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50% of comments: Micro Mages exists

Are you familiar with "Micro Mages" by Morphcat Games? They set out to make a game that fits into the 40 Kb limit, without any mappers. They even posted a video about how they fit the game into 40 Kb. :D

It's so fascinating to see how the NES evolved over its lifespan. It was originally intended to be a marginally better offering to something like the Colecovision or Atari 7800 (i.e., limited to producing fairly faithful arcade ports). Not only did Super Mario Bros. open the Pandora's box of what the console was capable of, it actually defined what a home video game was to be at its core. It was no longer about the single screen, mundane tedium of racking up points in an endless void. It was about exploring an entire world and actually completing a quest (finishing the game). I'll never forget what an experience it was seeing a scrolling screen for the first time. Looking back, not only was this an incredible technical feat at the time, it was also quite a powerful statement of how Nintendo was redefining what a video game was at its essence.

10:15 Its well known that they used the same graphic for clouds as they did for trees, just in diffrent colours of course. Sprites that are symetrical (like the goombas) where one half of the sprite mirrored to create the other half of the sprite. Also the sound used to go down a pipe is the same sound used as when big mario takes damage. Entire levels were re-used.............level 2-3 and 7-3 are identical in design, only difference is 7-3 has extra enemies. Sorry - you did mention the clouds/trees.

...hold up, there is no record whatsoever for the NES version of Pacland? BRB

Surprised the mention of repeating level layouts hasnt been mentioned.

When making graphic hacks for the original smb game I was always curious about what those graphics were for in the bottom right, now I know!

I think the homebrew game Micro Mages might be a bit more advanced than SMB1, while also working on just 40 kb

Well, I can't argue about that SMB is, indeed, the most impressive game on the original hardware of Famicom. Specially if we compare with the existing Japanese 8-bits computers at the time, like PC-88, Sharp X1 or MSX which were pretty limited in terms of scrolling horizontally. Speaking of which, by the way, could you make a "Games which push limits" episode with one of those computers I mentioned? I do really enjoy your research!

Love the channel! As far as I know the Namco release of Ms. Pac-Man in North America (not to be confused with the earlier Tengen release) was the last Namco game to use a 40kb cart. What's crazy is that was in late 1993. I wager it was the last 40kb release during the regular commercial life of the FamiNes. As you'll doubtless see, SMB smokes Namco's Ms. Pac-Man.

Hey! I saw my game again :D The original demo was MMC3 though, not NROM. But I wrote an NROM platformer for Second Dimension, Eyra the Crow Maiden, where I had to use a lot of fancy tricks to fit it into 40KB. And as many have said, Micro Mages should be mentioned :)

It was one of the games that I could honestly say, “yeah, I don’t have anything as good as that on my c64”. The other was RC Pro-Am

Everyone talking about "micromages" as if there hasn't been 30 years of programming tricks and hardware exploits discovered since then.

And the compression techniques lead to the Hidden Levels - which reminds me of how Sega used something similar later on for their Sonic & Knuckles lock-on technology.

This is a fantastic video my friend, well done! Well done indeed. This is precisely why I am a subscriber for life.

I had no idea the games you showed were running on the raw NES! Thexder, Formation Z, Pac-Land, I have a lot more respect for them now

Even though smb2 lost levels was a FDS game I’m pretty sure it would have run on an NES just fine and that had wind and more realistic bouncing physics and a sound effect when you slide and different physics for Luigi and levels that could include 2 themes and much more

Skip to 10:00 (!) for the actual subject of the video.

Hold up - I gotta go claim a Pac-Land world record.

Shigæru Maya-moto

With all the harping about pronunciations that you get, I'm sure you'll be delighted... moderately pleased... well, not entirely disappointed to hear that Formation Z's box art does spell out the pronunciation as "Zed" (more or less- it's in Japanese, and they use "zetto" for whatever reason). Hydlide's first syllable is pronounced like "high". And for what it's worth, I never had an issue with the whole "tiles" thing, even as a Canadian. (Though I do get a chuckle out of seeing KZfaq's auto captions, which usually interpret it as "tails" spoken with some strong accent or something. Not sure what its problem is!)

Wanted to say Final Fantasy 2 but turns out it isn't a 0 mapper game at all.

Whoa, thanks for the tip on Dragon City.

Micro mages is a mapper zero game that really pushes the nes even harder in every field you could imagine. They even have a channel under the name morph cat games.

10:27 The coin block is animated. But why? Shouldn't there be extra tiles for the changes in color?

color me intrigued!

I think Challenger and Formation Z were only on Famicom not the NES if I’m not mistaken

Things like those have made me a fan of high level optimization (also for my own projects). It reminds me of this gaming scene, where people try to put as much (modern) game into 64KB or 96KB, and they get ridiculous stuff together. HD textures, quite some gameplay, sound and music, it's nuts. You gotta admit though, they do this with modern computers, which can execute all kinds of code to decompress stuff and generate content from scratch with only a few lines of code, stuff the NES could never achieve. So still, SMB is a big achievement for more but only the storage limits it needed to deal with. Is there a video of the same type for N64? Because it was basically the same story all over again, cramming pretty advanced 3D games into a max of 64MB space (many games being a lot smaller) and 4-8MB of RAM.

