My first machine code game

My first attempt at a machine code game was called Ball Dozer. It was loosely based on Arkanoid, with a number of screens with different layouts of bricks, and various power ups could be collected such as a laser, a sticky bat and extra lives.



Loading Screen. Colour hadn't been invented yet.

 

Something that still irritates me is that there were a couple of flaws: There were a limited number of directions that the ball would travel in, as I hadn't yet discovered the art of fixed point numbers, and there was a bug in the collision detection. Very occasionally the ball would do strange things like tunnel through the gap between bricks or glue itself to the side of the screen. Much later I would figure out it was because the logic only took action on the first collision detected rather than take into account all collisions occurring at the same time.

First Level. You know the drill.

Even with the flaws, it sufficiently impressed the owner of Kouga Software (John Foster) to publish the game and I had my first title on the market. It was a surreal feeling seeing my game reviewed in Dragon User. It was awarded 4 out of 5 Dragons. Not bad for a first attempt!