The Arcade Machine

The Arcade Machine is a game creation system written by Chris Jochumson and Doug Carlston for the Apple II and published by Brøderbund in 1982. Louis Ewens ported it to Atari 8-bit computers. The game allows players to create alien attacks like those seen in Galaxian. The inbuilt editor allows players to: design/animate enemies, players and explosions; give enemies instructions on moving/firing; draw backgrounds/title screens, create sound effects/music, and set various gameplay rules. Finished games can be saved to a self-booting disk to allow them to run without this program.