Claude and old games
One of the interesting things about old games is just how small their code and binaries were.
Take Elite, my favorite game of all time. The whole thing fits into roughly 42 KB. And even some of that isn't really game code: there's copy protection, the screen buffer, and simple things like lookup tables used for fast calculations.
The result is that a complete Spectrum game can fit into Claude's context window.
I've been experimenting with the Claude coding agent, and it turns out that:
- Claude can directly read and understand compiled machine code for old computers.
- It is possible to make a very precise port of an old ZX Spectrum 48K game, even something as complex as Elite, to a modern platform.
- You can untangle the original highly optimized game logic and study long-forgotten secrets and outstanding bugs.
- With some guidance, you can even *improve* the original game and bring it closer to modern gaming standards.
Take Elite. I managed to port it to Java, move it to a modern 60 FPS engine, improve the controls and save system, and fix a number of original bugs.
If you want to dive into a modernized classic, you can play my version of Elite online:
