One of my favourite game dev stories from the 1980s is the story of Elite. It was a game people thought couldn't be made. Most devs thought hardware wasn't powerful enough and publishers thought it wouldn't be fun enough.

It was one of the first properly 3D open world video games ever made. I think when it released it sold nearly as many copies as there were home computers that could run it.

In order to make the game small enough to fit on a cassette tape they had to ditch basic and program the entire game, world in assembly.

There's a fantastic video about it here: https://youtu.be/lC4YLMLar5I

[–] Lemminary@lemmy.world 12 points 1 week ago (3 children)

the game small enough to fit on a cassette tape

Holy hell, that is OLD old. We're talking about the beginnings of digital time here. Had the first web constellations formed yet? How fast did you crank your CPU?

[–] zurohki@aussie.zone 4 points 1 week ago (1 children)

You couldn't crank your CPU in the olden days, it'd make games run in fast forward.

[–] lord_ryvan@ttrpg.network 1 points 6 days ago

To be fair, unlocking the frame rate on console-to-PC ports still fast-forwards many games including Nier: Automata or breaks the physics like in Skyrim.

It doesn't have to be this way, any more, but it still is because… Lack of expertise? I really can't think of anything else?

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