Tutorials
Small guides on how a game for retro machines is actually built: simple theory, grounded in the machines I use, Commodore 64, Mega Drive and Game Boy Advance, explained with code. Every piece is told in plain words, and some come with a video.
Commodore 64 · Mac
How to make a Commodore 64 game on a Mac
The free tools, from the bare minimum to the ones for measuring: editor, assembler, emulator and cruncher, then graphics, music and automation, and finally a CPU in Python and a script-driven emulator. With real screenshots from Ruote Fumanti.
13 · 09 · 2026Commodore 64 · codice vero
How the road scrolls
Ruote Fumanti's scrolling with the real pieces of the program: the seven-pixel trick, two screens like a flip book, the track that doesn't exist and gets composed, and two moved instructions that removed almost every dropped frame.
13 · 09 · 2026Commodore 64 · con video
C64 sprites, explained by putting them on the road
Eight drawings the video chip moves on its own, the 24×21 grid, the colour you own and the two you borrow, the shadow computed instead of drawn, and why the road isn't a sprite. With a video and a playable test.
07 · 09 · 2026
Game Boy Advance
The light that cast a shadow
The GBA has no lighting engine: it has an adder. How it blends two layers, why a brown cone darkens the wall instead of lighting it, and why putting sprites among the targets blends every one of them.
03 · 09 · 2026Game Boy Advance
It compiles, it runs, it doesn't work
Variables living in ROM, a branch of code written twice, tiles treading on each other, ivy growing where it shouldn't and video memory running out without warning. Five faults that raise no error at all.
03 · 09 · 2026
Mega Drive · asm + C
Assembler and C, why both?
Why is a Mega Drive game written partly in assembler and partly in C? Explained simply, with examples: CPU, compiler, stack, vectors.
18 · 07 · 20266502 asm · 68000 asm
The life cycle of a game
Boot, title screen and input wait, lives, game over, saving the record and return. The loop that holds up any game, shown line by line on the C64 and Mega Drive.
18 · 07 · 2026