: The original game has 64MB to play with on its original hardware. The
: graphical assets alone will be less than that, but then Classic Mode uses
: HPC assets, so it might actually be larger (I have no idea). The 360 has
: 512MB of unified RAM.

: My guess is that to support classic mode, you need at least 1/8th of the
: 360's pool. Having this dedicated at all times to Classic Mode assets
: might not have seemed acceptable to Saber's engineers. If so, they're
: probably caching Classic Mode stuff on the HDD and streaming it in during
: the transition, which would probably take long enough to cause a very
: noticeable hiccup.

Right. That makes sense.

: Even from online retailers and such!?

Yep. In fact, it might even be more expensive than that on the actual retailers. Especially specialized video game retailers. Yes, here, bookstores get cheaper prices than specialized retailers most of the times... ¬¬