About Monster

Monster is an all-in-one environment for writing 6502 assembly programs natively on the Commodore VIC-20.

This project was inspired by my desire to spend more time using real hardware to write programs for fun. It began in 2016 when I was looking for a 40 column editor/assembler for the Vic-20 but found nothing even close. Since then the project has grown into a complete development system with features never dreamed of in its original outline (a source level debugger and linker to name two of them). I had a lot of fun making Monster. I've poured a huge chunk of my life into it, which I believe you will feel when iteracting with it. The slow evolution from its initial conception led to numerous features that I dreamed up along the journey.

Most importantly, with its release, I've found it an immense joy to use. While it has taken FAR longer than I intended to realize (I thought it would be a nice project for a couple weeks of holiday vacation), I think using it has turned out to be far beyond my wildest imagination at that time. It elates me to finally write assembly programs on the friendly computer itself. Especially as the spirit of programming gets so far removed from the tactile experience, I find it immensely joyful and comforting to sit down at a 1MHz machine and slowly build a program byte-by-byte. I hope you will too! :)

If you'd like to support Monster's continued development (including forthcoming ports to the Commodore 64 and other Commodore 8-bits), follow Monster on Patreon or purchase a physical cartridge from the store. Read the online manual to see all that Monster is capable of.