BeepMini - a Retro Gaming Experience

A couple of months ago, while clearing out my grandfather’s attic, I stumbled across a box of electrical components and a stack of old floppy disks. Among the odds and ends was a device that resembled the original Gameboy—but it had to be over 40 years old.

I’d never seen anything like it. My grandfather was a tech genius, always ahead of his time, but this was new, even to me. Searching online didn’t bring up any leads, either.

The machine looked a little homemade, yet somehow finished. Like the Gameboy, it had a D-pad, two numbered buttons, and a start button. There was also a power switch and a slot for floppy disks. The screen? Portrait, like he was predicting mobile phones of the future.

Seeing the pile of disks gave me flashbacks to my childhood—loading and unloading them endlessly for games like Theme Park and Syndicate. But it had been years since I’d handled a floppy disk, and I didn’t have a way to read them. After some digging, I managed to buy a USB floppy drive on eBay (turns out they’re still a thing, and cheap too).

When I finally loaded the disks, I found code for all sorts of games. I’ve been making games as a hobby since the late ’90s, using all sorts of different programming languages, so I dove right in. While I’m much better with software than hardware, I started poring over the code.

What I discovered blew my mind—there are dozens of games in various stages of development. Despite being over 40 years old, many of them are surprisingly advanced and fun to play. Since I have the code I am now adapting them to work online, and that’s what you’ll (eventually) find on this website: a collection of games for the Beep8 console.

I still have no idea who made the console or how my grandfather got his hands on it. But I really want feel a sense of duty to preserve these games and share them with future generations.

Follow along on social to see what I uncover next!