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wtf is wire-city-2?

kirindenis/wire-city-2 — explained in plain English

Analysis updated 2026-05-18

12AssemblyAudience · developerComplexity · 5/5LicenseSetup · moderate

TL;DR

A collection of real video games written in 8086 assembly that run in your browser through a DOS emulator, built by a team that maintains legacy computer systems for a living.

Mindmap

mindmap
  root((repo))
    What it does
      DOS games in browser
      8086 assembly code
      DOSBox WASM emulator
    Tech stack
      Assembly and TASM
      VGA graphics
      Python build tools
    Games
      OWL FLY simulator
      WIRE CITY original
    Use cases
      Learn retro coding
      Play browser DOS games
    Audience
      Developers
      Retro hobbyists

Code map

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Why would anyone build with this?

REASON 1

Study real 8086 assembly game code to learn low level programming techniques.

REASON 2

Play retro style DOS games directly in a browser without installing an emulator.

REASON 3

Use the shared engine modules as a starting point for building your own tiny assembly games.

What's in the stack?

AssemblyTASMDOSBox-WASMVGAPython

How it stacks up

kirindenis/wire-city-2nicholas-afk/attochessmytechnotalent/stm32f401_eeprom_driver
Stars121310
LanguageAssemblyAssemblyAssembly
Last pushed2025-11-26
MaintenanceQuiet
Setup difficultymoderatehardhard
Complexity5/55/55/5
Audiencedeveloperresearcherdeveloper

Figures from each repo's GitHub metadata at analysis time.

How do you spin it up?

Difficulty · moderate Time to first run · 1h+

Building requires TASM, Python with Pillow, and local paths configured in a gitignored LOCAL.BAT file.

Game code is MIT licensed, so you can use, copy, and modify it freely, the DOSBox and js-dos runtime that plays the games in the browser is GPL licensed separately.

Wtf does this do

WIRE CITY 86 is a collection of real video games written entirely in 8086 assembly language, the same low level code style used on original 1980s IBM PCs. The games run inside your web browser through a tool called DOSBox WASM, which recreates an old MS DOS computer so the games play exactly as they would have decades ago, with no plugins or installers needed. The project comes from the team behind Owlos, a company whose day job is keeping legacy computer systems running. This project is a hobby built with the same skills. There are two games included. OWL FLY is a combat flight simulator with a procedural island, a city that can be destroyed piece by piece, five types of aircraft split into two air forces, missiles, and a cockpit view with a working radar display, all fit into about 40 kilobytes of code. WIRE CITY is the smaller original game the project is named after, a wireframe night flight over a computer generated city, contained in a single source file of about 5.5 kilobytes. Beyond the finished games, the repository includes reusable engine modules that both games share, plus small standalone teaching programs that show how individual pieces work, such as a hangar demo, a terrain generator, and a flight instrument demo. Written documentation explains the 3D graphics techniques, flight instrument logic, and the overall discipline of fitting a whole game into a tiny amount of memory. To build the project yourself you need Python with the Pillow library plus some local file paths configured, and a single batch file runs the whole build process, including compiling the assembly code and packaging the browser version. The finished site is published through GitHub Pages. The game code itself is released under the MIT license, which allows free use, copying, and modification. The DOSBox and js dos software that plays the games in the browser is separate and uses the GPL license, but that code is only the player, not part of the games themselves. This project would mainly interest people curious about retro computing, assembly programming, or how small, resource limited software used to be built.

Yoink these prompts

Prompt 1
Explain how the OWL FLY flight simulator fits a full 3D flight game into 40 kilobytes of 8086 assembly.
Prompt 2
Walk me through the ENGINE modules in wire-city-2 and how WIRE CITY and OWL FLY both reuse them.
Prompt 3
Help me set up MAKE.BAT to build wire-city-2 on my machine, including the Python and Pillow dependencies.
Prompt 4
Show me how DOSBox-WASM is used to run the wire-city-2 games in a web browser.

Frequently asked questions

wtf is wire-city-2?

A collection of real video games written in 8086 assembly that run in your browser through a DOS emulator, built by a team that maintains legacy computer systems for a living.

What language is wire-city-2 written in?

Mainly Assembly. The stack also includes Assembly, TASM, DOSBox-WASM.

What license does wire-city-2 use?

Game code is MIT licensed, so you can use, copy, and modify it freely, the DOSBox and js-dos runtime that plays the games in the browser is GPL licensed separately.

How hard is wire-city-2 to set up?

Setup difficulty is rated moderate, with roughly 1h+ to a first successful run.

Who is wire-city-2 for?

Mainly developer.

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