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Hardware-craft game development · 1975 → 2005

Make a real game,
on a real old machine.

Pick a system. Work through complete games — not toy exercises — in the languages people used at the time. Direct hardware, no engines, no apologies.

What's ready · what's next

/systems/

Four decades · pick a year

/timeline/
11 machines
1975–79

Genesis

22 machines
1980–84

The home-computer boom

13 machines
1985–89

Where the curriculum grows

11 machines
1990–94

16-bit · the bridge

7 machines
1995–99

Edge of our range

3 machines
2000–05

The hardest cases

Wander sideways

the rest of the site

Built in the open

github.com/emu198x

Our own emulator.

Emu198x — cycle-accurate cores for the machines we teach, modelled down to the pins and the timing. Headless and scriptable today; in-browser play, right in the lessons, on the way.

Meet Emu198x →

An honest ask

≈67 machines. Dozens of games each. One of me.

This is free, open source, and forever — every page, every binary, every line of prose. The catch: I can't reach the full ambition alone. Author a game on a machine you love. Port the methodology to one I don't own. Fill a vault entry.

Ways to help →
WANTED