I worked at a place where we used one of Steve Ciarcias circuits - the 8052-AH Basic module and used it as a security controller. We took the circuit as it was in the magazine, and built it and added some optocouplers and it worked, it was unique. Upon thought, I think we also used an 8051 microcontroller circuit as well.
Ciarcia could be so prolific because most of his circuits were centered around an integrated circuit such as a CPU, voice synthesizer, graphics controller, etc.
Many of his projects were really a fully realized example of an example circuit from the project datasheet as opposed to an adventure in discrete logic such as Steve Wozniak's "Breakout with 44 chips."
