– 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

Yea, i think NES was 8bit? So if we’re at 2000×32 vs 150×8, theres a difference of 64,000 vs 1,200, and that’s just for the Mario sprite.