How Pokémon Fit on a Gameboy - Compression Explained

[@BigRigCreates]

Today, they say that "storage is cheap, processing is expensive". But back in the day, that clearly was not the case.

[@JustBorisX]

I completely agree. I’d also like to add that, these days, with storage being cheap and processing power somewhat abundant, it feels like developers often compensate for a lack of creativity and skill with raw processing power, which turns game development into a boring, grindy chore instead of the chaotic, creative mess it’s supposed to be. Also, thanks for the comment :)

[@Jackpkmn]

Something I realized when watching Kaze Emanuar's videos on basically rebuilding super mario 64 from scratch at this point is that some of the old console constraints can completely flip what was considered good practice even back then on it's head. The n64 was so ram bottlenecked that normally ideal solutions like lookup tables stop working correctly and it becomes more computationally effective to calculate the contents of the table in real time instead.

[@MatthewCenance]

What kind of technique would YOU use to compress the game even further to run on real hardware?

[@Jackpkmn]

@@MatthewCenance Depends on the amount of processing power available. Modern Windows and Linux computers use compressed memory already and support transparent compression on the fly for stuff stored on disk.

[@DudeWatIsThis]

@@JustBorisX Not exactly. The crux is: game development in the 90's was a small, nerdy field. The average game developer was more skilled than their modern counterpart, and many of them were software engineers. The "game development" university degrees of today are just cashgrabs that teach no useful skills, thus the messy games.

[@ongakuwotabeta]

Keep in mind, the Japanese games took half the size of the international counterparts. Red Green and Japanese Blue took up a 512 KILOBYTE cart. Japanese Gold and Silver took up the same space as the international versions of Red and Blue: 1 megabyte. Also even more impressive considering the game had to be split into 16 kilobyte banks because game boy games above 32 kilobytes had to use mapper chips to function properly. (Also Japanese versions of Yellow and Crystal took up the same amount as international counterparts, 1 and 2 megabytes respectively

[@Paramoid]

That’s actually really interesting

[@novamaster0]

You mentioned you weren't 100% sure how the merging process Retro Gaming Mechanics released a video a few years back called Pokémon Sprite Decompression Explained is a huge video about it and it's very in depth, and would be a great reference. Basically tl;dw, the data is converted into a intermediate format in an order determined by a bit in the data, then uses one of 3 methods to convert the data back into a normal sprite through delta encoding based on which way is more efficient way to store the data as it's XOR'd This randomly showed up in my feed today! Nice video though!

[@smallmoneysalvia]

Retro game mechanics explained covered the pokemon call audio storage too

[@smallmoneysalvia]

kzbin.info/www/bejne/l3eUiqqVrNplma8 This is the video he does on sprite decompression too

[@JustBorisX]

Yes, I watched his videos when I was researching this topic. I especially liked the one where he decompressed a Weedle by hand on a whiteboard, absolute madlad.

[@danielpaurat1783]

When you said "compressing the like and subscribe button" you instantly got me!

[@CoolJosh3k]

I think the presentation of your video was really good. It was nice to have a detailed video on this. but in a way that was still basic enough for beginners to understand. One suggestion I do have is to talk much slower. I had trouble understanding you at times and I am a native English speaker.

[@suprelink]

Awesome video!! Very detailed and still easy to follow

[@Gelatin223]

This was actually super interesting! Love the video

[@parks1825]

Amazing vid man, can't wait for your next one to come out! You have a great voice, but I'd maybe just slow down a little bit so we can catch every word :)

[@JohnAlenProductions]

Investing in this channel early dude this rocks 🤘🤘 you've got the sauce my man

[@kie9683]

Oh wow, your quality is great. I just assumed you were a large creator based on it but you're just starting out! Good luck you're content is interesting and editing and presentation is fun!

[@espelhodasconstelacoes]

straight up amazing production value here, brother! Got yourself a new sub! God bless ya andJesus loves ya!

[@nazomishvelia-s4d]

you are Officially amazing now ! Keep going ❤️ i expect future video from you about how homebrew and demakes work, Welcome to DevTube ❤️

[@johnhofmann2828]

Great video man! Super interesting topic and your production is fantastic.

