Original Asteroids in JavaScript by Static Binary Translation

[norbert_kehrer]

Hi,

 

I am Norbert and just started with HTML5 development. As my first project I tried to port the original Asteroids game from 1979 to JavaScript using the Canvas element.

 

The project is a remake of a Java project of mine from almost ten years ago. I translated Atari's great vector arcade game Asteroids to JavaScript. Asteroids was originally written by Ed Logg of Atari Inc. in 1979, and my JavaScript version was created by applying the method of static binary translation to Ed's code. That means, that the program code originally written in the machine language of the 6502 CPU of the Asteroids machine was converted in a one-to-one manner to JavaScript. The translation was automized by a Java program, which generates semantically equivalent JavaScript code for each 6502 instruction and applies some optimization techniques to the generated program (e.g., removal of redundant flag calculations). The outcome is an exact simulation of the original, first Asteroids game.

 

Here is the link to the game: http://members.aon.at/~nkehrer/ast_js/AsteroidsJS.html

 

And here is a screenshot:

 

 

Sound and timing have still some potential for improvement.

 

Greetings

 

Norbert