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In case that explanation isn't sufficient, here's my reasoning: a lot of people don't have the funds to get the equipment they need
To be honnest, NES development (and computer development in general) is an overall cheap hobby. One of the cheapest if you consider the time it takes building something and that amount of money you have to invest. Everything you need (NES, powerpak, EPROM programmers, EPROM, custom PCB) costs around the hundreds dollars.
If instead your hobby is sport, let's say bike (it's another of my hobbys) you have to buy a bike for a few thosand dollars, and regularly buy new brakeplates, new tires, new mechanical components that gets used, etc... and it constantly costs a lot. I only use bike as a vehicle I use everyday, but if you do it for
sport, you'd need to buy an even more expensive bike and better equipment... Definitely much more expensive than NES/FC development.
There is other sports, but in the end it's the same deal, you always have to invest in expensive equipment, with the notable exception of running.
Music ? Music instruments are very expensive. It depends on the instruments, but basically every instrument counts thousands of dollars. Precussions are about the worst, the price of a set of tubular bells can be around $20k for example. Even drum sticks, which are basically two pieces of wood, have a ridiculous price for what they are. Singing is cheap fortunately
Music is often played as a group which means the group needs to be funded somehow most often with both a good volunteer work from the members and their money. Definitely more expensive than NES development.
As for art, I am not very knowledgeable but I am pretty sure any tools involving professional drawing are expensive as well, professional game photographic equipment is incredibly expensive (I have a co-worker that is into this), and if you want to do homebrew films, good luck. Writing books might be cheap however.
So in each cathegory of entertainment/hobbies we can find expensive and cheap ones, but my point was that NES development is not a relatively expensive hobby, although there is hobbies which are even less expensive.
Finally @8bitMicroGuy, if you need some specific hardware, just ask, there is chances someone has duplicates they are ready to send for free, or for less expensive than what you could find on ebay. Keep in mind many sellers in ebay are just huge profiteers and that prices have increased ridiculously during the past 10 years. But often there is no real alternative if you want to buy a very specific item and cannot find it in real life garage sales. Unfortunately, as for console the only one I have I might not want to keep is the USA toploder I modded to be usable with AV, but it's probably not best suited for you.
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I'm very happy about that, but I'd be sad if I'd have to throw all NES-ish knowledge away to learn SNES.
Both consoles are extremely similar in hardware and design, with the notable exception of sound which is
absolutely completely different. So unless you spent time studying the NES' sound, you didn't loose your time because your knownledge is directly transposable in the SNES.