The following weekend I created a test level to check the update timing for the kernel. The time critical section of the kernel is when the ice blocks are being drawn as everything (snowman & color, nose, melt trail, fireball, 6 playfield updates) had the potential for being drawn:     Looked great, but I had to drop both the nose and the melt trail as there wasn't enough time to update everything during that critical section 36 cycles to update playfields