Software Development Kits come in all shapes and sizes, some are built by the games console manufacturer themselves and others are built by 3rd-party companies.
We have tried to document all the software development kits available for the most popular retro consoles, so hopefully you will find the posts below helpful.
No information has been officially confirmed about whether an official NES SDK was sent out to developers, it may have just been documentation about the NES hardware given to developers and the companies themselves needed to pick their own tools.
We do know that Official Famicom development of Mario Bros 3 took place on the HP 64000 mainframe computers which had an assembler simply called assemble that when paired with a 6502 add-on board could have been the SDK used. However since most third party developers would not have these mainframe computers there was no point distributing tools for these computers.
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NES (Famicom) Development Kit Hardware
For more information on the Nintendo Famicom development kit check out this page.
Most third parties had their own custom assemblers and linkers at the time and so each company would have its own SDK toolchains.
Unlike the original Famicom system, Nintendo provided third party developers with some tools to make Super Famicom development easier. Although not all of these tools have been archived or released on to the internet, however the tools we know about are documented in the post below.
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SNES (Super Famicom) Software Development Kit (SDK)
For more information on the Super Nintendo development kit check out this page.
We also know that it was common for third parties to create their own custom SDK, such as Sculptured Software who created the SSDS (Sculptured Software Development System) which was released to the internet and is also available in the post above.
The Nintendo 64 SDK was leaked some time in the late 2000s and now can be easily accessed online, this gives us the opportunity to dive in and document exactly what was contained in the Software Development Kit:
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Official Nintendo 64 SDK
For more information on the Nintendo 64 SDK files check out this post.
From at least the Game Boy Advance Software development kits for Nintendo’s handheld systems were often provided by Nintendo themselves via their online dev portal known as WarioWorld.
A few files were leaked from Nintendo’s development FTP server (WarioWorld?) in the early 2000s, this has allowed us to document some of the known tools that were found in the Game Boy Software development kit:
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Game Boy Software Development Kits
For more information on the known Game Boy SDK files check out this post.
We are currently in the process of documenting the files available in the Game Boy Advance SDK in the following post:
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Game Boy Advance Software Development Kit (SDK)
For more information on the Official Game Boy Advance SDK files check out this post.
We are currently in the process of documenting the files found in the Official Nintendo DS (NITRO) Software development kit:
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Nintendo DS SDK (NITRO)
For more information on the Official Nintendo DS SDK files check out this post.
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Pokemon Mini Official Software Development Kit (Toolchain)
For more information on the Pokemon Mini SDK check out this post.
No information is known about an official SDK for the SEGA Master System or Mark-3 consoles, it is likely that SEGA relied on the hardware manufacturers and third parties to provide the tooling such as Assemblers and Linkers.
Again no information is available about any Official Game Gear Software Development Kit
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Official Sega Saturn Software Development Kit (SDK)
For more information on the files in the Official Sega Saturn SDK check out this post.
There were two Software Development Kits for the SEGA Dreamcast, one for Windows CE (supported by Microsoft) and the standard Dreamcast SDK.
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Sega Dreamcast Microsoft Windows CE SDK
For more information on the files in the Dreamcase Windows CE SDK check out this post.
There are two main Software Development Kits for the Sony PSP, which were both merged into one single Development Kit when Sony bought SN Systems.
ProDG was the third party SDK developed by SN Systems and later incorporated into the official PSP SDK.
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SN Systems ProDG PSP SDK
For more information on the files in the SN Systems ProDG PSP SDK check out this post.
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Official Playstation 1 Software Development Kit (PSYQ)
For more information on the files in the Official Sony Playstation SDK check out this post.
We are currently in the process of documenting the files in the Official Sony Playstation 2 SDK in the following post:
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PS2 Official Software Development Kit (SDK)
For more information on the files in the Official Sony Playstation 2 SDK check out this post.
We are currently looking for information about the Sony Playstation 3 Software Development Kit and will write a post on it in future.
We are currently working on a post that will document the files in the Microsoft Xbox SDK here:
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Official Xbox SDK (XDK)
For more information on the files in the Official Microsoft Xbox SDK check out this post.
We are still collecting information about the Xbox 360 software development kit provided by Microsoft, a post will become available in the future.
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Official Nintendo Super Famicom SDK Unlike the original Famicom system, Nintendo provided third party developers with some tools to make Super Famicom development easier. The tools were created by a... ...
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