I started making 2D games using Pygame which is Python + SDL. Is there any retro console/handheld out there the comes close to this set up? I am trying to avoid low-level programming. I wouldnt mind if there were tools like SDL where you can easily call functions to draw images for example, but from what it seems, all retro consoles require you to do reallllyyyy low-level programming and there are no tools like SDL. Is there anything remotely close to resembling this style? https://gist.github.com/anonymous/66a485aeedaaf8f89d8c
SGDK is a fairly powerful SDK for the Sega Genesis. It allows you to do nearly everything in C, but i would assume it's not quite as fast as using assembly. https://code.google.com/p/sgdk/
I guess most high-level compilers will spit out better code than even some of the best assembler coders. However, that being said, what high level compilers aren't aware of are hardware limitations. There is no way you are going to get a good performance out of a general use lib such as SDL because it's way to abstract to map to.. say NES hardware. You could write a subset of SDL for NES but it would still be pretty bad probably - way better to write a renderer targeted for a specific hardware which uses all existing hw features the way they are intended. It's a logic, not language, issue. Compilers can only solve some logic issues to make your code faster, but there is a limit. A poor algorithm will still perform poorly. And with high level APIs you get poor algorithms on those retro consoles. Also, what's the point to code something in python for an old console? I always thought the fun was to overcome the technical limitations of these systems by finding hacky solutions.
