The following table contains all thirty-five instructions in the CHIP-8 instruction set. NNN refers to a hexadecimal memory address. NN refers to a hexadecimal byte. N refers to a hexadecimal nibble. X and Y refer to registers.

CHIP-8 is an interpreted minimalist programming language that was designed by Joseph Weisbecker in the 1970s for use on the RCA COSMAC VIP computer. Due to its hexadecimal format, it was best suited to machines with a scarcity of memory, as minimal text processing had to be performed by the interpreter before a program could be executed. This property inevitably led to its implementation on a variety of hobbyist computers aside from the VIP, such as the COSMAC ELF, Telmac 1800, and ETI 660.

This article is meant to address some of the practical implications of the Chip8 instruction set and how it can be applied to writing games. Examples will be given using Octo assembler, but should be easy to translate into the assembler of your choice or raw Chip8 bytecode.

This document builds on concepts described in the Octo readme and beginner’s programming guide, and presents step by step instructions for creating a simple arcade-style game with Octo, along with the rationale behind design decisions.

This document is meant to allow someone with little to no experience programming to ease into working with Octo and Chip8. It introduces basic programming concepts as well as the features of the Octo programming language.

Emulators So… what is an emulator? Let’s say you want to play an old game from the MS-DOS era. You have the DUKE3D.EXE file, you launch it and …nothing happens. But why? Old syste…