Most of us have old projects sitting somewhere. Maybe it’s a folder on an old computer, a half-finished idea, or something we built years ago and haven’t thought about since. At the time, there was probably a reason we stopped working on it. We got busy, technology changed, or something else became more important. That doesn’t always mean the idea stopped being useful. Even if it isn’t useful anymore, that doesn’t mean it isn’t worth bringing back.
Going Back to Old Code
Recently, we went back to some old games we had built years ago. They were fun projects from a different time, built with different technology, and eventually they were put aside as we moved on to other things. Years later, we decided to open them back up and see what we could do with them.
The original GamePack came together at Concrete Software, Inc. in the mid-1990s, when handheld computing still felt like a glimpse of the future and software arrived on cards you could hold in your hand. It was a true team effort: David Newton served as project manager and led quality assurance, Mike Sullivan wrote Draw Poker and Domination, and Rob Campbell wrote Code Breaker.
We have tools today that simply didn’t exist when these games were first created. Using AI, we were able to work through the old code, make updates, fix what needed fixing, and put some new life into something that had been sitting around for years. Just for fun, we’re hosting one of our game projects again at games.troyonline.com →.
Part of the reason for doing it was simply because it was fun. Not every old project needs to turn into a new product or have some big business purpose. Sometimes it’s interesting to see something you made years ago working again. It becomes a small piece of your own history and a reminder of what you were building, learning, and experimenting with at the time.
The value of reviving an old project isn’t always what it becomes. Sometimes it’s what it helps you remember.
When we asked AI to assess the old code, it told us, “The architecture is impressively disciplined for its time: registered windows, virtual function tables, resource-driven screens, persistent models, and separate game engines.” Who doesn’t want to hear that about something they built years ago?
AI Can Make Revisiting Practical
We hear a lot about using AI to create something new, but it can also make it easier to revisit things we’ve already created. Old code can be difficult to understand, especially when it hasn’t been touched in years or was built using technology that has changed since then. Having better tools to work through that code can make the idea of going back to an old project much more realistic than it used to be.
Sometimes there may even be something worth building on:
- An old internal tool might still solve a real problem.
- A product that never made it to launch might have been limited by the technology available at the time.
- An unfinished idea might be much easier to finish today.
The project may be old, but the reason it was created could still be relevant.
Some Projects Are Worth Keeping
Of course, some projects are better left in the past. But there’s also something valuable about keeping a history of the things we’ve made. Not everything needs to disappear just because the technology around it moved on. AI gives us another way to go back, understand what we built, and decide whether there’s still something there worth keeping.
Our games are a small example of that. They aren’t changing the world, and that’s kind of the point. We had something we enjoyed building, new tools gave us a way to bring it back, and now it gets to live somewhere other than a floppy disk in a drawer. At the very least, it was fun to revisit something we built years ago and give it another life.
So if you have an old project sitting on a hard drive, tucked away on a set of floppies, or even stashed in a cloud backup somewhere, it might be worth opening it again. Maybe there’s still a useful idea buried in there, or maybe it’s just something you’d enjoy seeing work again. Either way, the tools we have today make it a lot easier to find out.
Want to See What We Brought Back?
Take a break and play a few of the old games we brought back to life with a little help from AI.