In brief: Usborne classics from the 1980s are now freely available and are being translated by the community into modern, accessible formats.
British publisher Usborne has made PDFs of its computer books from the 1980s freely accessible. In response, a developer reconstructed the classic game “Mad House” from the book “Creepy Computer Games” (1983) as an interactive JavaScript application.
Publisher Usborne has released a collection of its programming books from the 1980s as free PDFs. These books were aimed at beginners and documented concrete coding projects to type in on home computers such as the Commodore 64. The original edition of the game “Mad House” appeared in 1983 in the book “Creepy Computer Games”.
A developer took up the historical template and rebuilt the game as an interactive web application using vanilla JavaScript and HTML. The reconstruction is intended to faithfully represent the look and behavior of the original game while simultaneously functioning on mobile devices. This makes an artifact of early computer culture accessible to contemporary browsers and touchscreens.
Further information on Usborne’s computer and coding books is available at usborne.com/us/books/computer-and-coding-books.
Source: ainews-dev.lumi-systems.io · Published 24 May 2026
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