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SMB3 doesn't randomize scenery does it? The levels always looked the same to me every time I've played. It must keep the seed value the same every time it enters a level.

Those "stamps" at the top of the screen (flower, star, etc.) are randomized. The seed is not constant.

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There was a famicom game that ripped off the original Intellivision Dungeons & Dragons game VERY hard. Unfortunately, I forget the name.

Basically, it had a top-down view and dungeon sections were revealed as you traversed them.

RAM really isn't the issue with procedural content. You just need the right PRNG and the wherewithal to tailor your game around the results.

RAM can definitely help out a lot, but I'd agree it's not necessary.

Also, just to be clear. Procedurally generated content doesn't necessarily mean it's "random" - although it might as well be.

I always assumed that Balloon Fight's "Balloon Trip" mode was procedurally generated.

If I end up having enough space at the end of development, I do plan on adding a randomized "Endless mode" (á la Megaman 9 and 10) to my game, and it pretty much requires no RAM at all. But that's because the entire thing runs on a timer that spawns sets of enemies from data in ROM, all I have to do is make the spawns be dependent on RNG output, or maybe define sets of spawns and let the RNG choose one of those sets.

It seems the sum is something like this: Work RAM makes the design and programming a lot more convenient/easier as a wider band of approaches become available, but there are applications and techniques within the rather broad term "procedural generation" where the 2kB:s of internal, volatile RAM is (more than) enough.

The question of volatile and non-volatile RAM is something i've pondered about just recently. In the commercial"making of" video for Solstice which rainwarrior linked to in another recent thread, they boast of a game experience "totally unique to the Nintendo Entertainment System", seemingly on the basis of it offering a world where "[...] the player can do whatever he likes, he can manipulate things within the game [...]". This is true in the sense that there's no correct path and you can go wherever you want, perhaps even more so than in for example metroid. But in terms of world manipulation, the game is actually strictly choreobraphed, with the potion system layered on top. This is pretty common for NES (and other console-) games, which i'd attribute to the expense of battery backed work RAM, or just work RAM in the case of a game design like Solstice.

Not that solstice has anything to do with procedural generation, but i think the parallel is valid when hypothesizing how a procedurally generated dungeon explorer/adventure game would work - how to keep track of chests, loot, opened doors, links between levels and anything else in that fashion.

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A true persistent "open world" game could probably demand a lot of ram depending on how you prioritize elements in the design, and leaving stuff explored, enemies killed, chest open etc, is bound to require a least some amount of it, even with clever bitmasks.
But that's a pretty limited application of procedural design compared to what it can be used for. Balloon Trip is a great example of a game with simple procedural design and absolutely no amount of persistency.

I actually did some simple procedural generation on the NES. In Brony Blaster, I randomly generate a path between the rooms, then I randomly choose from 16 sets of 16 rooms depending on how many doors the room has. It's rather simple but it works. - https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Uyp31O3xSRY (This is an older version where the game would select from 256 rooms at random)

I also randomly generated the shelves on the bonus stages in REKT. The prices and the items on the shelves are randomised. It's just a cosmetic/comedic effect though. Level 4 in that game also randomly chooses rooms, although on a much simpler scale than Brony Blaster - https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=O9upGnDxbbM