Basic Computer Games (ported to C#, Java, JavaScript, Python, Ruby, VB.NET)

Nice idea, though it looks very incomplete so far – I guess that's why they're recruiting people (on HN and elsewhere) to help finish it up!

I tend to think that simple, self-contained programs and games like this can be a nice onramp to computing. Also it's remarkable that a very small program – such as these BASIC artifacts from the 1970s that managed to run on something like a 1MHz, 8-bit microcontroller with a few kilobytes of memory – can still implement an (arguably) interesting and/or fun game or simulation.

It can also be a fun exercise to write the same program in different languages and compare the results.

I'd still like to see a "write code" button in browsers that opened up a tab where you could easily write (JavaScript) code like this (and maybe even simple graphical games as well, e.g. with a simple canvas/svg + audio + controller API.)

This reminds that that sometime around the year 2000, I bought a boxed "Game Creation Studio" which came with a manual and a CD. IIRC the programming language was similar to Dark BASIC. I don't remember much more than that, but it was fun to edit the sample games like air hockey. It was useful not just for the code but the bundled graphics - I'll never be an artist. I donated it to a charity shop in my teens because I'd moved on to more modern/mainstream programming languages and thought I'd outgrown it. Since becoming an adult, I miss it and ofc can't find it anywhere. So I fully appreciate the effort to preserve classic "self-programmable games/tutorials" in modern languages :)

Probably it would just be better just to create a Basic compiler to WebAssembly, for the dialect being used.