Console graphics came from bespoke, fixed function chips for more than two decades, until the original Xbox burst onto the scene in 2001 with a PC GPU inside. Those of us who played on early consoles like the NES will have come across some familiar quirks with those fixed function chips: When too many Goombas lined up on the same row in Super Mario Bros. , for example, some of them would start to flicker. That the NES graphics chip hitting its hard limit of eight sprites per scanline; the chip...
