One of the things I’ve really taken to doing at the weekend is having a coding session to recreate an old arcade classic but give it my own take using Claude prompts. I’ll choose a game and see if I can source at least the graphics for it to give a head start, but anything else available from the original arcade games that’s downloadable I’ll pick up as well, which is usually just sound effects. I’ve done a few of these now and they have generally taken 3-4 hours of doing a blog post or listening to music while Claude is doing most of the grunt work in the background. I’m having them all done in Java so they are instantly runnable on both Windows and OSX, as well as anything else that will run Java, come to that. I’m also not publishing them as apps directly so there’s no security stuff to go through on Mac, and they’d probably be rejected for potential copyright issues if I did. I’m sure Windows will probably have the same kind of issues with created executables before too long, so just having the projects source available on the git page and instructions on how to build solves that. People that download the projects can then just build their own app the first time they run them. I don’t care about giving away the source code for these because I didn’t write them. My input was 99% prompts so why not share them for other people to study if they wish. All of these projects are on my public git hub page: Xerra’s Github.
All of them will likely have a similar look and share standard stuff like high score names and sound effects, strobing. I’ll probably mix that up once I get to the point where I’ve moved on from space games. I’d encourage people to check this area semi-regularly as I feel I’m going to do quite a lot of these in my spare time as it’s a great way of winding down from work, life and hangovers.
Robozone – elements of Robotron and Robotron2084 with some wild use of the 2084 sounds.
Gorf – Based on the classic arcade game and some of what I remember from the Vic 20 version.
Scramble – This one’s still cooking but it’s looking good. Everyone remembers Scramble but with this one I’m having an option to play the original Stern map or the one Konami used for the game.
Tempted to try Spy Hunter afterwards. Now that one will be ambitious.
