metroid caslevaina and mario 2 (Both of them)
"You never know what might come along and change your life."
I felt that.
Same!
i find it so interesting how differently nintendo handled the famicom to the NES even though they're basically the same thing
It's mostly business strategies on how to exploit the USA and Europe, though the NES did have hardware incompatibilities with Famicom features such as some support for some Mapper Chips and additional Soundchips by Konami.
This is why Castlevania 3 in Japan had better sounds and animations.
as a Famicom owner they are far more different than you think
Just seeing Sakurai being so passionate about these things makes you realise, this is one of the greatest game developers of all time.
More of this please! The Family BASIC is interesting enough for a deep dive!
I’m also interested in seeing more plus other development tools
To be fairly honest, Nintendo of America lost a huge opportunity.
A Nintendo BASIC could've been a good rival to the Commodore 64 at the time.
This proves how badly Sakurai needs a lets-play channel
Sadly he won't be able to do that because everyone would want the games Sakurai plays to be in the next Smash game regardless of Sakurai's feelings or current job.
Remember, he has his real job, life outside of gaming, and making content for this channel. Which is eating in his free time. And ask any Let's Player TH-camrs professionally, they will say, through enjoyable, making videos on playing game for content isn't relaxing. So, they usually have to set aside games to play off-screen. Sakurai doesn't seem to have much free time to cut into for Let's play videos.
Sakurai is such a geek, I love him!!!! he looks so happy with his family basic, this man is a treasure
My own story was similar. We had this old 1984 8088 PC in our living room which we never used (it was quite expensive too) aside form occasionally playing games. It was just after having had a NES and SNES that in 1993 I turned it on, studied the manuals and 5.25 floppies it came with and discovered Microsoft GW-BASIC on it. I made some very simple games on it and some months later really wanted my own, more current PC (at the time the 486 was commonly thought of as "the CPU to get"). This experience put me straight on a path to videogame development.
It took me a minute for it to finally click why the Mario sprites looked so different - they couldn’t draw from Super Mario Bros. since it wasn’t out yet!
Family BASIC coming out in 1984 and all that. What a wild time capsule of game history, and Sakurai’s demonstrations are great :)
Family BASIC may be an interesting software if it were released in the west, though Nintendo unfortunately had to scrap that idea to make the NES look affordable.
Sacrifices had to be made, if they ever released it who knows if the changes of today would have been for the better or not.
Can’t they release it a year later after they launched the NES and already established how affordable they are?
@terry4795 you have to remember, the NES was marketed as a toy in the west. Wouldn't make much sense to sell it along side the other goofy peripherals like the mat and powerglove.
@@Zant5976 It was marketed as an "entertainment system" so American stores wouldn't be scared about selling a "video game" system post-US video game market crash. That's why such big deals were made out of the Zapper and ROB; they clearly showed the NES didn't have to be a "pure" video game system. Family BASIC had built-in Nintendo sprites for "entertainment", so technically it wasn't violating that promise. I'd say the bigger issues were licensing (Sharp/Hudson) and language (what are you gonna do about all that kana? What if someone makes a naughty program?).
@@CarbonRollerCacoConsidering Nintendo had a close relationship with Hudson and Sharp back then, I bet licensing is a problem, not to mention they licensed it themselves.
As for the program, well it was very limited anyway.
So this is where it all began. Where Sakurai got his spark of realization that would eventually lead up to Kirby, Smash, etc. It's interesting seeing what Family BASIC was capable of during its time.
I haven't grown up with programming tools like this as a kid, but I always loved using character creators or level editors in video games. It's not too late for me to learn coding. Not too long ago, I gave Unity a shot and made a Flappy Bird knockoff for the sake of practice, lol. Someday, I'll keep practicing so that I can pull off something more unique than that.
Hey, that's a good start! Keep it up!
@@kazuma7232 Thanks! I will! ^^
@@phdbot4483 You're welcome!
As someone that started developing in basic and quick basic, I can say that what he has shown is incredibly powerful for a game cartridge.
As a computer science student, this is just fascinating to me. Thank you for doing a walkthrough of what the code does! I am debating on learning 6502 assembly to program on an NES/Famicom to do a project for school, this video is inspiring, thank you for making this!
There's lots of documentation on 6502! And it translates well to 65816 if you want to program on a SNES too.
I am a professional musician but I am so curious about how games were created since everything started and this video is a small but great window to this wonderful world. Congratulations to you all people who are involved in programming and designing games, you are the most impressive people in the world, it's a great mistery for me what you do
Mr. Sakurai's excitement to show us all this stuff makes me smile every time.
Family BASIC is one of the things that epitomises the "Anything goes" aspect of the Famicom that seems to have been the case before it hit the US in '85.
