Games · chips · invention · 1978 to now
A chip cannot hold a whole world. The game still has to give you one. Pac-Man got four chasing rules instead of minds. Pitfall grew 255 jungle screens from one byte. The chips got bigger. We kept the tricks.
Updated 13 August 2026. The drawings on this page are ours.
NO FRAMEBUFFER
128 B RAM · ATARI VCS
The television beam is already crossing the screen. Draw this line, then the next.
01 · The refusal
Console ads count what each year unlocked. The useful story is what would not fit, and what someone built instead. That story is still running in the game you open tonight.
Documented technique
Blinky chases the tile you stand on. Pinky aims four tiles ahead. Inky doubles a line from Blinky through a point in front of you. Clyde turns for home once he is inside eight tiles. Those are four sums. You still meet a bully, someone waiting in ambush, a muddled partner and a coward. The board only stored targets. [2]
Industry practice
A studio copies a trick when it still has the same problem. The first game becomes a footnote. The method is what you use to build the next one. [16]
Editorial synthesis
Memory grew. Time, thumbs, batteries and a fair fight on a bad line ran out first. Short sessions and Tuesday seasons are the tricks of today. The chip said no. Design found another shortcut. [15]
02 · Five problems that keep coming back
Pick a problem the chip keeps asking. Each step is one game, one trick, and what studios still do with it.
Bigger than memory
The cartridge is small and the disk fills up, but the designer still has to give you somewhere to walk.
A cycling byte that starts at C4 generates 255 jungle screens as you walk.
Studios still generate places from a formula.
Six seed bytes produce eight galaxies of 256 systems; names and prices come from tables.
A universe can be a seed.
The world is photographed. The processor cannot walk it in real time, so you click from still to still.
A photograph can do the work of a world.
The world arrives in 16×16 chunks, and players write the kilometres the disk did not keep.
Load the next piece and let players finish the map.
Bigger than the line
One line can only carry a handful of moving figures. A 1992 PC cannot fill a true 3D room that still moves well. The picture still has to stay in motion.
The NES draws eight sprites on a line and leaves the rest. Games rotate who is seen, and the missing figure flickers.
Reuse a few moving figures across the frame.
Walls are columns. BSP and visplanes decide what you see. The corridor looks deep. The machine never built a full 3D room.
Draw walls as columns. Players will still read a room.
Rooms are painted in advance and you turn on rails. The tight camera carries the fear. You never walk a free city.
A painted room can scare you.
Flat colour and simple faces keep a crowded sea drawable on a GameCube.
A cheaper drawing style pays for more sea.
Life with almost no mind
There is no room for a model of a person, but there is room for a target, a clock, a bar or a stranger recorded in advance.
Four ghosts, four targets and three modes. The habits come out of the sums.
Give cheap enemies habits you can understand.
The monks keep a timetable. If you are late for vespers, the house notices.
A clock can judge the player.
A scientist runs when the experiment goes wrong, so the lesson and the shock happen in the same room.
Put the behaviour in the room.
A nameless cloak appears on your dune with no lobby and no voice. The game treats the other person as weather.
One nameless companion can replace a crowd.
Teaching without a booklet
There is no pamphlet on the screen, and nobody in the living room will read one. The room itself has to teach.
A safe stoop, a short pit and a mushroom that arrives as a surprise. You learn by landing.
Put the lesson in the first screen.
One gun, and rooms that are jokes about that gun. You laugh, and you have already learned.
Teach with one verb.
An empty map. You learn to climb on one huge body.
Empty space teaches too.
Highlighted buttons and a first match that holds your hand. Same 1985 problem, new living room.
If you do not teach in the first minute, you lose the player.
Many people, thin cable
A cable carries a few bytes, and a modem lies about time. A hundred players cannot all be simulated, and you still want company.
The cable is the game. You cannot finish the creatures alone.
Make trade the missing half of the adventure.
The game guesses where you are until the server speaks. Smooth motion hides the delay.
Hide the lag so you can still aim.
A storm shrinks the island so a hundred connections share the last patch of ground.
