[gambiting]

Having worked with people who wrote games like the original Driver - large chunks of code used to be re-written by hand in assembly for performance late in development, or the game just didn't run fast enough. 90s compilers just weren't that good. I think in 2024 if you think you can do better than the compiler you're mostly fooling yourself, but 25 years ago that wasn't the case.

[AnotherGoodName]

Even then though C has always had trivial to use and very tightly integrated inline ASM that you could use at any time and had been a thing since inception all those years ago for this very reason.

[gambiting]

oh yeah I mean the source code for Driver has tonnes of inline assembly inside C files, so there was definitely value in using it. Writing the entire game in assembly is just taking it a step further, and like someone else said - if that's what you're most comfortable with, I don't think that's as insane as it sounds.