One of the very first games I ever played on a home computer was a maze game called Labyrinth on the Sinclair ZX81. So when I wanted to learn Golang and delve a little deeper into terminal cli development, I decided to start with a simple maze game that could be run in a shell on the Linux command line. As you can see from the screenshot, the graphics could, at best, be describes as very basic.

One of my all-time favourite games is Manic Miner on the ZX Spectrum. When Bug-Byte released Matthew Smith’s masterpiece in 1983 the bar was raised for quality gaming on the Speccy. Sure there were many, many excellent games released on the Spectrum (I’m looking at you Ultimate) but Manic Miner is still my go-to game when I need a retro gaming fix. Ever since I saw Mario64 on the N64 I wondered what a 3D version of Manic Miner or Jet Set Willy would look and play like.

Most of my recent (and not so recent) programming efforts have been in JavaScript that runs in the browser. I believed that with WebGL, the browser would become more relevant in gaming and graphics applications. Fast forward a few years and it’s clear that the vast majority of PC games are still downloaded and installed, just as they were decades ago. I decided to return to creating native games for the PC.

A retro demo inspired inspired by the Atari ST demo scene of the late 1980's

A simple browser based slot machine game written using the excellent three.js javascript library.

A simple 2D puzle game written in JavaScript with the Pixi.js framework that runs in the browser.

The classic zx spectrum game lightcycles recreated in JavaScript that runs in the browser.

A very simple Jumping Jack zx Spectrum remake written in JavaScript for the browser. Written as a programming learning exercise.