Are there any 1-bit, 2-bit, or 4-bit graphic/computational power game systems?

[buzz_n64]

Growing up in the late 80's and 90's, the bit wars were a huge deal, usually with everyone referring to the NES as 8-bit graphics as the baseline that everyone compared all other graphics to. What about systems before the NES, or the first system, the Magnovox Odyssey? No one ever states or refers to pre-NES systems by their bits. I know it's an outdated and passe in the modern era. Everyone stopped counting the bits with the Dreamcast in 1999 when we got to 128-bits. Are systems like the PS4 and the Xbox One possibly 256-bit game systems?

[jb143]

Intellivision was before the NES and it was 16 bit. Monochrome could technically be considered 1 bit, if you're just talking about colors.

There were/are 4bit CPUs that have been used in toys and other low cost consumer electronics(like TV remotes) so there were probably some handheld games that used them. The Microvision was originally designed with a 4-bit CPU but they switched to an 8-bit one. Otherwise, there's nothing I know of for sure.

At 2 bits you'd be extremely limited. You could probably make something like a Simon type game but even someone with the most generous definition of a CPU would have a hard time making that count.

The number of bits was more of a marketing thing anyways. Once you started having systems with 8 bit CPUs but 16 bit color pallets it started to not actually mean anything useful in and of itself...other than creating schoolyard arguments.

Edit--I could have sworn that I read before that the Microvision was redesigned from a 4-bit processor to an 8-bit but it looks like I was wrong, it was redesigned from a more powerful 8-bit CPU to a less powerful one though, which is why the later models only need one 9V instead of 2.

[ccovell]

"8-bit graphics" really is meaningless, in the sense that schoolyard battles used them. When people use bit(depths) in graphics, it means how many possible colours a single tile could use. In those terms, Colecovision is 1-bit; the NES is 2-bit; the SMS, Turbografx, Genesis, and Neo-Geo are 4-bit, and the SNES is 8-bit.

As you can see, this gives some information, but not a lot. More important would be multiple specs like size of sprites, number of sprites, and number of background planes. (Maybe little kids couldn't digest these easily...)

[SparTonberry]

Yes, game companies would throw around the TECHNICAL limits of their console, not necessarily what's used in practice.
(like comparing resolution. SNES COULD do 512x448, which was higher than 320x224 regularly used on Genesis, but the SNES rarely used that mode, in practice it was usually 256x224, whereas I hear the Genesis more commonly used 320x224?)

Likewise, Nintendo advertised "256 colors on screen" but I think that was limited to Mode 7. In other modes it was only actually 241 (if a scene was using 16-color mode), and even then only if the developers were determined to use EVERY available color. In practice it would probably be less due to palette limitations.)

[ccovell]

Yes, game companies would throw around the TECHNICAL limits of their console, not necessarily what's used in practice.
(like comparing resolution. SNES COULD do 512x448, which was higher than 320x224 regularly used on Genesis, but the SNES rarely used that mode, in practice it was usually 256x224, whereas I hear the Genesis more commonly used 320x224?)

Likewise, Nintendo advertised "256 colors on screen" but I think that was limited to Mode 7. In other modes it was only actually 241 (if a scene was using 16-color mode), and even then only if the developers were determined to use EVERY available color. In practice it would probably be less due to palette limitations.)

Quite a lot of text-heavy games (read: RPGs) used 512-wide graphics for their text boxes for greater clarity and detail.

And the SNES does have 256-colour background modes; it's not limited to mode 7. This means a full 8-bit tile having access to any of the palette colours. Used on title screens, interstitials, and who knows what else.

Anyway, the "Yeah, that system has this feature, but what games actually use it, huh? Go find me some examples." argument is best off in its own thread, and not in a "system limitation" thread. It's too much of a derailer.

[RP2A03]

For the record, there are no 128-bit systems. Dreamcast, GCN, Xbox, Wii, and Wii U are 32-bit. PS2, PS3, PS4, Xbox 360, Xbone, and (from what I can gather) Switch are 64-bit.

[AdamAnt316]

4-bit CPUs didn't stick around much past the early days of calculators (Intel originally designed the 4004 for a company called Busicom, a manufacturer of desktop calculators, and the 8-bit 8008 followed soon afterwards). Several years back, a friend of mine built a 4-bit computer using a series of relays; it can add simple numbers, but not much else. To the best of my knowledge, any 1- or 2-bit computers have probably looked akin to that one, but simpler.

