What is this "cheating" you speak of? I wasn't expressing any judgement, just saying that using MIDI helps save bytes. But now that you mention it, the bitmappe

What is this "cheating" you speak of? I wasn't expressing any judgement, just saying that using MIDI helps save bytes. But now that you mention it, the bitmapped graphics that we take for granted nowadays also help (it gives you a whole memory space to work with that doesn't count towards the length of your program, rather than having to "race the beam" -https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Racing_the_Beam https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Racing_the_Beam). Not sure if there's a demoscene for the Atari 2600, but that would probably be the most "bare-metal" you could get...