Atari 2600 Scenedemo - TIM1T by Cluster and DMA (Revision 2014) 

It had more to do with having limited resources at the time.

It's a 32K cart, which would have cost a ton of money back then. 2600 games were usually 4K or 8K. Also while many of these effects are clever, at least some of them are pre-computed on PC and stored as values in the cart. So they only ever play back the same way, where a game needs different things to happen depending on the player! Demos also use tricks, using parts of the screen hardware combined to give certain effects, but wouldn't work on a whole interactive screen. You'll notice there's never more than 48 hi-res pixels for each line of the picture. That's made from 3x Player-1 sprite (8 pixels wide) and 3x Player-2. There's one demo with "CLUSTER", 7 letters, but I suspect the T or the E is made using the "missile", a 1-pixel wide element that can be 2x or 4x wide. The background of a 2600 uses 40 chunky wide pixels. Though by adding fine sprite pixels to one edge, you can make it look hi-res. Stuff like that. All clever. If you don't know the limits it seems like it's breaking the rules of 2600 games. If you've read STELLA.TXT you mentally break down each screen into the hardware display elements a line at a time. And are all the more impressed for appreciating what they've done.

That's correct, the NES has tile-based graphics so there's no way to manipulate the display anything like this

That statement about tile based graphics making a demo like this impossible on the NES is wrong. It would just become a multitude more complex as you'd have to generate a considerable number of tiles in a short time rather than drawing directly to the screen.

@@1337Shockwav3 Tilemapping doesn't make for fast, dynamic displays. You can't even have a fully bitmapped screen without putting extra hardware in the cart. The more complex addressing makes plotting slower, and demo effects are often about plotting speed. That, and crazy palette effects, which the NES is also limited with. You'd have trouble doing some of this on a NES. On the other hand, plenty of NES games couldn't be done at all on a VCS. The NES demos I've seen are pretty boring compared to 2600 ones. Just a handful of bytes can be slung around to generate a whole screen on 2600, not so with the NES.

@@greenaum I tend to agree on the technical details and would assume when it comes to raster effects something along "copper bars" would be the end of the line for the NES. But then again, keep in mind most demos are "cheating" in the most obscure fashions, showing effects that are technically impossible, but look like the intended ones by using unconventional programming techniques. But yup, most NES demos are pretty boring indeed.

@@1337Shockwav3 I don't recall seeing any NES demos. Did the Japanese tend to write them? It's quite weird what an impermeable wall the Japanese language has been, even now they're still completely separate from the Anglo Internet. But even the Americans didn't have the hunger the Euros had, and have, for squeezing their mind into tiny little 8-bit register spaces! And particular among those, the Germanics, including the Norsemen. I dunno what it is that makes a race good at engineering that also drives them to make most excellent cakes and pastries, but it's certainly true. Anyway yep you're right, the cheating is just as important as the coding. It's part of ordinary programming too, "finding an optimal method" I think you'd call it. Yeah the NES could *maybe* do raster bars in it's border, although it has almost no border. I think you can have tiles that are blank and show background, not sure, or else you could fill the screen with just 1 tile repeated, and modify it's palette to get your bars. IF it's possible, not just quickly enough but accurately enough, that's what really counts. The NES never did well in the UK (or Europe), so it's a machine I've never been really interested in, never played one as a kid. Master System, yes, my brother had one, and I had a few of the 8-bit computers, enjoying BASIC programming and games that came on cheap tapes for a tenth or twentieth what a NES game cost. Back in the 80s, 45 quid for a game was even more a ripoff than it still is! I'm curious enough now to have a quick look for NES demos...

You just need one of the 2600 cartridges that run ROM image files. Harmony Cart is a popular one. It also has hardware on board that adds to the 2600's capabilities, letting it run newly-written games that do more than a bare 2600 ever could. It runs ordinary 2600 games / demos as well though.

@@greenaum Alternatively you can butcher generic carts like this: i.imgur.com/nZxzgr6.jpg

kindly FUCK OFF DOOD

@@hacktrixapii he was citing the demo though...