Dash — a finishable NES game

The NES assembly track now opens with a complete, finishable game. Dash is a single static screen — no scrolling, the way the earliest cartridges worked — where you steer a runner, time a jump over a hazard that sweeps the playfield, and collect three coins to turn the level over.

It’s built the way the whole course is: one technique at a time, each arriving only when the game needs it. Seventeen units take you from a blank screen to OAM sprites under DMA, a controller read, the NMI loop that times everything, collision, a score, lives, a title, two levels and a tune — a real game with a win and a loss, not a demo.

The last unit is the finishing pass: levels that quicken, two little endings, and the small fixes that turn a nearly-game into one you can win and lose.