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How we fit an NES game into 40 Kilobytes

Morphcat Games · 3.7M views · 2018-09-05 · 12:04

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Overview

Morphcat Games explains how they fit Micro Mages, a full-featured NES game, into 40 kilobytes. It covers compression of sprites and level layouts and other space-saving tricks.

On Hacker News

HN points to it whenever discussion turns to how old games were so small, as a clear tour of 8-bit optimization and creative work under hardware limits.

Recommended by 6 HN people across 6 months · HN mentions 2019–2026

Topics

Game history & retro gamingIndie game developmentDemoscene & retrocomputing
Search by tags
nescompressionretro gamesmicro magessize optimization

What people said

arnaudsm · 2023-11 · Strong recommendation

Here is my favorite video about 8-bit era optimisations. Makes you appreciate games from this era even more. This arcane magic survived in the demoscene to this day. [VIDEO]

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splch · 2021-11 · Strong recommendation

I love this video: [VIDEO] As part of a Kickerstarter campaign, Morphcat Games made this video explaining how they eked out a really incredible game with only 40 Kb (a lot like Super Mario Bros 2). I definitely recommend checking this out as they go over interesting compression methods and more general thought processes.

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throwawayk7h · 2024-08 · Recommendation

Incredible. I love these stories of kb games. For those interested, there's a great video for this 40 kb nes game, micro mages: [VIDEO]

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Sources

Video by Morphcat Games, played through YouTube.

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