Shrink the stage when you cannot simulate the rest.
Tuesday quests and a battle pass buy time. The team cannot finish a whole world every week.
Use a calendar when you cannot finish a world.
03 · Two benches
These drawings are ours. They use Elite’s seed and the NES rule of eight. If JavaScript is off, the same lesson is in the still figures.
A world from a seed
Type four hex digits or generate new ones. A small generator paints a sky, builds a name from syllables and numbers a strip of rooms. A small seed looks empty; a large one looks written by hand.
Systems generated from this seed: 36
Name made from the same bytes: Lexeon
Rooms the same seed would number
This is a teaching sketch. Elite used six bytes and Pitfall used an eight-bit cycle that starts at C4. This is neither program. [4] [3]
Eight figures on one line
The pale block is you, and you keep a slot. Add figures. After eight, someone drops. Rotate who vanishes and you will see how a crowd is faked on a line that cannot carry more.
On this line: 8 · Off or flickering: 2 · First extra figure to lose a slot: 0
These are plain blocks. The NES copies eight sprites to the current line from a pool of 64. [6]
04 · How they did it
Each block is one game. Check the numbers against the sources at the bottom.
Space Invaders
Tomohiro Nishikado saw that every dead invader left the processor more time, so the rest advanced faster and the march tightened. He kept that leftover, and difficulty arrived as leftover work. [5]
How it felt
The last invaders look personal. They are cheaper to copy.
What stayed
Shooters still tighten as the board empties.
Pac-Man
Blinky aims at your tile, Pinky aims four tiles ahead, Inky doubles a line from Blinky through a point in front of you, and Clyde chases until he is inside eight tiles, then turns for his corner. On a timer they each run home. [2]
How it felt
A bully, someone waiting in ambush, a muddled partner and a coward. The board never stored those words.
What stayed
Give cheap enemies habits you can understand.
Elite
David Braben and Ian Bell generated eight galaxies of 256 systems from six seed bytes. Names and prices come from tables. Acornsoft cut a much larger mathematical universe down to eight galaxies so the place still looks named by a person. [4]
How it felt
You jump to a planet that looks named by someone.
What stayed
Store a function and let the world appear when you travel.
Super Mario Bros.
World 1-1 puts a stoop, a goomba and a pit exactly where your hands will meet them. The PPU copies eight sprites and leaves the rest, and games rotate who vanishes each frame. [13]
How it felt
The first screen taught you before you had a word for jump.
What stayed
Put the lesson in the room and reuse a few moving figures.
La Abadía del Crimen
Paco Menéndez and Juan Delcán built an abbey with a day, monks on routes you can watch and rooms the CPU has to act out. The world is small in bytes and large in rules. [10]
How it felt
You are late for vespers and the building notices, as if the house had opinions.
What stayed
A house can judge you on a small machine.
Doom
Walls are columns of texture. BSP and visplanes decide what you see and stitch the floors. WADs let strangers rebuild the offices. [9]
How it felt
A corridor with depth, and a game other people could continue.
What stayed
Draw the cheap picture and let players rebuild the rooms.
Pokémon
Game Freak made trade the unfinished half of the adventure. You cannot finish the creatures alone. [15]
How it felt
A friend on the other carpet.
What stayed
Make the missing half of the game another person.
Journey
Jenova Chen let a second cloak arrive on your dune without a lobby or a chat window. [14]
How it felt
Someone is with you and you do not know who.
What stayed
A nameless companion can be enough.
05 · What left the studio
The first game becomes a footnote. The method stays.
The NES draws a world from a short alphabet of squares. The Spectrum paints a bitmap and pays the price in clashing colours.
You reuse a handful of moving figures, which is why they flicker when they will not fit.
The cartridge lies about its size. That lie made Super Mario Bros. 3 possible.
You store a function, and the map appears when you walk.
You load the next piece while the player looks away. Fog hides the disk.
Seasons and shops keep a world larger than the team can finish.
