Making 8-bit Arcade Games in C

by Steven Hugg

Learn how to reprogram the 8-bit arcade games produced in the Golden Age of video games (the late 1970s to early 1980s) with your own game! We'll learn about the C programming language and compile code for the Z80 CPU.
We'll cover these platforms: Midway 8080 (Space Invaders) VIC Dual (Carnival) Galaxian/Scramble (Namco) Atari Color Vector, Williams (Defender, Robotron) We'll describe how to create video and sound for each platform, and make some simple games. Use the online 8bitworkshop.com IDE to compile your C programs and play them right in the browser!

Genres: Programming

240 pages, Hardcover

Published July 18, 2022

Reviews

[Colin Hoad · Rating 4 out of 5]

This is a good book and really whets the appetite for programming 8-bit games. It is essentially a guidebook to the author's online emulators that he created to demonstrate writing games in C using various 8-bit machines. Treat this book as it was intended to be used, namely as a resource to get the most out of Steven Hugg's website and his impressive emulated environments. It also helps if you already have a basic grasp of the C programming language, since this is not a "how to" book for C itself. Overall I enjoyed it and learnt quite a few tips about 8-bit programming in general.