We’re excited to announce that our hit retro gaming book Code the Classics Volume I, recently released in a revised edition, is joined by even more vintage gaming goodness! Code the Classics Volume II is out now, featuring five games inspired by video games of the 1980s. This new volume takes you on a tour of the games that inspired their remakes. It also includes code listings and explanations to help you learn how to write games of your own.

If you played computer games back in the 1980s, you may have typed game code into your computer. Back then, computer game listings graced the pages of books from Usborne and magazines like ANALOG Computing and The Micro User. Spend a couple of hours of typing in code, and soon you’d be playing a game you could modify and learn from. A reasonable trade: you’d earn a gaming experience that matched what you could buy from your local computer store. And you’d learn a bit along the way!

Code the Classics Volume II features retro arcade games written by Andrew Gillett, ably assisted by Raspberry Pi co-founder and CEO Eben Upton along with Sean M. Tracey. Dan Malone (famous for his work with The Bitmap Brothers) created the game graphics, and long-time game audio pro Allister Brimble provided the music and sound effects. Simon Brew, David Crookes, and Liz Upton wrote the stories that take you behind the scenes of the creation of the five classic arcade games featured in this book. What’s more, the book opens with a foreword from Dr. David Braben, co-creator of best-selling computer game Elite.

In this new volume, you’ll meet these vintage-inspired games, and learn from their code in between rounds of play:

• Avenger: fly across a scrolling landscape while you save humans from malevolent aliens
• Beat Streets: fight your way through a level, and defeat a notorious crime boss
• Eggzy: collect gems and survive as long as possible before time runs out
• Leading Edge: Race a car on a pseudo-3D race track
• Kinetix: Break bricks with your paddle, and use powerups to avoid various menaces

Code the Classics Volume II features abridged code listings along with detailed explanations of the game logic. Not only that, you can download the source code from our GitHub repo and play all the games yourself. The book is available now from the Raspberry Pi Press store, and will be on sale from various print and electronic bookstores in the coming weeks.

Pay what you want for a bundle of books

What’s more, between now and Saturday 5 October 2024 (at 11 AM Pacific), you can get this and other fantastic books as part of our latest Humble Bundle. Pay what you want for 14 books from Raspberry Pi Press and learn about Raspberry Pi, retro gaming, and Python.