As a kid I thought games were a waste of coding time. Ports of Call (1986) was the exception — so 40 years later I built it a love letter.
When I was 10, I genuinely didn't like playing games. It felt like time stolen from the real fun — fighting with C64 BASIC and, later, Amiga assembler. But there was one game that consistently beat my own code for my attention: Ports of Call. Running a little shipping company, counting every mark, sweating through those docking approaches... it didn't feel like playing. It felt like thinking.
This year I finally paid that debt. I built Ports of Callback — a browser remake of that feeling, reworked for what I became: a software developer.
- The ports are cities named after TCP ports — Port 22 is SSH Harbor, Port 443 is Fort TLS (you have to complete a 3-beat TLS handshake before its berth opens)
- The cargo is Docker containers, npm packages and legacy COBOL (which only loads onto your oldest ship, obviously)
- The Kraken only hunts ships that departed on a Friday, because every developer knows you don't deploy on Fridays
- And yes — you still dock by hand, and it's still the best part
Every wave, ship and port is drawn procedurally in code — no image assets, which felt like the right way to honor the era. Every Monday the game generates one world for everyone, and the fastest IPO tops a global leaderboard.
It's free, runs in the browser, no install, no ads: https://ports-of-callback.dev
I've also written to Rolf-Dieter Klein, the original author, to tell him what his game did to a stubborn 10-year-old programmer. Fingers crossed he approves.
Happy to answer anything about the game or how it's built. And if you were also an Amiga kid who lost hours to the original — the docking minigame is waiting for you. It remembers.