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What passed for animation on a mid-1970s home computer could be as simple as printing another line. In a new 10-minute video, The 6502 Show revisits Ski Trek, a text-mode skiing game that makes the scenery appear to move by scrolling characters down a terminal screen.
The creator compares versions of the game, including one shown on a Commodore PET, and walks through BASIC code before presenting an upgraded version. The interesting constraint is that a serial video terminal could display text without giving the computer a conventional video frame buffer to animate. Scrolling the terminal output became a practical visual effect, not just a way to read longer text.
It is a useful reminder that early homebrew game design often began with the output device’s behavior. The video was published on 30 October 2026; watch “Primitive animation on a computer with no video RAM” on YouTube for the demonstrations and code discussion.
