On: Let's write a video game from scratch like it's 19...

[space_oddity]

The complexity and creativity of early video games from the 1980s and even earlier are truly impressive

[another2another → space_oddity]

Yes, what people managed in pure assembly language was really impressive.

Unsurprisingly though they also spent a lot of time developing a lot of time-saving tools, like macro assemblers and higher level languages like C.

Probably the games on the Amiga and Atari ST was the last heyday of these kinds of development.