did nes games use hardware randomness

Well, let me tell ya somethin’ ’bout them NES games and how they worked, like that “did nes games use hardware randomness” thing you’re askin’ about. I ain’t no fancy expert or nothin’, but I seen my share of them games back in the day, and I know a thing or two about how things worked, or didn’t work, if you catch my drift.

Them old NES games, they weren’t like these fancy things you got today. No sirree. They called it the Nintendo Entertainment System, or somethin’ like that, and in Japan they had a Famicom. Fancy names for somethin’ that was simpler than a screen door on a windy day.

Now, you’re askin’ about “hardware randomness.” Sounds complicated, but it ain’t, not really. See, these games, they ran on this little box, and that box had a brain, a real simple one. They called it a CPU, and it was slower than molasses in January. We’re talkin’ under 2 MHz, whatever that means. And there weren’t no fancy picture maker thingy, like them GPUs you hear about now. Nope, just a PPU, a Picture Processing Unit, and it wasn’t too strong. That’s why sometimes them pictures would flicker and disappear, they called it “sprite flicker”. It wasn’t broke, it just couldn’t keep up!

So, think of it like this: that box, it did everything the same way, every time. If you started the game, it would do the same things, in the same order. It was like a clock, tick-tock, tick-tock. There wasn’t no room for things to just happen on their own, no “randomness” like you might think. Everything was planned out, set in stone.

• No Fancy Graphics: Them games, they didn’t have fancy graphics. Just blocks and colors, mostly. But they were fun, darn it!
• Simple Brain: That CPU, it wasn’t strong, but it was enough to make the games work. And the games, they were made clever-like, to work with what they had.
• Same Every Time: Start the game, and it would do the same thing every time. No surprises, mostly. Unless the game was designed to trick ya, make ya think it was random.

Now, some games, like Metroid or Super Mario Bros. 2, they didn’t have no batteries to save your progress. So you had to start over every time! Imagine that! Nowadays them games save all the time, but back then, you just had to get better or remember how to do things. And some of them old games, they were made to be like them arcade games. You know, the ones where you put in a quarter and play for a few minutes? They wanted you to keep puttin’ in them quarters!

So, did these NES games use this “hardware randomness”? Well, if by that you mean did that little box have some kinda magic thing inside it that made things happen randomly, then no, it didn’t. The box did what it was told, and that’s all. It didn’t flip no coins or roll no dice on its own.

But that don’t mean the games weren’t fun, or that they couldn’t seem random. The game makers, them smart fellas, they figured out ways to make things seem random. They used tricks, like math problems and timers, to make the game different each time you played. They’d use the time, when the machine turned on, as a starting point. It wasn’t really random, but it felt that way, most of the time. It was like they were fakin’ it, makin’ it up as they went along, but with numbers and codes instead of duct tape and baling wire.

Think of it like this: if you shuffle a deck of cards, it seems random, right? But it ain’t really. You’re just movin’ them cards around in a way that you don’t know beforehand. Them game makers, they did the same thing with the numbers and the code in the game. They shuffled ’em around, so you didn’t know what was comin’ next.

And that’s how it was with them NES games. No fancy randomness, just smart folks makin’ the most of what they had. They created some amazing games, games that we still play today, even though they ain’t got no fancy graphics or powerful brains. They had what mattered – good gameplay and that clever way of makin’ ya think things were more random than they really were. Those game developers from back then, they really knew what they were doing. They made games that are still iconic today. They even started whole new kinds of games, genres, I think they call ‘em.

So, there ya have it. That’s my take on that “hardware randomness” thing. Maybe it ain’t fancy, but it’s the truth, as far as I see it. Them old games were simple, but they were fun, and that’s all that matters.

And listen, the limitations, they were part of the charm, you know? Made them game makers get creative. You had to be clever to make somethin’ good out of somethin’ so simple. It was like makin’ a quilt out of scraps – you didn’t have much, but you made it work, and it was beautiful in its own way.

So next time you play one of them old games, remember that. Remember the folks who made it, and the tricks they used to make it fun. And don’t go lookin’ for fancy hardware randomness, ’cause you ain’t gonna find it. What you will find is a good time, and maybe a little bit of that old-fashioned charm that’s missin’ from these newfangled games.