I always found it super impressive that this game incorporated a proper (simulated and simplified) physics system where Mario could gain velocity slowly by running over time, and where there was a real feeling of momentum and weight to Mario. Basically no other platformer did this until Sonic... and I would bet anything that the algorithms in Super Mario World and especially Yoshi's Island are more complex and nuanced than any 2D Sonic game, even then. And that this wasn't just SMB, but something that Nintendo was clearly committed to with the series, always being way ahead of the curve on physics that give the player so much more complexity to work with, and same to the level designers. And this philosophy came into fullest bloom with Mario 64, which, just like SMB, stood head and shoulders above all other 3D platformers, almost permanently, because of how complex the physics were, the array of moves was.... the very first 3D playground they made, they got it so perfect that it will never be surpassed, no matter how great Galaxy or anything else ever is. The only conclusion I can come to is that designing physics for platformers is as much art as science, and that it takes vastly more work than anyone might imagine to actually get right.

Does anyone know the game after city connection?.

Brill vid, ta.

Most master system or mega drive games were this way, without "cheat" chips inside cartridges

What game is that @6:06?

I'm surprised Hydlide was mapper zero

Here for the Micro Mages.

Later Games are for that inpressive that the squeeced all out of the CPU (with APU integrated) and the PPU. there was never a chip on the cards that increased any limits of the PPU, that means all graphic data no difference 1983 Mario Bros on a Famicom and a 1993 Kirby on the NES must in the end land in the PPU with 2KB VRAM with 25 max colors out of 52 color palette and limited sprites to draw on the screen. However mappers with extra WRAM and VRAM and lots of space are quite required to pull of such games thats clear, but despite of the SNES the NES never had chips that provide any more CPU power like the SA1, or Graphics like the Super FX. In Fact the NES (unlike the Famicom) never had additonal sound so the sound capablities where also all there from the beginning including the DAC Channel for low quality samples which was later used even for music samplling for the background music like Super C, Return to Silus etc...

I need to mention that off-the-shelf 74-series logic chips (which integrate a few logic gates, or contain several 1-bit storage registers) are not the same thing as "Expansion Chips" (like Super FX on the SNES). The 74-series logic chips are very simple, there are so few components integrated into those chips that you can actually count the transistors. Using the simple chips (mostly mappers 2, 3, 7, 11, 34, 66) was enough to increase the maximum cartridge size. The custom mapper chips came later, like the MMC1, MMC2, MMC3, Sunsoft FMC-7, Konami VRC chips, etc...

I've seen some comments already saying this, but, Micro Mages

Check out Micro Mages!

What about Bioforge Ape or whatever the name is? That pushes the limits less than Super Mario Bros? EDIT: I see, it's only for 40k cartridges, no extra chips, etc.

Challenger doesn't play very well and isn't a very good game, but it has parallax and smooth 4 direction scrolling, which is something not even later Nintendo-developed games like Mario 2, Metroid and Zelda pulled off, so that's gotta count for something...

Thexder has 4-way scrolling but not in the smooth way.

"mee-a-moto", not mayamoto 😂

MiCrO mAgEs

Micro Mages

Would have been better if u can scroll the camera to the left instead of mostly to the right, but becuz of limited coding, nvm

Micro Mages done in 40k

Yes we call it Formation “Z” here because it is just the letter ‘Z” and not the word “Zed”.

My nes gets laggy when I play this game lol

Mad props to you for using footage of snes doom the unequivocally worst doom port that is actually playable in my opinion 32x destroys it. Gba wipes the floor with snes port

i know 1 game that easily overcome Super Mario Bros for nes that the use the same limitation the name off the game is Micro Mages and made by the Morphcat Games

Side-scrolling. Pushing to the limit.

Micro Mages doesnt count folks because we know way more about how the NES works now than how we did then.

I think the Nes homebrew game micro mages is way more impressive than super mario bros

Wait, Hydlide uses a 40Kb Mapper0 cartridge? Well, I guess my respect for it's frankly awful NES/Famicom port just increased.

You should do a series of "games that push the limits of the IBM PC", one for the original PC hardware, one for 286-class hardware, one for 386-class hardware and one for 486-class hardware. Talk about the limits that were pushed by the likes of the legendary John Carmack.

i believe Micro Mages is mapper 0 ;) a great game indeed

6:07, 8:13 game name pls

ok so micro mages isnt more impressive. and no matter how much you scream at this comment, it wont change reality

Early asf

Shigeru MAYA-MOTO? Please, a little more care with Japanese names! It's not like we've NEVER heard of Shigeru Miyamoto before!

Micro Mages?

I thought games like SMB3 or Metroid or any of the more graphic NES games would push the NES to its limits

It’s actually named the _FAMILY COMPUTER_ not some bastardized name like famicom

Video aboug one of the greatest and most remarkable games of all time sponsored by one of the crappiest and most unremarkable craps of all time. And of course it has chest animations like any crappy game with lots of flashes and other bullshit targeted at the same kind of people who were thrilled they won iPad each time they entered world wide web :)

micro mages isn't fun

No. No it doesn't. What a strange lie to make up.

Сan you talk like a normal person? Have you even heard yourself? What's up with all this choppy talking, overemphasizing words and jumping inflections?

what game is this? 6:07 ?