The bad news is that you can't do any of that on modern computer systems anymore. I started out learning how to program in Windows 95 to make games. I learned

The bad news is that you can't do any of that on modern computer systems anymore. I started out learning how to program in Windows 95 to make games. I learned to use inline assembly to set the video mode, and then directly write to video memory at 0xA0000000. You can't do that anymore on modern Windows even if you knew how. Today if you wanted to start game programming, you'd probably read a bunch of articles recommending Unity, which doesn't even easily support C++ FFS.