The Server Room
“I made a discovery today. I found a computer. Wait a second, this is cool. It does what I want it to. If it makes a mistake, it’s because I screwed it up. Not because it doesn’t like me…”
Corewars
Corewars is a game about writing viruses (aka. warriors) in assembly (specifically Redcode). Redcode is a RISC assembly with niche features like multithreading and relative addressing. Your warrior is then loaded into the core (a VM, usually pMARS) together with another warrior. The warriors compete with each other to trick the other into terminating themselves. The most reliable way to accomplish this is to modify the opponents memory (i.e. instructions or jump addresses). Each warrior fights against multiple other warriors to eventually be rated and get a rank on the hill (or not). Get the first rank to become king of the hill!