squeepty/bomb-jacques-mo5

Bomb Jacques is a one screen arcade game built for the Thomson MO5, a French home computer from the 1980s, written entirely in Motorola 6809 assembly language. The project has two goals: to be a genuinely fun game in the style of 1985 MO5 arcade titles, and to double as a heavily documented learning resource for anyone who wants to understand how a game for this old machine is put together. The source code favors clear labels, small routines, and companion documentation over clever tricks, so a reader can follow how the game is assembled, loaded, drawn to the screen, controlled, and expanded. The current release, called V2, is inspired by the arcade game Bomb Jack but is not a conversion of it, it asks what a single-screen bomb-collecting game would look like if it had been made specifically for the MO5. The player character, Jacques, moves around a fixed arena full of platforms, bombs, and enemies, trying to collect every bomb while avoiding getting hit. One bomb is always highlighted as the current target and is worth more points than the others. The game includes a title screen, a hall of fame with high score name entry, ten handcrafted levels that loop after level ten, sound effects made from the MO5's simple one-bit buzzer, and a points and lives system with bonus items that add points, freeze enemies temporarily, or restore a lost life. Controls work through the keyboard as a fallback, using Q and D to move, space to jump, and the standard MO5 joystick when one is connected. There is also a cheat code that can be entered on the title screen to make enemies harmless and let you skip levels. To build the game, you need the lwtools 6809 assembler, installable through Homebrew, and Node.js, which powers a cassette image generator and a browser based sprite editor included in the project. Running the provided build script produces a cassette image that can be loaded in the DCMOTO emulator or on real MO5 hardware. A prebuilt cassette image is already included in the repository for anyone who just wants to try the game without building it themselves.