– How is it that the first Mario Bros. game was about 32kb, but a JPEG of the game is over 300kbs in 2023?

Question

I’ve seen the meme/info-graphic that the original file for Mario Bros. was approx. 32kb, but a picture file would be 10x more.

I’ve googled it and looked, but it seems to have some nebulous answers. Could someone please ELI5?

In: 26

Answer 1

In addition to what’s already been said, a JPEG is good for things like photos where there’s a lot of different colors. For something with a small fixed color palette like old school pixel art, a PNG would be much more efficient. Especially if it’s exported with a limited color space to what was available for the NES.