A Working Nintendo in ~1GB of Qwen Weights
6 comments
- Points297
- Comments153
–Rank now
#8Peak rank
4Days on list
–Score · 7d
Oct 30, 2026First seen
On Hacker News
- Points
- 297
- Comments
- 153
- Submitted by
- dbreunig
- Posted
- Oct 30, 2026
- Site
- github.com
Story details from Hacker News ↗ · linked article on github.com.
Trending history
A Working Nintendo in ~1GB of Qwen Weights was first seen on Hacker News · Front page on Oct 30, 2026. Since then it has appeared in 129 checks on 4 different days, across 2 lists (Hacker News · Front page, Hacker News · Show HN · this week). Its best position was #8 of 30, reached on Oct 30, 22:52 UTC. It dropped off the list after Nov 6, 15:50 UTC. The same link also trended on GitHub, which raises its cross-platform score.
Rank history
Position on Hacker News · Front page at every check (lower is better).
Last 14 days
Best rank per day (UTC).
8
9
Oct 26today
Metric history
Platform metric as reported by Hacker News.
Where it trended
| List | Best | Days | Checks | Last seen |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Hacker News · Front page | #8 | 2 | 97 | |
| Hacker News · Show HN · this week | #8 | 2 | 32 | |
| GHGitHub · Rising this week dbreunig/nesformer | same link | |||
From the discussion
A few top-level comments from Hacker News, shortened. Read the full thread on Hacker News.
A couple thoughts on the process here… First off, Opus 5.5 built working weights and code with only two prompts: 1. Read this article and any relevant source code: https://divagr.com/blog/qwenputer. Then explore if you could emulate the chip and ram in a Nintendo Entertainment System (as people do today with FPGAs in…
This opens up so many interesting opportunities. In principle one could compile a small VM inside the LLM weights. The VM can host for example a Python interpreter, a shell and tools like sed, cat, grep etc. Instead of LLMs having to do slow autoregressive token emission with the current "external" tool calling, it…
I love these hacks, even though from an efficiency point of view it is horrifying to my assembly-code-golfing-brain. And it also gives some new appreciation for how much more efficient deterministic programs are compared to AI.
Featured in
Archived daily, weekly and monthly lists that include this entry.
Hacker News 2 days, best #8
Show HN Weekly 2 days, best #8
Questions
Is A Working Nintendo in ~1GB of Qwen Weights trending on Hacker News right now?
Not at the moment. It was last on the list on Nov 6, 15:50 UTC, after 4 days of trending.
What is the highest rank A Working Nintendo in ~1GB of Qwen Weights reached?
#8 on Hacker News · Front page, on Oct 30, 22:52 UTC. Trendoday checks this list every 15 minutes.
How long has A Working Nintendo in ~1GB of Qwen Weights been trending?
It was first seen on Oct 30, 2026 and has been on the list on 4 days (129 checks) since.
How much discussion did it get on Hacker News?
297 points and 153 comments; submitted by dbreunig on Oct 30, 2026.