Code Like It's 198x
Hardware-craft game development · 1975 → 2005
Make a real game,
on a real old machine.
Start from nothing, or pick a system and work through complete games — not toy exercises — in the languages people used at the time. Direct hardware, no engines, no apologies.
Not sure where you fit? Find your way in → · Want the shape first? Open the map →
Ideas for every machine
/foundations/One place to begin
The Basics
What a program is, before any machine
Explore how the machine works
Working It Out
Arithmetic, the counter, and the leftover
Decisions
A program that reacts
Truth Tables
Every case a question can have, written down
Repeating
Three kinds of loop, and the game loop
Structure
Lists, named jobs, and finding out why it's wrong
Counting in Twos
Binary, hex, two bytes, and a minus made of switches
Working the Bits
Masks, shifts, letters and fractions
Gates and the Adder
The same tables, built out of wire, until they add
From Source to Silicon
When the translating happens decides whether a game keeps up
You can begin with a machine track and return to these explanations when they help.
What's ready · what's next
/systems/Sinclair ZX Spectrum
Britain's gateway to gaming
Commodore 64
The best-selling computer of all time
Commodore Amiga
The multimedia powerhouse
Nintendo Entertainment System
The console that revived an industry
Atari ST
The musician's computer
Preview →BBC Micro
The educational powerhouse
Preview →MSX
The international standard
Preview →Amstrad CPC
The all-in-one challenger
Preview →VIC-20
The friendly computer
Preview →Master System
Sega's first worldwide console
Preview →What's new
/updates/ →Meet BASIC: from a greeting to your first story
Four new Spectrum BASIC lessons take you from your first instruction to a story you can change, save and share.
Read →Dash — a finishable NES game
The NES track's on-ramp: steer a runner, time a jump over the sweep, collect three coins to turn the level. Seventeen units from a blank screen to a cartridge, all driven off the NMI loop.
Read →All four launch machines have a game you can finish
Spectrum, C64, Amiga and NES each now open with a complete game, built one technique at a time — a title screen, a win and a loss, the lot. Not a demo: a small game you can play to the end.
Read →Four decades · pick a year
/timeline/Genesis
The home-computer boom
Where the curriculum grows
16-bit · the bridge
Edge of our range
The hardest cases
Learn in layers
curriculum and referenceCurriculum Map
How the learning layers fit together
The Craft
Cross-machine game-making techniques
Foundations
Where the path starts, and where it forks
The Vault
People · games · hardware · culture
Pattern Library
Production-ready code, per system
Sources & Standards
What counts as checked, cited, and real
The Timeline
Hardware alongside the world that shaped it
Systems
Every machine we mean to teach
Built in the open
github.com/emu198xOur own emulator.
Emu198x — cycle-accurate cores for the machines we teach, modelled down to the pins and the timing. Headless and scriptable today; used for automated runs, screenshots, and accuracy work while learners use the native emulators.
An honest ask
≈156 machines catalogued. 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 →