– 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 all the answers here, theres the issue of resolution.. The original Maria was like 12 pixels X 12 pixels (a bit of an exaggeration, but not too much) whereas a modern jpeg is likely done on. 1080 9r 4k display… So each “pixel” of the original Mario is probably being represented by 16 or 64 actual pixels