Imagesource: https://johnearnest.github.io/

Someone once said that you only become a real-programmer™, if you have implemented a CHIP-8 emulator at least once. Whether or not this is true, we don't want to judge here, but John Weisbecker's Micro-VM for his RCA 1802 design is a more than perfect target for an emulator. And the instruction set is so small, that within a short time you have a working emulator, for which there are plenty of games and other programs available even today. 

But what if you want a little more? John Earnest has taken an in-depth look at CHIP-8, and his project Octo was supposed to go into one of our issues a year ago. (Somehow got lost…)

🐙 Octo is a high-level assembler for CHIP-8 and introduces a number of macros, that make programming much easier. However, Octo is also a complete IDE including an emulator that runs directly in the browser. 21 sample projects make it easier to get started with the language, the speed of the emu can be adjusted, and your own creations can easily be shared via a URL.

Kind of like PICO-8 but in simple.

If you want to get to grips with CHIP-8, you should definitely not miss Octo. Ingenious project!