Quote Originally Posted by Anarchy_Balsac View Post
Video Game Programming is NOT simple. You do not have to like it, but it is the truth. even a simple NES style game takes more lines of code than you will ever remember, and if it is an RPG or anything involving an inventory and a wide array of monsters and power ups, you can easily do 10's of 1000's of lines of code.

So yeah, you shouldn't be going for simplicity, but for what works.
Actually, if you use CC65, you can write a basic NES (NROM) game, and remember all of it.

CC65 is a NES C compiler. Of course, that is a very simple game, unless you delve into ASM.

My suggestion on priorities:
Readability / Cleanliness
Efficiency
Minimalism (do the needed task)