[@xanthman7528]

wow this is awesome. can't believe such a good channel is so small

[@scottschneider7445]

damn, love it, keep up the good work!

[@Guilherme-qk9so]

this is a crazy good video, very impressive

[@AlexShynkarenko]

where was this video half a year ago :( I had to figure it out myself. I make a little pocket display with an Arduino of your gen 1 team

[@TemoanaD]

Awesome video 😁🤙

[@ImJohnnnnnnn]

Nice vid! Very interesting

[@fets809]

Nice video. Looking forward to more content from you 👍🚀

[@madladlane2947]

Algorithm, bless this man 🙏

[@emilengstrm8119]

10/10, this was amazing.

[@danisafilthycasual]

great video, glad i came across it.

[@linceed]

amazing! really interesting vid!

[@matthewsoldano]

how the heck do you only have 38 subs

[@MofoMan2000]

I remember unwrapping my copy of Blue version on Christmas 1998. I still have that cart now... I can't believe how much they were able to fit into 1MB. And then Gold, Silver and Crystal were 2MB each. Just... what?

[@nobafan7515]

Hey, can you make a video on the compression they needed for gen 2 pokemon? I heard they had a much harder time getting all that extra data in there.

[@JustBorisX]

ok so full honesty i never played the original gen 2 games because im a fraud, but i did play heartgold like few years ago and also pokemon has been melting my brain lately and if i see another pokemon right now im going to go crazy, but you're absolutely right that's a topic id like to cover in a future video if i eventually get around to playing the game, in the meantime here's a great reddit post talking about the topic: www.reddit.com/r/Games/comments/hwlylf/while_it_is_true_that_iwata_did_write_a_new/

[@wesleysanders8570]

excellent video

[@LuigiTheMetal64]

2D saves memory size, which is how Mew came to be too.

[@scruffleztube6891]

damn son, bless the algorithm ⚡️

[@Catbattle]

woah nice video, really interesting st uff

[@passalapasa]

graphics, audio, engine, decompression algorithm, dialogs/texts, maps, how TF

[@stevedude1625]

Great video overall, production quality and information considered, might I just suggest speaking a bit slower? I found myself having to slow the video to fully understand some parts. Overall again though, excellent quality.

[@swirvyexe]

fire video

[@grogu808]

banger 1st vid

[@Nayef1406]

Got recommended through the Algorithm ;D

[@hicarodestrui]

Nowadays Gamefreak make a very unoptmized pokemon game with bad graphics. Even through, a lot of other games manage to create better graphics in the same hardware and 10x better performance. Still impress me that Xenoblade Cronicles, runs way better than pokemon scarlet...

[@viniciusferrao]

Great video, but I had to watch it at 0.75x.

[@bushesbakedbeans1fan888]

Goated

[@austindmunday]

good video

[@jonnymiskatonic]

That's less than a single photo, not more.

[@idklolwut]

depends on what res

[@nentox_888]

Nice video! You definitely have potential but please talk slower and leave short breaks between sentences. At the speed your talking right now its quite hard to follow.

[@RealCaptainAwesome]

Don't cry, it's only a joke

[@Mofunendo]

Nice video. But please try to talk bit slow and make your words clearer.

[@CoolJosh3k]

I found a mistake for you. Earlier in the video you say “Megabyte”, but later said “Megabit”. :)

[@JustBorisX]

I totally did that on purpose just to see if you were paying attention. Nice catch, good job!

[@mimizdani8194]

Why you talk so fast?! It's almost gibberish

[@Chrissi33004]

Dude you need to speak more clearly this video is unwatchable

[@NN.Nemo917]

It's fine imho. He may not be a native speaker.

[@epicnerf1]

It's fine. I don't know if I can get behind unwatchable. I think he may just not be a native English speaker and if you pay a bit more attention, he's pretty easy to understand. Of course, I listen to all kinds of accents on a regular basis so maybe I'm just used to it...

[@i_am_goro]

Woahhh, stop mumbling! I can't understand a sigle word!

[@No_True_Scotsman]

He's not mumbling

[@SukkinEBN]

but it's not hard to understand him lol (and i'm not a native english speaker)