/vr/ - Retro Games

>>6238689
The VSP Scrolling trick of some late C64 games (and of course demos) comes to mind, which allowed much faster scrolling than the hardware devs originally intended that additionally didn't even need much CPU load. It doesn't get any more bare to the metal than using well timed tricks to let the video chip do things it was never designed for. Well, most of these tricks exploited various hardware quirks of the C64 (and of course later on the Amiga too) to a point were it had to be timed right to a single cycle to work correctly. In case of the VSP the actual timing variations of various hardware components also could just crash the computer on some devices without additional precautions (in case of crashes using the VSP scrolling trick the DRAM is to blame).
https://www.linusakesson.net/scene/safevsp/
https://bumbershootsoft.wordpress.com/2015/04/19/variable-screen-placement-the-vic-iis-forbidden-technique/
https://bumbershootsoft.wordpress.com/2015/10/18/partial-badlines-glitching-on-purpose/
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DJgB7_02wXk

Also the latest Super Mario Bros port to the C64 makes heavy use of the VSP trick.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6jIrR9Iqq4Q