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CREATIVE ASSEMBLER How To Write Arcade Games

The assembler available on the BBC Microcomputer and Acorn Electron is a very powerful programming tool. It is a most effective way to communicate with your computer - an equivalent program in BASIC will take between ten and one hundred times as long to execute. Speed is one reason why assembler is used in fast-moving, colourful arcade games, but it also rids us of other constraints imposed by the structured nature of all high-level languages.

The author, Jonathan Griffiths, the creator of such top-selling games as SNAPPER and JCB DIGGER, introduces the more useful assembler instructions available to the 6502 processor and gives simple examples of their use. In Part II he introduces more complex techniques, which lead on to the final part in which the routines are linked together to produce a complete arcade game.

First Sentence

The BASIC assembler which is available on the BBC Microcomputer and Acorn Electron is a very powerful tool for programmers.