In early days of personal computers, the only way to get computers fast enough for playing games, was to program them in assembler. I started programming in BASIC on a Sharp MZ80K around 1980 and quickly transitioned to the brand-new ZX81. It was a lot of fun to manually play the role of a compiler, that translated high level ideas into a number of hexadecimal assembler codes, which finally made ZX81 and later the ZX Spectrum, a device for arcade game playing. GoBall (a breakout-version), Spinnen, Spukhaus, Totenkopf were all published in early German Computer Journals. In 1986, I started a series on a hands-on assembler course, which unfortunately only made it to its very first part before the magazine was discontinued (not my fault)...
Totenkopf (1985)
[~skull]
Spukhaus (1985)
[~haunted house]
Spinnen (1985)
[~spiders]
GoBall (1983)
Vom Byte zur Action (1986)
[programming course]