Inkbox Software has released a recreation of a beloved isometric arcade game that runs directly from a PC’s Unified Extensible Firmware Interface (UEFI). Moreover, they coded their version of Zaxxon (1982) in x86-64 Assembly language, and have generously released it as open source under the GPLv3 license. There have been prior UEFI games and apps, but they are often incomplete or limited demos, and run within the UEFI as payloads, rather than booting directly to the game.
In the above video, Inkbox explains the reason they decided to begin this classic arcade gaming UEFI coding quest. In brief, our assembly coding hero says that they were “so tired of operating systems holding me back,” and that they wanted their hardware to run a classic game as it was meant to be played. That means “Written in assembly, without an operating system,” asserts Inkbox. “This is total freedom from big tech. Reject OS, Return to metal.”
Of course, there are significant hurdles to creating a handsome and responsive Zaxxon port for a PC UEFI. You can learn how Inkbox navigated this difficult path in their extensive and in-depth, yet engrossing video.
As if assembly coding wasn’t tricky enough, the developer battled through UEFI limitations regarding timings, keyboard input, and graphic output. For example, the default UEFI keyboard was described as “absolutely garbage for game input,” by Inkbox, as it has a built-in delay, which is terrible for gaming. So a responsive mouse/joystick control was devised. For graphics, an engine had to be coded to replicate a retro console Picture Processing Unit (PPU).
Such wrinkles were eventually ironed out, though, and the video ends with a demo of the assembly-coded OS-less Zaxxon remake running at a buttery-smooth 128FPS. There is no sound in the game, though.
This game “will run on any x86_64 machine,” says Inkbox, as long as it supports UEFI. Further details about getting this Zaxxon game up and running are available on the Space Game for x64 GitHub, alongside the code and other resources.
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