Learning a machine from the inside
NES Oxide is a small emulator built for fun and for the kind of systems learning that is difficult to get from documentation alone.
It implements the official CPU opcodes, background and sprite rendering, Mapper 0 cartridges, keyboard input, and debugging tools for inspecting graphics state. It can run early games such as Donkey Kong and Pac-Man.
Why emulation?
An emulator forces several areas of software engineering into the same room: binary formats, instruction decoding, timing, graphics pipelines, input, state machines, and debugging. Every visible glitch is a clue that the model of the hardware is incomplete.
The project is intentionally not cycle-accurate. Its value is in building a coherent system, finding the boundaries where accuracy matters, and understanding how classic hardware turns bytes into behavior.