History
Legacy
The evolution of Nethercore hardware
What we know about Nethercore's hardware — pieced together from recovered documentation, collector archives, and surviving prototypes. Some details are confirmed. Others remain speculation. The full picture is still emerging.
One
1-bit Handheld
References to a 1-bit handheld appear in early Nethercore documentation — what collectors call "the One." A screen that could display two colors. Two buttons. No backlight. If it existed, it predates everything else we've found.
Some collectors claim to have seen units. Others believe it was a prototype that never shipped. What's clear from the fragments we've recovered: this was where Nethercore started. Simple hardware. Clear limits. A foundation for everything that came after.
Documentation being recovered
Chroma
2D Handheld
Color arrives — but not the way anyone expected. Instead of chasing the largest palette, Nethercore locked Chroma to a curated set of colors. Sixty-four hues chosen to work together. No gradients. No dithering tricks. Just clean pixel art.
The locked palette simplified development. One set of colors to work with. One resolution to target. Games shipped faster when developers weren't second-guessing every color choice. Chroma found an audience — enough for Nethercore to keep going.
View specs · Planned
ChroMAX
2D Home Console
Internal documents reference a home console codenamed "ChroMAX" — Chroma with the constraints lifted. A larger canvas. Expanded palette. Four-player support. What happens when you give Chroma more room to work.
We've recovered partial specifications and what appear to be development notes. Whether ChroMAX shipped as a consumer product or remained internal is unclear. The documentation suggests it reached at least the prototype stage.
View specs · Planned
z
3D Handheld
The leap into three dimensions. When the z launched, texture mapping was still emerging — too expensive for portable hardware. So Nethercore built around vertex colors and hardware dithering: limited colors, but smooth gradients achieved through pixel patterns. Every surface defined by geometry.
The dithering gave z games a distinctive look — geometric shapes with smooth color transitions despite the limited palette. More sculpture than rendering. The aesthetic held up even after texture mapping became standard elsewhere.
View specs · Planned
ZX
3D Home Console
The flagship. Everything Nethercore had learned, brought together. Full 3D rendering with texture support — the cutting edge had finally arrived on home hardware. Fixed 960×540 resolution. Four fixed-function rendering pipelines. Enough power for the fighting games and platformers that defined the era.
Of all the hardware we've recovered, the ZX has the clearest paper trail — complete specs, surviving manuals, and the most reliable target for emulation. It became the reference point for the Archive.
View specs · Playable Now
What Else?
More to discover
Internal documents reference additional projects — codenames we haven't been able to match to hardware. Experimental consoles. Cancelled prototypes. Hardware that may have existed only on paper.
The full extent of Nethercore's catalog remains unknown. If you have documentation, hardware, or information about Nethercore systems not listed here, we want to hear from you.
Philosophy
Developer-First Hardware
Recovered specs suggest Nethercore punched above their weight technically. But they lacked the marketing reach of major manufacturers. What they could do was court developers directly. Every console shipped with thorough technical documentation. Fixed specs meant no guesswork about target hardware.
It was a practical decision: make hardware that developers actually wanted to build for. Smaller studios and hobbyists who couldn't afford the licensing fees of major platforms found a home here. The library grew because the barrier to entry was low.
Portable First
Nethercore's handhelds often reached market before their home consoles. The z brought 3D graphics to portable hardware before most competitors. Lower production costs meant faster iteration.
Complete Documentation
Every console shipped with technical manuals that explained the full system. No NDAs required. No devkit fees. If you could write code, you could ship a game.
Architecture
Nether Silicon
Custom chips. Unified architecture. Recovered from schematics.
Internal documents reference a semiconductor division — some collectors call it "Nether Silicon." Every Nethercore console runs on custom chips built around a unified instruction set: the NetherCore Architecture.
The namesake chip. Game logic, physics, AI, audio. The foundation everything else builds on.
Rendering pipeline. Sprites and tiles on 2D consoles. Full geometry pipeline on 3D.
Dedicated environment rendering. Procedural skies, particle systems, layered backgrounds, atmospheric effects. Everything behind the action — handled by dedicated silicon.
Synthesis, mixing, compression. Flexible PSG audio: 4 channels on early consoles; ZX expands this to 16 channels + 1 tracker music player. Audio formats stay compatible across the line.
Unified Instruction Set
NetherCore, NetherGraphics, and EPU share the same foundation. One toolchain, one codebase, multiple consoles.
Linear ROM Addressing
Why cartridges? The z-series treats ROM as extended memory — assets stream directly without loading screens. CDs would have broken the model. The seamless access mattered more than raw capacity.
Unified Audio
Every console uses the same audio compression — near-lossless quality at aggressive ratios. A sound effect from Chroma plays identically on ZX.
Hardware Decompression
Decompression silicon sits between ROM and the graphics pipeline. Packed geometry streams from cartridge, gets unpacked inline, and arrives at VRAM ready to render. Zero CPU overhead. This is why ROM building requires specialized tooling.
NetherSound
Flexible PSG audio — 4 channels on early consoles, each configurable to square, triangle, saw, or noise. ZX expands this to 16 channels + 1 dedicated tracker music player, while keeping the same asset formats across the line.
Hardware Dithering
Before hardware blending was cost-effective in portable silicon, dithering was state of the art. The z's crystalline look came from ordered patterns simulating smooth gradients. What started as a workaround became an aesthetic.
Controller Evolution
Each generation responded to developer needs. ChroMAX added buttons for fighting games. The z introduced analog nubs for FPS games and analog triggers for racing. ZX brought clickable sticks and separated bumpers from triggers.
Memory Cards
Cartridges hold games, memory cards hold saves. NMC (Nether Memory Card) storage works across all consoles — move saves between handheld and home. The trade-off: lose the card, lose your saves.
Console Silicon
| Console | Era | Silicon |
|---|---|---|
| One | Origin | NetherCore-1 (unconfirmed) |
| Chroma | Color | NetherCore-8, NetherGraphics-8 |
| ChroMAX | Color | NetherCore-8X, NetherGraphics-8X |
| z | 3D | NetherCore-32, NetherGraphics-32 |
| ZX | 3D | NetherCore-32X, NetherGraphics-32X, EPU |
The "X" suffix indicates home console variants — more headroom than their handheld counterparts.
"Whether the company took its name from the chip or the chip from the company, no one can say for certain. What remains clear: the NetherCore processor was the foundation everything else was built upon."
Present
The Archive Continues
At some point, Nethercore stopped making consoles. What happened to the company remains unclear. Hardware aged. Documentation was lost, recovered, lost again. Games survived on cartridges in private archives. We're still piecing together the full picture — and building emulators to keep what we've found alive.
This isn't just preservation. New games are being made for this hardware. The libraries are growing. The story continues.