As part of undergrad we had to implement space invaders on a Zync FPGA so you got to choose which bits you did in hardware and what was in software. It was a blast seeing what people came up with as you could do “extras” that gave you bonus points. Someone built a simple microphone frequency analysis block so you could go left, right, and fire by playing notes on a recorder.
One of my first programs was a Space Invaders-style game, in Machine Code, on a VIC20.
Not particularly impressive, but it did teach me stuff.
>on a Zync FPGA so you got to choose which bits you did in hardware and what was in software.
You mean verilog vs block diagram, or did those boards have like a microcontroller too for more normal software?