help, some discoveries about the game would have been difficult to make." A color version of the Game of Life was written by Ed Hall in 1976 for Cromemco microcomputers, and a display from that program filled the cover of the June 1976 issue of Byte. The advent of microcomputer-based color graphics from Cromemco has been credited with a revival of interest in the game. Two early implementations of the Game of Life on home computers were by Malcolm Banthorpe written in BBC BASIC. The first was in the January 1984 issue of Acorn User magazine, and Banthorpe followed this with a three-dimensional version in the May 1984 issue. Susan Stepney, Professor of Computer Science at the University of York, followed this up in 1988 with Life on the Line, a program that generated one-dimensional cellular automata. There are now thousands of Game of Life programs online, so a full list will not be provided here. The following is a small selection of programs with some special claim to notability, such as popularity or unusual features. Most of these programs incorporate a graphical user interface for pattern editing and simulation, the capability for simulating multiple rules including the Game of Life, and a large library of interesting patterns in the Game of Life and other cellular automaton rules. Golly is a cross-platform (Windows, Macintosh, Linux, iOS, and Android) open-source simulation system for the Game of Life and other cellular automata (including all Life-like cellular automata, the Generations family of cellular automata from Mirek's Cellebration, and John von Neumann's 29-state cellular automaton) by Andrew Trevorrow and Tomas Rokicki. It includes the Hashlife algorithm for extremely fast generation, and Lua or Python scriptability for both editing and simulation. Mirek's Cellebration is a freeware one- and two-dimensional cellular automata viewer, explorer, and editor for Windows. It includes powerful facilities for simulating and viewing a wide variety of cellular automaton rules, including the Game of Life, and a scriptable editor. Xlife is a cellular-automaton laboratory by Jon Bennett. The standard UNIX X11 Game of Life simulation application for a long time, it has also been ported to Windows. It can handle cellular automaton rules with the same neighbourhood as the Game of Life, and up to eight possible states per cell. Dr. Blob's Organism is a Shoot 'em up based on Conway's Life. In the game, Life continually generates on a group of cells