Micro Mages: How we fit an NES game into 40 Kilobytes

September 5, 2023 1:23 PM

In 2018, retro indie studio Morphcat Games create Micro Mages for the 8-bit Nintendo. Playable as a Windows PC game or on an NES emulator, they discuss how they fit an entire game into 40 kilobytes. [SLYT]

Additionally, Nostalgia Nerd discusses kkrieger [SLYT], an entire first person shooter game in 96 kilobytes.

posted by AlSweigart (8 comments total)

Demoscene tech is the most amazing tech.
posted by grumpybear69 at 1:39 PM on September 5, 2023 [2 favorites]

I remember being blown away by kkrieger. Micro Mages looks great - sad I don't have native hardware to run it on. But I do have a Analogue Pocket! I'm gonna buy the ROM and play it on the plane!!
posted by BlackLeotardFront at 1:47 PM on September 5, 2023 [1 favorite]

Nice trip down memory lane. I remember kkrieger coming out and the Farbrausch's demos mentioned in the video, and I also played around with texture creation in Werkkzeug. Procedural creation is fascinating.
posted by JSilva at 2:01 PM on September 5, 2023

> I'm gonna buy the ROM and play it on the plane!!

I've only played it a little, but it's amazing what modern game design can do even with the limitations of the hardware.
posted by AlSweigart at 5:07 PM on September 5, 2023 [2 favorites]

I love the sprite optimization. So many neat tricks to save space.
posted by They sucked his brains out! at 6:26 PM on September 5, 2023 [2 favorites]

Not as compact (in fact I think it uses the full capabilities of the fanciest NES memory management unit), but I have been amazed by celeste.smc , an homage to Celeste in the form of a Super Mario Bros. rom hack. Need a copy of the original rom to patch and play.
posted by anthill at 7:18 PM on September 5, 2023 [2 favorites]

Wait, that's an SNES version based on Super Mario World - I was thinking of Mario Zap and Dash, which apparently will run on a stock NES
posted by anthill at 7:21 PM on September 5, 2023

Reminds me a bit of when SethBling hacked together an Atari emulator entirely in Minecraft. The best part is how the entire memory of the "cartridge" was visually represented with stone and dirt blocks, and you could see the sprites being written directly into the RAM.
posted by The Pluto Gangsta at 8:13 PM on September 5, 2023 [1 favorite]