Hard Hat, Spectrum, Berserk, Spectrum, and Pac-Man graphics

@john2001plus
Hard Hat looks interesting. I was also going to suggest that it could be a Spectrum game. It would be faster pace without the solid walls. Gobbler looks like it was written in BASIC. I think that I could do better.

@simonebernacchia5724
i suggest either basic or FP compiled (was not too performing) - HardHat i wanted a speccy port so bad! (had a speccy at that time)

@john2001plus

Back in the 1980s I noticed that Berserk had a graphics limitation similar to computers like the Spectrum.  When the character gets too close to other objects it changes their color to be the same as the main character.  This implies that every 8x8 group of pixels can only have one foreground color, like on the Spectrum.  It either has memory mapped video with this color limitation, like the Spectrum, or it has character based graphics like the VIC-20.  Berserk probably doesn't have sprites.  I don't think that Space Invaders does either.

Compare this Pac-Man also released in 1980.  It has 3 color sprites that can overlap each other.  It apparently has a large color pallette since we see a flesh color in a cut scene.  I assume that the Pac-Man video hardware was much more expensive. 

In 1980 memory was very expensive, with 64K costing around a thousand dollars.  Memory limitations were often the reason why graphics were more primitive  The Atari 2600 is the ultimate example of this with only 120 bytes of RAM.  It would have been much easier for programmers if Atari had designed the 2600 with 4, 6, or 8K of RAM.  I wish they had.

By 1980 I had already written primitive games in BASIC on home computers.  Later I became I video game programmer.  However, I didn't know what sprites were.  None of the home computers had them.  So when Pac-Man came out, I was puzzled trying to understand how the game displayed its graphics.  It was pretty easy to understand how Spaced Invaders worked.  I assumed that each pixel was memory mapped.  I made a similar assumption for Pac-Man, but I assumed that it had a 16 color screen and that it was drawing the characters to the screen.  Since the characters can overlap each other, I assumed that it was drawing all the characters on each frame.

Just a side note:  Due to the limited number of sprites on the Galaga game, it uses a single sprite to display the double bullets.  It didn't have any sprites to spare.