In the early days of computing, things weren't as standardized as they are now; the DEC PDP-1 from 1959 used an 18-bit architecture (and a 6-bit byte rather than 8), the IBM 1620 eschewed binary in favor of a variable-length decimal architecture, and some early computers like the Heathkit EC-1 weren't digital at all, instead using analog methods. Getting back to the point at hand, to the best of my knowledge, no computer/video games have been made using sub-8-bit CPUs, though the Wikipedia article for the Intel 4004 mentions that one was used as part of a prototype Bally pinball machine.
-Adam

[Steve W]

I remember one of the old Mattel guys saying that their early handhelds like Football and Gin used 4-bit processors. That's about the only time I've ever heard of anything more primitive than 8-bit processors being used in gaming.

Video games took off because of 8-bit processors like the 6502. Before that, processors were slow and incredibly expensive. The 6502 was created, and suddenly companies could afford to use them in consumer electronics rather than in mainframes or minicomputers. The 6502 and later the Z80 built our modern electronics and computing industry, rarely did anybody bother with earlier 4-bit processors after that point, unless it was in a very limited portable machine.

[jb143]

The NES lockout chip used a 4-bit CPU, not that it has anything to do with the "bitness" of the system.

It's also interesting to note that some early arcade and pong type systems didn't even have CPUs with no real programs. The "programs" were created entirely in hardware out of digital logic circuits.

[BlastProcessing402]

Intellivision was before the NES and it was 16 bit.

It never ceases to amuse me that INTV was 16 bit, while PCE/TG16 was really 8 bit (albeit with a 16bit GPU)

[Gamevet]

Maybe the old Mattel handheld games with LEDs.

[AdamAnt316]

It never ceases to amuse me that INTV was 16 bit, while PCE/TG16 was really 8 bit (albeit with a 16bit GPU)

The Texas Instruments TI-99/4A computer (and its predecessor the TI-99/4) also used a 16-bit CPU, the TMS9900. Of course, all the 16-bitness of the CPU didn't help the fact that the hardware design was shoddy, shoe-horning a 16-bit CPU into an architecture originally intended for an 8-bit one, and using a version of BASIC which was double-interpreted, slowing things to a crawl..........
-Adam

[Steve W]

The TI-99/4A had a lot of problems. TI were planning on putting a super-fast processor into it, but the prototype chip had too many mathematical errors so they eventually dumped it. They used the older TMS9900, but there was a problem - it couldn't refresh RAM. The video chip could however, so the main system memory is tied into the video memory and the processor has to go through all that to access memory. And instead of having BASIC access the hardware directly, they had it interpreted into GPL (Graphics Programming Language) which then had to be re-interpreted to run, maybe having something to do with the fact that the TI-99/4A originally started out life as the Milton Bradley Gamevision console before TI decided to use the architecture they were hired to prototype for MB and clumsily turn it into a computer. It also didn't help that they took the main programming group and moved them to Odessa, Texas from its original location in California. Nobody wanted to move to the Texas desert and so they had to settle for a smaller base of programmers. All because the guy in charge of software development wanted to move from California back to Texas.

I always wonder what the 99/4A could have been like if the prototype processor would have been perfected and used instead of the TMS9900, and the design's compromises could have been neutralized. If they had kept development in Silicon Valley instead of east Texas.

[AdamAnt316]

The TI-99/4A had a lot of problems. TI were planning on putting a super-fast processor into it, but the prototype chip had too many mathematical errors so they eventually dumped it. They used the older TMS9900, but there was a problem - it couldn't refresh RAM. The video chip could however, so the main system memory is tied into the video memory and the processor has to go through all that to access memory. And instead of having BASIC access the hardware directly, they had it interpreted into GPL (Graphics Programming Language) which then had to be re-interpreted to run, maybe having something to do with the fact that the TI-99/4A originally started out life as the Milton Bradley Gamevision console before TI decided to use the architecture they were hired to prototype for MB and clumsily turn it into a computer. It also didn't help that they took the main programming group and moved them to Odessa, Texas from its original location in California. Nobody wanted to move to the Texas desert and so they had to settle for a smaller base of programmers. All because the guy in charge of software development wanted to move from California back to Texas.

I always wonder what the 99/4A could have been like if the prototype processor would have been perfected and used instead of the TMS9900, and the design's compromises could have been neutralized. If they had kept development in Silicon Valley instead of east Texas.

Yeah, TI made a LOT of mistakes with the TI-99 series, in my opinion. The original /4 had a lousy keyboard, and adding peripherals to it involved sidecars which, given enough of them, would require you to buy a new, longer desk. They later rectified that issue (to some degree) with the Peripheral Expansion Box, but that cost several times what the computer itself did, especially once the price war with Commodore got underway. I have a feeling that most owners used them basically like a glorified game console, a'la the Magnavox Odyssey^2. I've managed to find a PEB (and monitor) to go with my TI-99/4As, but the vast majority of the ones I've seen 'in the wild' didn't have any peripherals beyond the Speech Synthesizer and the cassette recorder, just game/educational cartridges.
-Adam