AI Can't Recreate Thrust, But It Helps Decode Its Physics
AI Can't Recreate the Thrust Game (But It Can Help You Understand It)
I asked Claude to rebuild the classic 1986 game Thrust, but the result was unplayable slop. However, using Claude as a tool for software archaeology allowed me to interrogate the original 6502 assembly code. By understanding the precise timing gates and fixed-point arithmetic hidden in the source, I finally recreated the game's unique weight and feel, proving that AI excels at explaining legacy code rather than generating it from scratch.
Creating a Thrust-like game with normal physics is trivial, particularly using a coding AI. Recreating Thrust with all its specific feel and weight required understanding exactly how the original worked, right down to the timing of individual physics updates within the game loop.
- aenis
Funny. I had claude recreate Thrust based on wiki article alone - and it nailed it. I then spent a week trying to implement a perfect autopilot for it. And then a solveable level generator. I have this running as a screen saver in one of my apps.
- AndrewKemendo
I tried to use his writeup to oneshot the game and you can see my results here along with the prompts I used:
https://kemendo.com/thrust-one-shot.html
Notably while the game "works" it's not even close to an a "reproduction" as far as I can tell - moreso an interpretation.
This has one level that doesn't level increment, none of the adversarial sprites are correct and the color and iconography are incorrect.
Granted I didn't give it much to work with but I figured I'd see what happens. As far as one shots go, I've seen worse.
I used commodity GPT 5.6 HIGH on firefox via chat interface
- iainmerrick
Your reconstruction is so close, I'm a little surprised you didn't stick with the original controls! Even though the BBC had a rather weird layout for all the non-alphanumeric keys.
It's been a very long time since I played Thrust, and I've played plenty of WASD games in the meantime, but it still felt really strange to control it that way rather than the classic BBC Z/X/*/? for left/right/up/down.
Pretty sure it was return to fire, space for shield/tractor; and maybe * for thrust? Edit to add: ah, no, shift to thrust. Works very well on modern keyboards too.
- cortesoft
I feel like a lot of the success of an AI project currently still comes down to the skills of the operator. I don't think it is possible to say "AI can't create this because I told AI to create it and it failed" any more than you can say "You can't write this in Rust because I tried and failed."
There is still a TON of skill involved in guiding an AI to create something, and how good it turns out has a lot to do with how the AI development process went.
- heaney-555
I hate when people say "AI" without specifying which model. It's like saying "plane" without specifying if you're talking about a Cessna or an F-22 Raptor.
> I asked Claude
There is no such thing as 'Claude'. Claude is a brand of model, some incredibly dumb and some incredibly capable. Was this 4.6 Sonnet? 5 Fable? Without specifying, the post is essentially meaningfless.