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Metal Gear (1987)
6.8/10on IGDB
Released
The original MSX2 version grew out of a problem with the machine’s graphics. Konami had asked for a combat game, but the MSX2 could display only a few moving soldiers and bullets at once. He made avoiding the guards the main job. Watch where a soldier is facing before you cross a room, and you’ll see how that limit turned into a rule for almost every encounter.
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Prince of Persia (1992)
Released
On the Apple II, Jordan Mechner had too little room for a second character’s full set of animations. He reused the prince’s frames to create Shadow Man, turning one set of movements into a character who looks and acts like your double. When the two finally face each other, watch what a successful hit actually does before you try another one.
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1K ZX Chess (1982)
Released
David Horne had only 672 bytes available for his code on the 1K ZX81. To make room for a computer opponent, part of the board setup was saved on tape. He also gave the computer a fixed starting role. It plays White and the board opens with either its king’s or queen’s pawn already moved one square. You start by solving the position you’re handed.
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Gridrunner (2012)
Released
The unexpanded VIC-20 left Jeff Minter just 3.5 KB of available memory. Successive levels use the same basic setup, increasing the pace or sending more enemies and faster lasers. Watch the guns on the edges of the grid and get used to their rhythm. Staying alive means performing a familiar task under growing pressure.
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Elite
David Braben and Ian Bell wanted far more destinations than the BBC Micro could hold as a list of places. They made the computer generate star systems from a small set of starting numbers, yielding eight fixed galaxies. Open the chart and plot a trade route. The worlds remain in the same places when you return, so learning the map can pay off over several trips.
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The Oregon Trail (1971)
8.2/10on IGDB
Released
The 1985 Apple II version planned to let you hunt eleven kinds of animal. The team couldn’t fit all the animation into memory, so it cut the number of animals to six and used fewer frames for each. It’s a small change that sets the variety of encounters when you leave the wagon to look for food.
More about The Oregon Trail7
Adventureland (1978)
6.0/10on IGDB
Released
Scott Adams had 16 KB and a cassette recorder on his TRS-80. He wrote a compact language to encode the adventure and an interpreter to run it. You play by trying short commands, usually a verb and a noun, and reading the response for clues to what else the game understands. The vocabulary is part of the puzzle.
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Zork I: The Great Underground Empire
Infocom’s original mainframe adventure was too big for a TRS-80 or Apple II. Even with a compact new interpreter and a floppy disk, the home version had to carve out part of that map. Where one route had led to the area that became Zork III, Zork I gives you a crystal skull to find instead.
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Spindizzy (1986)
6.2/10on IGDB
Released
Paul Shirley fitted 386 areas into 11 KB by building them from an internal script. In the original Amstrad CPC game those areas form an isometric maze for a spinning explorer. Momentum makes the route as important as the destination. Slow down early before a corner or a narrow platform and you’ll have a much better chance of staying on it.
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Rescue on Fractalus! (1985)
Released
Loren Carpenter simplified a technique for generating mountains until it could run on an Atari 800 at a usable speed. David Fox built a pilot-rescue game around the resulting terrain. The ridges stand between you and the people you’re looking for, so keep an eye on the altimeter and decide which valleys to follow as visibility drops.
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Exile (1988)
Released
Storing even one byte per terrain tile would have taken twice the BBC Micro’s 32 KB of memory. The game computes much of the terrain from its coordinates, with important locations laid in by hand. The passages come back the same each time. Remember a bend or a shaft and you can find your way back from a different direction.
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