Nanolathe is the latest example of a fascinating subgenre of real-time strategy game: Chris Taylor's 1997 hit Total Annihation but with something more. Nanolathe offers an open source MIT-licensed 2.5D RTS engine reimplementing the original plus three decades of the quality-of-life tweaks: a perfect access point for anyone who played it way back when but might now be intimidated by Beyond All Reason's sprawling 150-player Götterdämmerungs. — Read the rest

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Id Software's 1992 shooter Doom now runs on toothbrushes, alarm clocks and all sorts of other modern gadgets that contain tiny supercomputers. But it doesn't run on the 8-bit home computers (or even 16-bit ones) that are even older than it is. — Read the rest

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In the early days of computer game development, Star Trek was a popular topic for young programmers with access to mainframes. Players could hunt Klingon ships across the galaxy's numbered sectors while conserving their dilithium crystals and photon torpedoes. The programs were copied, edited and expanded by those who played them—or just made over from scratch. — Read the rest

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