During school, I used to spend countless hours coding. Mastering Z80 assembly was one of my goals at the time. Besides writing code, I also disassembled games to extract various routines.
Boss 4, Zé do Caixão, também poucos tiles, mesmo com espaço na VDP (pra sobrar pras fases seguintes né). Utiliza apenas 15 tiles novos mais alguns reciclados, e a versão "PB" dos metatiles reutiliza a paleta dos sprites (tive de coincidir a posição de tais cores em ambas paletas)
Cross Blaim for the MSX (DB-Soft/1986) is considered a proto-Metroidvania (very early example of the genre).
Features the core components of the genre, such as exploring a non-linear, interconnected map, and backtracking at will with gained abilities.
Underrated MSX1 hidden gem.