The 1987 game "The Last Ninja" was 40 kilobytes
by keepamovin on 4/6/2026, 3:03:22 AM
https://twitter.com/exQUIZitely/status/2040777977521398151
Comments
by: le-mark
Apparently this person is referring to the available ram on a Commodore 64. The media (data) on disk or tape was much more than that.
4/6/2026, 4:52:34 AM
by: YZF
I was looking at a production service we run that was using a few GBs of memory. When I add up all the actual data needed in a naive compact representation I end up with a few MBs. So much waste. That's before thinking of clever ways to compress, or de-duplicate or rearrange that data.<p>Back in the day getting the 16KB expansion pack for my 1KB RAM ZX81 was a big deal. And I also wrote code for PIC microcontrollers that have 768 bytes of program memory [and 25 bytes of RAM]. It's just so easy to not think about efficiency today, you write one line of code in a high level language and you blow away more bytes than these platforms had without doing anything useful.
4/6/2026, 4:51:43 AM
by: vinkelhake
I grew up with and absolutely adore The Last Ninja series. I'm not going to comment on the size thing because it's so trite.<p>Instead - here's [0] Ben Daglish (on flute) performing "Wastelands" together with the Norwegian C64/Amiga tribute band FastLoaders. He unfortunately passed away in 2018, just 52 years old.<p>If that tickled your fancy, here's [1] a full concert with them where they perform all songs from The Last Ninja.<p>[0] <a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ovFgdcapUYI" rel="nofollow">https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ovFgdcapUYI</a> [1] <a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PTZ1O1LJg-k" rel="nofollow">https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PTZ1O1LJg-k</a>
4/6/2026, 5:29:29 AM
by: xvxvx
I remember this game, the way it drew itself on each screen, the nice graphics. Growing up with games on Atari, Commodore, Amstrad, and Spectrum, was a lot of fun.<p>By comparison, COD Modern Warfare 3 is 6,000,000 times larger at 240GB. Imagine telling that to someone in 1987.
4/6/2026, 3:26:30 AM
by: chmod775
That short video of the game on twitter is 11.5MB, or about 300x larger than the game itself.
4/6/2026, 4:44:53 AM
by: YasuoTanaka
It's kind of amazing how much of those old games was actual logic instead of data.<p>Feels like they were closer to programs, while modern games are closer to datasets.
4/6/2026, 3:48:42 AM
by: reedycat
Masterpieces like these are a perfect demonstration that performance relies not only on fast processors, but on understanding how your data and code compete for resources. Truly admirable. Thanks for the trip down memory lane.
4/6/2026, 4:09:58 AM
by: mock-possum
Wow that search/interact mechanic is obnoxious, you can see the player fumbling it every time, despite knowing exactly where the item is they’re trying to collect.
4/6/2026, 5:33:19 AM
by: userbinator
The same size as Super Mario Bros. (NES, 1985)
4/6/2026, 4:54:01 AM
by: Morpheus_Matrix
[flagged]
4/6/2026, 5:14:36 AM