We didn't get it until '87 here in Europe, so there was NO chance of Family BASIC making it's way over here. The fact it'd have to compete with C64 BASIC probably didn't help it's chances either!
Hey, the C64 was decently big here in the States, too. I'm sure both BASICs could've thrived everywhere.
If we take "it cost as much as the Famicom" as a base and apply it to the NES price, it comes in noticably cheaper than the C64 in the same timeframe. In the UK, it'd still be slightly undercut by the ZX Spectrum though.
So many different computers at the time. C64, ZX Spectrum, Amstrad CPC...
@@Link-ho8yq I'm quite partial to the Dragon 32!
omg it's the guy from the Club Penguin OST
Wow. Whoever edited in the English subtitles to complement the game did a great job
10:05 The silence followed by the little body scrunch was so funny.
Right now I’m the same age Sakurai was when he developed Kirby’s Dream Land, so there’s a cool little bit of perspective in hearing Sakurai’s early gamedev stories as I work on my own game. I think retro gamedev tools would be a really fascinating field of study.
This is actually really cool! I'd never seen Family Basic in action before.
Reminds me of how I started my programming career because I grew up playing with the BASIC interpreter on an MSX
There really should be more mainstream stem tools nowadays that can bring kids into the field like this. Really interesting from a historical and reflective perspective!
On PC there's Scratch; I remember using that to make small games. On PlayStation, there's the Little Big Planet Series; I made a bunch of levels and minigames on them over the years ( I really like the music editor it has).
There are many tools that are free or low in cost to make games these days. Someone young could play around with a version of RPG Maker. A young person could also experiment with making games by even just working with level designers like in the Super Mario Maker games. It's easier than ever to figure out if making games is for you.
@@murkywaters5502 I agree on that front, mostly meant from a pure programming perspective. Game design tools with ui weren't exactly the same line of thinking I had, but thanks!
He looks so genuinely excited and happy to share this. It's really inspiring.
It feels like Mario maker was totally inspired in this software, I'm surprised this kind of tools were made for consoles and love the background story behind it for you Sakurai san
I actually felt the same thing
Yep, the computer character when first booting up Family BASIC reminds of the Mario Maker Course Bot.
Woah that's crazy, sakurai really did manage to get smooth objects in Hu-BASIC
This might be one of my favorite videos of his. You'd think he'd have a "really complicated" or "standard" origin story. But no, he had an origin that is relatable and something we can all understand. Pretty cool., Sakurai.
The first RPG Maker that came out for Playstation 1 back around in the 00's got me into game development
It was challenging to work with. but it was a BLAST of fun!
If not for that, i wouldn't be in my dream job right now.
Makes me realize, creation games in consoles should never stop for next generations to come!
Everyone is scared of SkyNet, but Family BASIC is the real threat here😶🌫️
Thanks for sharing your history Mr Sakurai! I remember learning BASIC as my first programming language. It was rough but it's a basic start, hence the name.
Ah, a Sakurai Let's Play. What the people want! I'm sure he could play anything as a Let's Play and we'd all watch, at least I know I would.
Also, I've never seen those Pauline sprites before. Were they only used here?
i think some of them are from donkey kong but others do look 'new'
@@McArg_ Yeah I mainly meant the Pauline jumping and moving around sprites.
I believe so, I know they were one of the presets that came with the Family BASIC, I saw a photo of the presets before, but I am not 100% certain they never showed up anywhere else. Just like 80% certain
@@k.w.6626 They appeared in PINBALL
Very inspiring! I recently did a course on Software Development and on the stage now where I need to make more projects... Sakurai's stories are inspiring because back then he didn't have all the tools and courses that we have now. Thus, if he could pursue it despite his struggles, surely I can too.
I love hearing about devs' earliest experiences toying with computers and making games! I'm much newer to the industry but your story reminded me a lot of messing with Game Maker and Super Mario World ROMhacking when I was in middle school
I've never really seen the Family BASIC software. The presentation, providing Famicom players of the eighties what they'd want from a home computer, is really charming. The thinking computer with a personality is straight out of old kids' science fiction and anime.
WHAT A STRANGE GAME CONSOLE.
Sakurai's finally doing Let's Play content! Heck yeah! 😂
I actually made a game with this thing. It was fun.
video: *the footage from here on is in "Let's Play" style
me: my happiness is immeasureable and my day is saved^^
Fascinating video with a nice message at the end
Oh man, I wish we had gotten this in the Americas. I would have had so much fun learning with it! We didn't have a computer in our home until I was 15 years old, but the NES came out when I was 5 years old. So many lost years!
"I hope it works" - Well, if it didn't, we wouldn't be having this video, would we?
