Character Bitmap Graphics on the PET 2001
July 30, 2025
How to impress with bitmaps from nothing.
In 2022, Genesis Project (that is: Elder0010 and LRNZ) released a very impressive demo for the Commodore PET 2001 (the original machine and the upgraded PET 2001-N), “A Bright Shining Star”. Among a few other experiments, it showed high-res graphics (in animation) and static bitmap graphics in a vertical strip spanning over 10 characters or 80 pixels.
As readers of this blog may be aware of already, this is particularly impressive, because the graphics of the PET 2001 are strictly character-based, rendering hard-coded character shapes from ROM, and, most importantly, there is no bitmap plane, nor anything resembling sprites.
Run the demo in in-browser emulation on a PET 2001:
Here are a few stills from the demo:
Screenshot from “A Bright Shining Star”, Genesis Project, 2022.
Screenshot from “A Bright Shining Star”, Genesis Project, 2022.
Screenshot from “A Bright Shining Star”, Genesis Project, 2022.
... continue reading