The 1980s and 1990s were the formative decades of modern computer gaming—a time when a handful of passionate developers, working with limited tools and virtually no rules, laid the foundations of a global entertainment industry. These were the years when creativity thrived within the constraints of slow processors, tiny memory footprints, and pixelated displays. Yet from these humble beginnings, entire genres were born, icons were forged, and the language of digital play began to evolve.
Computer Game Creation in the 80s and the 90s is a journey back to that pioneering era, where innovation was driven by necessity, and every byte counted. It explores the tools and techniques that developers used, while examining the rise of bedroom coders, the birth of major game studios, and the emergence of graphics engines, and sound systems that would go on to shape the industry for decades to come. It highlights the challenges developers faced—limited resources, censorship, competition—and the solutions they invented, often with nothing more than a floppy disk, and a wild idea.
This book explores the technical roots of computer game creation during those formative decades—from 8-bit machines to early 16-bit PC platforms running MS-DOS. It highlights the programming languages, tools, and graphics routines of the time, and it dives slightly deeper into memory management, sprite handling, audio synthesis, and the clever hacks that made so many “impossible” games possible.
Whether you’re a game developer, a retro computing enthusiast, or someone who simply grew up glued to a CRT monitor, this book is both a tribute to and an excavation of a time when game creation was equal parts art, science, and rebellion.
Let’s press play.
Note that this book is also available in the Kindle Store as ebook under the name “History of Computer Game Creation”.
