🕹️ Basicade

Basicade preserves retro computing history by bringing original 1970s and 1980s BASIC software to the modern web. By porting classic interpreters (Bywater BASIC, RetroBASIC) to WebAssembly, it runs raw .bas source code directly in JavaScript environments—no emulators or syntax rewrites required.

Features

• 🎮 Playable Arcade: Play The Oregon Trail, Hammurabi, Lunar Lander, and Super Star Trek directly in your browser.
• 📦 NPM Packages: Import bwbasic-wasm or retrobasic-wasm to run legacy BASIC code inside your own JS/TS applications.
• 📜 100% Original Code: Runs raw .bas source code without changing line numbers, commands, or dialect syntax.
• ⚡ WebAssembly Powered: High-performance runtime isolation powered by Emscripten and SharedArrayBuffer worker threads.

Repository Structure

Basicade/
├── packages/
│   ├── bwbasic-wasm/     # Bywater BASIC WASM port (ANSI Minimal BASIC)
│   └── retrobasic-wasm/  # RetroBASIC WASM port (70s/80s microcomputer dialects)
├── demos/                # In-browser launcher, terminal UI, and Web Worker thread
├── examples/             # Curated historical .bas programs & provenance records
├── interpreters/         # Vendored C source code for underlying engines
└── test/                 # Cross-interpreter integration & launcher tests

Development

Basicade requires Node.js 18 or later. Building the interpreter binaries also requires Emscripten; RetroBASIC additionally needs Bison and Flex.

# Installs dependencies
npm install

# Creates Wasm builds
npm run build:wasm

# Runs the demo
npm run dev

# Format, lint, and test
npm run all

The launcher opens at:

http://localhost:5173/oregon-trail/

Use ?interpreter=retrobasic to run the same program with RetroBASIC. The catalogue also supports ?game=<id>&interpreter=<id> for every selection.

Deploying the demo to GitHub Pages

The demo is automatically deployed to GitHub Pages using GitHub Actions upon push to main if CI and build jobs succeed.

AI Disclaimer

Basicade was designed and built with assistance from several Large Language Models:

• Architecture & Planning: Early setup, design planning, and strategy were assisted by ChatGPT.
• Execution & Integration: Core implementation—including WebAssembly compilation/packaging, catalog management, game wiring, testing, and deployment workflows—was developed in collaboration with Codex and ChatGPT 5.6.

License and Sources

Copyrightable contributions to Basicade are licensed under the MIT License in the repository root, except where a file or distributable artifact states otherwise. That license does not relicense vendored interpreters, their derived WASM packages, third-party test fixtures, or historical program listings. Those components retain the terms and notices below, see NOTICE.