06 · After the limit lifts
The machine can hold a city now. Designers still fetch it in pieces. They can draw a crowd and they still plant cardboard figures far off. A hundred people can connect, and most of them stay hidden. The cheap picture is easier to read than the expensive one. That is why it stays.
In Bucharest the ICE Felix HC had the same 48K ceiling as a Spectrum. You still had to invent a monastery, a galaxy or a joke in a handful of kilobytes. The small rooms now are the thumb, the battery and Tuesday evening. [11]
Tomorrow, open a game and name the trick.
07 · Questions
No. The old limits forced tricks that new machines still use. Plenty of early games are clumsy; keep the method.
It is the example everyone remembers. Iwata Asks supports the claim that 1-1 is arranged as teaching. Arcade cabinets were already teaching with short lives; Mario brought that lesson home.
No. Walls are columns of texture, not a full 3D room. Earlier experiments exist. This page looks at the picture people copied.
No. They show how a seed numbers rooms, and how eight figures fight for one line. They copy nobody’s pixels.
08 · Sources
Each note says what that source can support.
Numbers and tricks were read for what the source supports. Dates that catalogues dispute are written as ranges. The drawings are original.
Book · platform studies · 2009
Montfort and Bogost describe the Atari VCS: 128 bytes of RAM, no framebuffer, a CPU that feeds the television beam line by line. They read Pitfall! as a platform invention.
Technical reconstruction · 2009, updated later
Jamey Pittman’s reconstruction of Namco Pac-Man: chase, scatter and frightened modes, and the four targeting rules that read as personality.
Technical essay · 2021
A public walkthrough of David Crane’s polynomial counter, now usually called an LFSR. Documents the 255-screen cycle and the starting room byte C4.
Documented history · 2013
Jimmy Maher on Braben and Bell on the BBC Micro: eight galaxies, 256 systems each, a six-byte seed, and Acornsoft’s cut of a larger mathematical universe so the trick would not show.
Standard published account · compiled account
The public account of Nishikado’s 1978 arcade: as invaders vanished, the Intel 8080 had less work to copy into video memory, so the rest marched faster. He kept the leftover. Standard published story.
Hardware documentation · hardware fact
The NES PPU evaluates up to 64 sprites and copies only eight onto the current scanline. Later sprites on that line drop. Games rotate who vanishes each frame. The eye reads flicker.
Book · platform studies · 2015
Nathan Altice on the Famicom/NES: PPU limits, mapper chips, and how Super Mario Bros. and The Legend of Zelda turned those limits into a camera and a map you can remember.
Engine book · 2019
Fabien Sanglard’s line-by-line reading of id’s 1992 raycaster: a 2D map extruded into a corridor you can walk. The drawing trick that opened a genre.
Engine book · 2018
Sanglard on Doom’s BSP, visplanes and WAD files. The step after raycasting, and the public habit of letting players rebuild the rooms.
Catalogue + later studies · 1987–88
Paco Menéndez and Juan Delcán’s isometric monastery for Spectrum-class machines, published by Opera Soft. A day, monks on routes you can watch, a 48K world the CPU has to enact. Public catalogues date it 1987 or 1988.
Museum / machine history · 1985–94
Romanian ZX Spectrum-class machines built by ICE Felix in Bucharest from 1985. Same 48K-class ceiling, tape loading and clone compatibility as the British and Spanish machines.
Designer journals · 1985–89 / published journals
Mechner filmed his brother David, traced the frames, and spent years fitting a walking body into an Apple II that could not play cinema. Primary source for rotoscoping as a storage and labour decision.
Designer interview · 2010
Nintendo’s interview with Miyamoto and the Super Mario Bros. team. World 1-1 teaches jumping, goombas and pits by arrangement. Testimony.
Design talk · 2013
Chen’s public account of anonymous companionship: no names, no voice chat, a second cloak that appears on the same dune.
Book · game studies · 2010
Jesper Juul on downloadable, social and casual games as a change of audience and session. Limits return as thumb, time and living-room permission.
Method book · 2015 / 2019
Clara Fernández-Vara’s method for reading a game as a built thing, context and reception. Use it to ask what a trick is doing.