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How about tokenizing commonly used words and sending that, ne byte per word ?

A lot of parsing was done at runtime, rather than at entry time or program startup time.

Such as??? The Commie 64 tokenized every statement at input time. You can find the complete list of C-64 tokens here.

Very few high-level constructs.

Compared to what? Look at the token list. It has many high level functions. Can you give some examples of competing computers at the time that had more? Apple II? TRS-80? Atari 400 or Atari 800? TI-99?

Most BASICs at the time would at least tokenize at entry time, and many even converted programs to P-code for execution.

As I said, C-64 tokenized too. Can you name one computer in that time that did more than the C-64 regards tokenizing or P-code? And how would you differentiate between C-64 tokens and P-code? Aren't they are basically the same thing?

What parsing was done at runtime that other interpreters do at input time? All the BASIC commands were tokenized at input time.
You can find the complete set here
And as you can see, there are several high level functions.

oh, and here is a link.

no single game could exceede a hard 32MB limit.

Things aren't so hard & fast... by using tricky hardware, you could easily surpass any memory address limitations.

Take a look at the Atari 2600. It's memory space only allows for 4K cartridges, meanwhile there are many games that use 8K or 16K roms. Although the actual implementations by each company was slightly different, they all use "bankswitching". Basically, the cartridge reserves a special set of bytes that it listens on. If the Atari were to attempt to read these bytes, the cartridge could react to it by switching to a different bank. So, you could make a cartridge that had some graphics in one bank and some in another, and just switch between them on the fly.

For a better, and more in-depth explanation, you're probably better off reading this. It also explains many of the other neat tricks that programmers had to use to get around such restrictive hardware back in those days, like sticking RAM into cartridges.

In any case though, should the GBA become popular enough that 32MB cartridges limit the programmer, I can pretty much assure you that they'll find a way to get around it (Of course, the cartridges would have to be more complicated, possibly making them more expensive, or maybe even slightly larger). Cartridge limitations are no excuse for the lack of a Super Mario All-Stars port.

This could make a hella update to Tradewars 2000? :)

As I see it, there are two types of games out there-- those to make a profit, and those because the designer was having a bit of fun.

The problem is that companies are trying to get the most profit that they can. For a flight sim, they've got to get everything right, or some anal retentive bastard's going to bitch that the lever to control the landing gear's in the wrong place.

It's not so bad with fantasy games, where you can make up whatever you want, and well, that's just how it is. [which is why Halflife starts getting lame when you're on alien worlds -- it's so much cooler to see how well they got the human reactions and such]

Some games are fun in a more nostalgic way... I'll go back and play Quake once in a while, or Duke3d, when I'm in the FPS mood, but QuakeII....I don't think so. Sometimes, I'm in the mood for a good game of C&C or WarcraftII. [Although, after playing it for so much, I guess I have to admit that AOE and AOK aren't bad games, either]

You still get people working on text based muds....not for the profit, but for the fun of it. [okay, and I know a few that are just there to be fascist bastards, but that's another story] People still work on NetHack. I think I remember seeing on slashdot a while back mentioning Trade Wars. Hell, there's even a sequel to Dark Castle coming out.

Good games are still out there, even if they're not coming from the companies who can afford the multi million dollar ad campaigns.

starshiptraders.com (this one supports telnet and http, supports lots of players and games, and is available to play -- I wrote this one), Tradewars, The New Era (you can download this one and run it yourself), and "Galactic Domination", which I've logged in to but don't have permission to make public -- it's under development.

If you want more info and links related to 8-bits and such, check out classic-games.com. Lots of good stuff there.

Classic games are a rapidly growing hobby... I can get games for my PlayStation for less than I'd have to pay to buy many of the Vectrex games on eBay. Check out classic-games.com and the pages linked there if you want more info. There are a lot of us out there :)

I remember spending years working on my BBS software... never did get it to the point where I was really satisfied with it, although it's still available for download at

my web site
. I got most of the way through a win32 port, but never really finished it.