A remake of the ZX Spectrum 48K game River Raid (1984, Activision) in Go using the Ebiten game engine. The game logic was reverse-engineered from the original via an annotated disassembly (source).
A WebAssembly build is available at river-raid.github.io.
The faithful reimplementation is a foundation for a potential modernized remake. The mechanics would be preserved exactly as reverse-engineered, with the presentation brought up to date:
- Resolution — render at native target resolution rather than scaling up the 256×192 ZX Spectrum screen
- Frame rate — smooth gameplay to 60 FPS; the original's 12 FPS is a result of suboptimal implementation, not a design choice
- Sprites — replace the monochrome pixel bitmaps with full-color, higher-resolution artwork
- Audio — replace the 1-bit beeper with sampled sound effects and music
- Touch controls — make the game playable on mobile devices