https://motherboard.vice.com/en_us/article/xwjjb4/the-first-2-seconds-of-super-mario-bros-3-fill-up-3000-printed-pages-of-cpu-operations

Our favorite video games are nothing more than frozen frames animated rapidly by machines. Protagonists like Mario, Master Chief, and Mega Man all exist as carefully rendered lines of code captured in time and tossed onto our monitors. The process behind this is impressive and hidden.

Case in point: When the first two seconds of Super Mario Bros. 3 are extracted, translated into text, and printed up on paper, the operations carried out by the CPU fill 3,000 pages and stand six inches tall when stacked on the ground. It’s enough operations to fill three three-inch binders. We know this thanks to artist and programmer Matt Bierner, who took the time to render the operations that make Mario move into a book that anyone can read.