A list of playable boot sector games, most of which are on github. Fun to play, great to learn from. There are also many cool non-booting boot sectors out there that aren't games (so more like demos), but this page is just reserved to interactive boot sectors / games. This list is also not complete, but not on purpose, it is a best effort collection of games, so if you know of any fun boot sector games, please contribute.
This page lists a collection of 31 games spanning several authors: nanochess, me, daniel-e, shikhin, JulianSlzr, XanClic, QiZD90, darkvoxels, guyhill, w-shackleton, egtzori, VileR, ish_works, franeklubi, queso_fuego, franeklubi, Jethro82, waternine9, tevoran, palma3k, taylor-hartman. peterferrie should also be mentioned as he has touched a lot of these games.
https://github.com/daniel-e/tetros
Tetris Clone. Full color, no score. This was one of the older boot sector games out there.
https://github.com/shikhin/tetranglix
Includes score, but not full color. A writeup of this game was found in issue 3 of PoC||GTFO as Tetranglix: This Tetris is a Boot Sector
A significant contribution by @nanochess was made to add color to this version of tetris:
https://github.com/XlogicX/tetranglix
https://github.com/JulianSlzr/project512
A basic snake/nibbles clone with score
https://github.com/XanClic/512-petty-bird
Good physics, but not as good graphics as FBird
https://github.com/XlogicX/tronsolitare
A little bit like 1-player tron, but with power-ups and traps with snake/nibbles like strategies. Complex and progressive scoring system and winnable.
https://github.com/QiZD90/dasher512
A simple puzzle game with 2 levels. Slide from wall to wall, trying to solve a puzzle and reach the finish. The game looks like Atomix, but without atoms.
https://xlogicx.net/BootMe_-_CrackMe.html
Not the traditional arcade game, this is a bootable polymorphic quine meant for the reverse engineer. At the prompt, enter 'd' and see a hex dump of itself. Entering 'i' at the propmt gives the player the oprotunity to enter an ASCII hex byte, and the game will insert this byte into itself, changing its own DNA. Enter the correct byte, you win.
https://github.com/darkvoxels/battlesnakes
This is basically Tron, it supports 2-players (at once).
https://github.com/nanochess/fbird
A Flappy Bird clone with reasonably better graphics than the previous petty bird version
https://github.com/guyhill/Boot-Man
This is a PacMan clone with individual Ghost AI and working power pills. This game is in text-mode
Another PacMan clone and even programmed around the same time as Boot-Man. Though there are no power pills in this version, it's the smooth graphics-mode that sets this version apart.
https://github.com/nanochess/Pillman
https://github.com/nanochess/Invaders
A graphics-mode clone of Invaders, very playable and difficult.
https://github.com/XlogicX/BootSlide
A Boot Sector implementation of the physical 15 number sliding tile puzzle. The object is to get the numbers in order. This game supports an 'evil' mode; there is a small chance the tiles will be red, which is an unsolvable orientation.
https://github.com/XlogicX/Validation
This is a game that is social commentary on social media. It is not very fun to play and the mechanics work like a slot machine. A much fuller description can be found on the github page.
https://github.com/nanochess/bootRogue
A Rogue-like dungeon crawler RPG with HP, enemies, traps, food (increases HP), swords (increases attack), and armor (increases defense). The goal is to go through 26 randomly procedurally generated dungeons and retreive the amulet of yendor, you then must come back up through another 26 dungeons. If it's any boot sector game to try, this is definitely the one to try.
https://www.pouet.net/prod.php?which=67997
A racing game with a very clever use of code-437 graphics
https://github.com/nanochess/bricks
An Arkanoid/Breakout clone
https://github.com/nanochess/cubicDoom
A 3d ray-casting shooter. Shoot all of the cubes in the room before they touch and kill you to get to the next level. One of the most impressive boot sector games from a graphical standpoint
https://github.com/XlogicX/lightsout
A boot sector clone of an old classic 90's puzzle where you have to turn off all of the lights. Selecting a light will toggle that light and the 4 surrounding lights. This game comes with an 'evil' unsolvable mode (displayed with red lights when it happens).
https://github.com/w-shackleton/snake-in-my-boot
Another snake clone. Though there are many snake-like boot sector clones, the thing that makes this one unique is that the main 'business logic' was written in C (though there are many routines written in assembly).
Though the code is written really well, this is a good example of the bloat that a compiler can add to something as small as a boot sector. Below is a fork that demonstrates a true-to-the-original assembly source (snake.asm) and a heavily commented and optimized version (snake2.asm) that shaves off 40% of the bytes that the compiler didn't need to add
https://github.com/XlogicX/snake-in-my-boot
https://ish.works/bootsector/sokoban.asm
A really great looking Sokoban clone
https://github.com/egtzori/4inabs
A connect4 clone, intended to be played with 2 players
https://github.com/nanochess/lights
A Simon clone
https://github.com/nanochess/Toledo-Atomchess
A chess game with computer AI
https://github.com/franeklubi/dino
Dino is a game that's based on Chrome's t-rex runner game! This clone has nice graphics and smooth gameplay
https://gitlab.com/queso_fuego/bootsector-pong
A Pong clone with fairly challenging 'AI'
https://github.com/Jethro82/Boot-Sector-Games
A timed procedurally generated maze game, can you get to the finish before the timer runs out?
https://github.com/waternine9/bootsector-atari-breakout-x86
"You can't break the blocks, but everything else is good"
https://github.com/tevoran/x86-Pong
A pong clone with some basic CPU AI for tracking the ball
https://gitlab.com/Palma3000/rainbowsnakeos
A very fast paced snake game in graphics mode with a colorful snake. It's a quickly winnable game with SNAKE_MAX_LENGTH = 0xF, so don't give up.
https://github.com/taylor-hartman/codegolf
A Golf game with a few challenging levels and a winnable state. This game is equally a game of skill as it is a puzzle game. This is an excellent and fun game to play.
Hello, I wrote RainbowSnakeOS, a 512 byte OS and snake video game written in 16-bit x86 assembly language (FASM). It can be run from boot sector and MS DOS as .com application. Can you add my game to list?
https://gitlab.com/Palma3000/rainbowsnakeos
https://palma3000.itch.io/rainbowsnakeos