Oh man, I COMPLETELY missed the REAL news of 2020:
Microsoft open-sourced GW-BASIC (from 1983)
https://devblogs.microsoft.com/commandline/microsoft-open-sources-gw-basic/
<< I was 13, and spent every spare second that I wasn’t finishing my homework or doing my chores, writing BASIC and assembly code on one of the hottest home computers of the time – the BBC Micro sporting 32KB RAM (yes, 32,768 bytes, total!), powered by a 6502 processor running at a BLAZING 2MHz. When not coding, I was usually playing one of the most groundbreaking games of all time: “Elite” by David Braben & Ian Bell. >>
@natecull Elite was amazing at the time. I played it on the Spectrum like crazy. 😅
@tsturm @natecull I'd argue it's the best game of all time. This is partly because it was groundbreaking, being the first open-world game, the first game that could be played with no ending, the first space flight game, (one of) the first 3D games, etc, etc.
But it's also because it was a phenomenally good game to play. I think the viability of its gameplay can be seen in the current incarnation, Elite Dangerous, which has gameplay remarkably similar to its 35 year old predecessor.
Hope you've seen the fully annotated and cross-linked Elite disassembly at
https://www.bbcelite.com/
@EdS @loke @natecull Yes! That is some amazing work.