I love the novelty on display here. I've never heard of the Family BASIC before! Limited though it may have been, I love hearing it meant so much at the time, and the story to go with it is really fun, too! Mr. Sakurai is practically oozing passion and fondness for this thing.
If it didn't they would probably load a ROM
Fascinating. Just to see how far computers and programming have come since 1984, it's honestly kind of mind-blowing.
昔にこれがあればよかったのにと思います。プログラミングをとても簡単にできるようにしてくれたスーパーマリオマサヒロに感謝します。それは時代を先取りしていますが！いつもながら素晴らしいビデオ、マサヒロ 👍🏾
These videos are frickin gems and you are a treasure Mr. Sakurai!
Thank you so much for all of these. I know videos of pixel art and programming and sprites and Unity all exist, and even more people dabbling with gameboy stuff. but seeing how you ORIGINALLY did it in games we know and love is so cool and amazing
We’d love if you went more and more into deep dives!
And I love seeing a dev/lead dev like you who loves games so much. I know you know that a lot of the greed has soured gaming, but seeing someone as knowledgeable and passionate as you about VARIOUS games and game feel and UI and just all of it. And you’ve even commented how difficult and disappointing it was during the pandemic how you didn’t have the couch coop testing for Smash Bros Ultimate for some time and it affected the vibes and as gamers I’m sure we totally understand that 😊
Sometimes people see modern game dev as corporatized but it’s great to see that there’s still the passionate indies and devs like Sakurai who still love the fun and feel just as much as ever!
oh god, it's like diving into my years when I had my head in MS-DOS and visual basic!
god, so many memories
This is easily my favorite video! I love seeing Sakurai show us something he's so passionate about!
I love seeing awesome things like this I have completly missed. It's very interesting, thank you for making that video!
Im always amazed by the effort put in the videos of this channel, its awesome
This video was particularly entertaining to watch - Sakurai's enthusiasm for the Famicom BASIC is really infectious!
Of all your great videos this one has been the absolute COOLEST and most inspiring. Really cool old technology and a personal story. GREAT VIDEO!
This video is awesome. It makes you realize how passionate Sakurai is at his job. Truly inspiring!
a lot of information here as usual! thanks for the insight, sakurai!
amazing piece of tech from so long ago. thanks for showing it to us, sakurai!
Thank you Sakurai, Your video really made me feel that I have to start making games I need to stop procrastinating, your channel is perfect and you're my favorite youtuber nowadays.
ah, this is so sweet! sakurai's game dev career had such humble roots :D
The ending of this video was so inspiring. I've always wanted to create games and this channel is making me want to get started.
That was AMAZING!
Probably my favorite video on this channel !
sakurai san sharing his first programing experiences is such a wonderful and helpful for everyone taking first steps in programing.
thank you so much sakurai san. 😊👏👏
It was a pleasure watching that video. I love seeing how people do / used to do things.
It really is motivating, and you can feel how much it meant for M. Sakurai.
(On a side note, I'm glad we have better tools for making games nowadays 😅 )
Whenever I'm feeling discouraged in my game development efforts, I sit down and watch your videos. They help inspire me and remind me why I enjoy game development! This video was fun to watch!
It's so charming that you could have a chat with the Family BASIC. And wholesome too.
I really like how even in the past with technology that was pretty limited, you still had avenues like this for a fun way to learn new skills, reminds me of what's done nowadays with stuff like Scratch.
This was fascinating, informative and just all around wholesome.
this actually made me really excited about learning to program! it looks kind of fun :)
PICO-8 and other fantasy consoles continue the spirit of these old kits and I love it. Beauty in it's simplicity. And prepackaged sprites with animations is a great inclusion!!
Seeing an old, console based programing software is really interesting. I've only ever used whatever the standard program was back when I was in high school. I imagine getting something like that on a cartridge was a lot of work.
This is so cool! I can't explain what it is about console-based software like this that really interests me, but throughout the video I kept imagining how obsessed I would've been with this if I had the chance to use it! The closest equivalent I had growing up was RPG Maker XP. Thank you so much for showing this!
We need the option of giving more than just 1 like per video. Thank you Mr. Sakurai for sharing so much valuable information about you and the industry you helped to became innovative.
Watching Sakurai-san having some fun with this video made my day ❤
Another awesome video from Sakurai! Thank you, Family BASIC, for inspiring a legendary game developer to create the greatest games series ever made! Nowadays, there are plenty of resources and engines available to help people create games so in a way, Family BASIC's legacy lives on.
I'm pretty technologically illiterate so I could never do anything resembling programming but this video was still very cool to watch.
God I love this man and his wonderful personality. Thank goodness for this delightful channel!
This guy’s work ethic is admirable. He’s so good at keeping up the youtube vids
Thank you. This was all the motivation I needed.
