Steviesaurus Dev
About
Retro inspired games by Steve.
I've had a love of both gaming and Commodore since I was 9 years old. As a kid I always wanted to be able to create games. I would try a little BASIC here and there but didn't have the patience to ever get close to creating anything. Eventually, my desire to write code led me to be a professional developer. With the modern tools and AI driven development these days, I find myself again wanting to go back to a simpler time. Not to say that I don't like modern coding environments, but I love the simple machines and limitations. So this is my place for having fun writing real old school code for game like I always wanted to do as a kid.
Keeping it BASIC
Some may wonder why I'm building BASIC games, and a lot of it goes back to the familiarity with my first C64. So I'm kind of creating a story with my current BASIC project based on a kid in the early 80's that just got his first computer, and the journey he takes to start making games.
- the first program would probably be a text base adventure type game the would only consist of the main BASIC statements
- the next would be more action based having PEEK and POKE's to start doing some custom things, such as custom characters and direct screen register updates (The Munching Millipede)
- then it would be time to move on to sprites and animations, in Methane Mayhem I'm using all 8 sprites with 16 animation frames
- after that he would probably be starting to reach the limits of what can be done in BASIC, and would start looking into Assembly
Contributing to the Community
My journey into rediscovering BASIC has also led me to contribute to the VS64 extension for VSCODE. I use some of my own build processes to help my source code stay clean and readable, and have now added my variable name alias system to the open source project. Read more about it in this post: https://itch.io/blog/1647827/variable-name-aliases-for-c64-basic-in-vs64
Current Projects
- Methane Mayhem is my current C64 BASIC project, and I welcome testers to try it out while I'm still working on it
- The Munching Millipede is still receiving updates, but just finishing touches, next may be some other ports to expand my horizons
- I'm working on UFO Intercept here and there, a Space Invaders type game, but it's a lower priority as I really prefer the C64 projects at this time
- I recently imported my very first game into my GitHub account, and have rebranded it as UFO Intercept: Tactical Stand, it's a Battleship type game
In the Media
Compute's Gazette (April 2026)
I am honored to have been interviewed in an article named " BASIC Is Not Dead", and answer questions about my decision to develop games in 2026 in BASIC for the Commodore 64. Specifically they wanted to know about the development of The Munching Millipede. What started it, what parts of the language I used, and mostly why BASIC.
Played Games
