Building a Tetris Clone in X86 Assembly, Pt. Ⅰ: Hello, World

Tetris seems to be one of those games that people love to size-optimise in Asm; here&#x27;s a few in the &lt;512b category:<p><a href="http:&#x2F;&#x2F;www.pouet.net&#x2F;prod.php?which=33942" rel="nofollow">http:&#x2F;&#x2F;www.pouet.net&#x2F;prod.php?which=33942</a><p><a href="http:&#x2F;&#x2F;www.pouet.net&#x2F;prod.php?which=6951" rel="nofollow">http:&#x2F;&#x2F;www.pouet.net&#x2F;prod.php?which=6951</a><p>There was a competition too, based on a standard appearance and behaviour, and the winner is 363 bytes:<p><a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;files.scene.org&#x2F;view&#x2F;mags&#x2F;hugi&#x2F;compos&#x2F;hc22fin.zip" rel="nofollow">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;files.scene.org&#x2F;view&#x2F;mags&#x2F;hugi&#x2F;compos&#x2F;hc22fin.zip</a><p>Vaguely related; chess game in 487 bytes:<p><a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;news.ycombinator.com&#x2F;item?id=8954630" rel="nofollow">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;news.ycombinator.com&#x2F;item?id=8954630</a>

It&#x27;s not 100% related but I had great fun building a very minimal Tetris clone in 6502 assembly, for the C=64, a couple of years ago (the code is &quot;kinda&quot; commented):<p><a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;github.com&#x2F;cjauvin&#x2F;tetris-464" rel="nofollow">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;github.com&#x2F;cjauvin&#x2F;tetris-464</a>

Is anybody able to get the repo running? &#x27;make qemu&#x27; simply shows a blank screen and exits. But the repo seems much farther along than the blog post.

there&#x27;s no comment section there so i&#x27;d figure i&#x27;d ask here: what is that font that it outputs? is that part of BIOS or something? or part of boot loader or PXE server?<p>i assumed asm was the lowest level, is there some builtin font by default that can&#x27;t be changed or something?