What sets Iratahack games apart?
All games available here are hand-coded in Z80 assembly language, built from scratch with painstaking care and a deep love for the hardware. No game engines, just old-school craftsmanship and thousands of lines of hand-tuned code.
Why Make Games the Hard Way?
You might be wondering: Why take such a convoluted path to make games when modern tools make it so easy? Our answer? Why climb a mountain? Because you can—and because it’s fun. (Well, “fun” might be a subjective term in this context.)
We don’t do this because it’s easy—we do it because it’s meaningful. Writing code directly for 8-bit and 16-bit machines is a way to connect with the hardware, to unlock every byte of performance, and to carry forward a tradition that’s too often lost in today’s drag-and-drop world.
The Birth of Wee Knight
Rewind to March 2020. The world was shutting down. Offices were closed, streets were silent, and isolation became the new normal. Amid the uncertainty, many people turned to creative projects—and IrataHack was no exception.
During those long, quiet evenings—what we jokingly called “Week Nights”—the first lines of code for Wee Knight: Castle Escape were written. Built for the ZX Spectrum, this humble little project quickly grew into something bigger: a full-fledged game series, born out of lockdown and brought to life on silicon older than some of today’s developers.
More Games, More Platforms
After Castle Escape came Forest Escape and Pyramid Escape, completing the Wee Knight Trilogy on the ZX Spectrum. But we didn’t stop there.
The adventure expanded to other classic systems, including the Sega Master System, Aquarius+, and more. Each port presented its own challenges—and its own opportunities to push vintage hardware in new and exciting ways.
Whether you’re a lifelong retro gamer or a curious newcomer, these titles offer a unique blend of nostalgia and novelty. They’re not just games; they’re love letters to a golden era of computing.