[username90]

He seems to code an interpreter in scratch and then do the other stuff. Coding an interpreter is a lot easier than coding a game, and after that you really aren't coding in scratch anymore.

Complex minecraft works similarly, instead of working in redstone they make the logic gates and then the bit adders in redstone and then used programming as normal on those constructs.

[jimsmart]

In the case of his Beeb project, the 'interpreter' you speak of here is in fact a fairly full featured emulator. Although yes, the z-machine (Zork) is an interpreter of sorts.

But all of his other games - including the clones of arcade games - aren't emulators nor interpreters. They're just games, written from scratch (pun unintended), from the ground up, in pure Scratch.

After all, his day job is in fact games dev - and with 25+ years experience (I worked with him mid-90s), one could say he's a veteran in that field.

In reality, it depends on the what the game actually is, as to whether it is harder to implement than an emulator or an interpreter. e.g. I strongly suspect that Battleships was much easier to implement than the Beeb emulator was.