Ahah! I was thinking the latter, but thought I was potentially going somewhat insane...
I'll use a full pinned version in a first attempt, then move on to the low pin count displays - I'd imagine the code for these is somewhat more complex.
On another note, I'm thinking how to drive so many pins - it seems there would be lots of different ways; port expanders, multiplexed latching etc...
EDIT - Saying that, that's just a lazy excuse because it's late at night... I could save loads on hardware and just do it in software using the low pin count displays.