Introduction

This tutorial will (hopefully) get you going with SMS (actually, Master System or Game Gear) programming, from setting up your IDE and assembler, to debugging, to getting a working program.

The lessons are linked below:

Lesson 1

  • Downloading stuff
  • Setting it up
  • "Hello world!" explained in full

Lesson 2

  • A text scroller
  • Good practices
  • VBlanks
  • Debugging

What's new

  • 22/7/2010 Hello World fixed
    I had broken the first "Hello World!" demo code! And it only took 10 months for someone to notice. Good to know my work isn't for nothing...
  • 17/9/2009 Lesson 1 re-re-completed
    I wrote the last few extra pages explaining the various bits of VDP data (beyond the "mysterious blobs" in Lesson 1).
  • 13/9/2009 Lesson 1 re-completed, highlighter updated
    I finished the conversion of lesson 1 (mostly); the later parts are substantially rewritten, to simplify the first cut, make the enhancements more exciting and to explain some things in more detail. I also updated the ConTEXT highlighter to match the current version of WLA DX - the old one was missing quite a few directives and their parameters.

Older changes