Programming language

[KKSzymanowski]

Was Pokemon Red originally written in Assmbly?

Why not C? Was it because of some hardware limitations? Was it to optimize it as much as possible in terms of performance and required space?

[Sanqui]

A C compiler for the Game Boy was likely not even available by the time Pokémon Red was made; it was standard to code games in assembly.

C was used for some very late Game Boy Color titles, but even there you usually have hand-optimized assembly sections, as compiled C code tends to be an order of magnitude slower and larger than equivalent hand-coded assembly.

[yenatch]

That said, sdcc has come a long way since 2000. See https://github.com/rotmoset/gbdk-n.

[LIJI32]

The ASM code itself is too inconsistent to be generate by a compiler, too.

[KKSzymanowski]

Thanks. I asked because when i first touched assembly it was some academic exercise with image processing(Gouraud shading I think) and it was so much pain to write, it makes me wonder how can you develop whole game. I suppose they didn't really have a choice back in the 90'.