:o didn't know it

First one was in assembly, wasn't it?

Plus everything is drawn by code, not loaded. For those who ask how is that possible: search kkrieger on google. A fully playable fps with music, different enemies, pickups, weapons and a whole level... in just 96 KB :)

So the "things" in super mario bro were stored as arrays of colours? Wouldn't that take a decent amount of space?

@FelisPhasma not as many as an image

@FelisPhasma on ram yes. The actual rom can be small because using repeated blocks of color can just be procedurally generated

@tisaconundrum but then again if you're just using pointers then it's even smaller. The good ol days of constrained video games

Respect for old school game devs. They didn't have nearly as many helpful resources as we do today. ✊🏻

I remember the days on my Commodore programming games with a crapton of peeks and pokes. Ah, the good old days. I don't miss it one bit

The power of vector graphics! Instead of storing in memory the color of each and every pixel, design the mathematical rules enable a program to draw the graphics. For a straight line you only need a angle and initial position.
Getting into more detailed graphics must lead to some insane complexity tho :p

@tisaconundrum I guess. I assume rasterized games are, by opposition to this one, games that use pixel matrices to store images instead of vector graphics.
When it comes to 3D models going vector is getting crazy difficult. It is still possible, but given the amount of memory and HDD capacity machines have today there is jot point in going into this complexity.
If you want to see true 3D vector graphics, check-out 4K and 64K demoscenes. The requirements for these is to not exceed a few KiB, code, models, texture and music included for a full screen HD video lasting several minutes. Pretty amazing performances there, much more impressive than Mario's ;)

Well yeah, but I think if you write custom compression algorithm like you should and put it at the right resolution it can be under 31kb. Because mario used repetitive textures at different colors and repetitive textures in general.

@FelisPhasma no. Imagine how smaller it would be. And animating would be much cheaper than storing an entire new image.

I love some of the shortcuts taken. Like the bushes are just three clouds combined together and shaded in green. And Mario wears a hat so they didn't have to program hair movement. Pretty damn smart.

I suppose they used scary compression algorithms to keep the assets as small as possible

This is an image trick. It's because the image is such a high ppi compared to the game itself, and therefore takes a larger footprint