Lunar Lander

My first computer was the Commodore VIC-20. It had just 5 kilobytes of RAM, and when you plugged it into your TV the screen was only about 24 characters across. When you turned on the VIC-20, you could start typing BASIC programs like the following program to count, starting at 1 and going forever:

10  X = 1
20  PRINT X
30  X = X + 1
40  GOTO 20

I was hooked! Somewhere, I obtained a printout of the BASIC program for a game called “Lunar Lander”. It was, perhaps, 50–100 lines of BASIC code. The game was entirely textual. As your lander approached the lunar surface a printout on the screen would report your altitude, speed, and remaining fuel. I modified the program so that when I hit various function keys, it would make the sound of rocket thrust using the VIC-20’s built-in noise generator: “Chchchhhhh…..cheeeeeeeee”… The game was stored on an attachable cassette tape drive and was eventually lost to time. But I remember the VIC-20 version with a great deal of nostalgia.

During my summer break of 2026, I created this animated version of Lunar Lander while learning to use Claude Code. I showed the game to an English Major friend of mine and offered to demonstrate coding with AI by having her give me a feature suggestion. She said: “Ok, make all the aliens hot pink and have them wear silly hats.” <type> <type> <type> and 60 seconds later Claude had successfully fulfilled her request. (This is why the aliens in the game are now hot pink.)

“Oh……!”, she said. “AI is pretty cool!”