This made me think of programming my TI-84/89 calculators back in the day, but also of my first programming experience using a CD program called "Learn to Program Basic."
I'm grateful for these kinds of resources that make an entry point for learning computer programming!
Sakurai videos just make me so happy.
I have zero talents, I'm not a programmer, artist or game designer and I will probably never be but his videos are still so interesting to me.
Not only do they contain some great information and insights on the creation process, he genuinely looks like he's enjoying this. This doesn't feel like someone on a high horse trying to tell you what's good, it's just a wise man sharing his experience and knowledge so you can learn what's relevant to you and be better.
Sakurai is truly a gift to mankind.
I imagine it's quite limited, but I find impressive how intuitive the coding is from a glance, even if you are a programmer, different programming languages from the ones you are used to, looks like gibberish sometimes, this being easily understandable with just basic knowleadge, especially at the time and in a Famicom of all things is a feat.
This is one of my favorite videos so far
Mr. Sakurai is so fun and charming. His little excited face when he showed off the battery port, and then paused before mentioning he cant zoom in on himself got a good chuckle out of me. I'm so happy he made this channel!
So cool see you talking about something like that !
This is flooding me with memories of Turtle BASIC for the Apple IIe, and later QBASIC on my first home computer. I was able to save the old QBASIC games on my cloud backup.
With any creative endeavor, you need a tool simple enough you can get started but not too complicated you drown in options. Looks like Family BASIC was Sakurai's spark.
BASIC was everywhere back in the day, so it's no wonder the Famicom had it too!
We've sure come a long way in terms of programming languages since then, so it's pretty nostalgic to see these things again!
Typing out line numbers on top of everything must've been extra rough!
This is seriously so cool, I loved this!
This is amazing! Haha I was just watching a video previously about the MOS chipset used here and variations of BASIC used on microcomputers made around this time. This was not mentioned, so thank you for the demonstration. So appreciated! It’d be cool if you could program games on a future Nintendo console or even the switch without mods.
11:35-This is the Cannon Event that Miguel O'Hara (Spider-Man 2099) should and always protect.
12 minutes of Sakurai showing his huge gamer nerd prowess and origin story? Rad, more of this if you can!
Sakurai looks so excited on this one! It looks really fun!
When I was a kid I had a TI-99/4A home computer. If you got the Extended BASIC cartridge, you could do sprites, speech, and other amazing things. You used CALL SPRITE to create sprites, CALL MOTION to set their velocity, CALL COINC to do collision detection, etc. It didn't come with ready-made sprites like Family BASIC, you had to do your own pixel art (as hexadecimal numbers) but these were powerful tools that could be combined to make sophisticated games. There was even a clone of Frogger written in BASIC. It was slower than regular Frogger, but pretty good -- and you could hear the happy frog croaking when it reached the top of the screen, if you had the Speech Synthesizer accessory!
The TI-99/4A's graphics chip was weaker than the Famicom PPU. But it would be used in the MSX and Sega SG-1000 systems. The designers of this chip coined the word "sprite" when referring to movable graphics.
That's what got me into programming games. I will never be as successful at it as Masahiro Sakurai. But I will always love the art.
This was a great video! It's the first time I've seen the Family Basic. While I'm a programmer, I've never used the actual language of Basic, the oldest I studied was C. The RAM isn't the biggest (for the time, it's awfully small nowadays), but I can see how you were able to do a lot with it. The fact that it came with its own sprites - that included Mario too - and you could also "paint" a screen level with sprites, that's fabulous. An idea of what you can make: record the movement and physics plus hazards of Donkey Kong (the arcade game) and you could paint endless levels to try for yourself!
This video felt really special, like reliving history.
I bought a Family Basic for my little collection a while back, I was really surprised how small the keyboard is. I tried to make a game with it, I worked really hard to sorta get a good jump feel but I feel like I should take inspiration from some of your program with the smooth sprite movement just to get it right.
I'm waiting to get a Family Basic V3 with double the memory and interesting expansions to the commands to do a better job. I also bought SmileBasic on Switch at one point, but didn't have enough time to delve into it much.
Had no idea this existed! Really cool
This looks amazing!
This was so cool to see. Reminds me of learning to make games in QBasic, only I didn't go on to make Kirby and Smash
I’m very grateful you ended up in the game industry 😊 Me and my husband bonded a lot while playing Smash Bros, before getting together ❤️ So thank you, Sakurai!
Amazing. Thank you Sakurai.
Man, this is some super intriguing stuff. Who knew that your origins as a game developer were even humbler than we once thought? I'd love to get a hold of one of these historical pieces of gaming history, if only to just mess around with it a little.
I love this channel!