I spent six years of my early childhood on my Commodore 64, between ages 6 and 12. I wrote many programs, all using the built-in BASIC language, learning everything I could from reading the Commodore 64 Programmer’s Reference Guide and typing in program listings from Compute!’s Gazette magazine. I learned a lot from writing BASIC programs, but the one lesson I took away over and over again was this: to make anything really cool, like Marble Madness or Skyfox, I’d need to know machine language.

Machine language felt like dark magic. In Compute!’s Gazette, all the games with the cool graphics and high speed action were printed as columns of numbers, a pages-long incantation that if you typed it correctly would conjure a video game. The Programmer’s Reference had a chapter on machine language that I stared at endlessly trying to make sense of it, but it only made a passing reference to the fact that I needed additional software to write it. If I were older or had a friend with more experience, I would have known what utility cartridge to ask my parents for as a birthday gift, but it was too much for my kid self to figure out all by myself in a basement.

In fairness, Compute!’s Gazette did publish the occasional machine language coding tool, like Fast Assembler in the January 1986 issue. The companion disk to the issue even included the source code for Fast Assembler itself, the first time I had ever seen a complete machine language program listing. I remember making a small change and running the assembler on its own code, which produced a new version of the assembler that printed my name instead of its own. But that’s as far as I got.

In this issue of the Digest, we’re going to answer the questions I had when I was a kid. What is machine language? What is an assembler? And what in the name of Chuck E. Cheese is hexadecimal? We’ll also look at ways you can start learning machine language right now with your MEGA65.

Featured Files

It’s time once again for Featured Files, where we highlight stuff you can download from the Filehost and try with your MEGA65 today!

Mega Wizards, by RBJeffrey. A game for one to four players, using the joysticks. Use your wizardly wiles to bounce the magic ball, take out your enemies, and defend your crystal. Three and four players require a four-player joystick interface.

WORDUP by geehaf. A faithful variant of the popular daily word game Wordle, playable on your MEGA65. Guess the secret five-letter word in six or fewer tries, using hints produced by each guess.

xmas65 by MirageBD. A holiday greeting for the MEGA65 community with an impressive graphical effect and a rockin’ MOD-style backing track.

New Intro Disk!

The intro disk is the first thing you see when you turn on the MEGA65 for the first time, a bundle of games, demos, and m