I wonder if programmers of NES games visualized code differently than programmers today, or maybe their frontends were just wonky.

When working with the loop for (i=0; i<9; i+=1), it seems logical to me that you would perform any actions that take place before that loop prior to declaring the loop. In other words, if you're going to set a=32 so that within the loop a will always be 32, you would set a=32; for (i=0; i<9; i+=1). Did they do that in CV3? No. Instead, I keep finding confusing crap like i=0; a=32; for (i<9; i+=1) in their code (to put it in equivocal terms).

It's a good thing I'm starting to get a little more comfortable with reading assembly.