No, see, the question is precisely "why the hell is an emulated programmable 16bit CPU newsworthy?" Hey, I know an MMO with an emulated programmable 32bit CPU;

No, see, the question is precisely "why the hell is an emulated programmable 16bit CPU newsworthy?" Hey, I know an MMO with an emulated programmable 32bit CPU; it's called Browser Quest, and was recently released by Mozilla; you can access its console by pressing Shift-Ctrl-J; it even comes with a high-level scripting language. With the JS implementation of Notch's 16-bit CPU you can even quickly paste Notch's CPU into BrowserQuest, so that you can write with his opcodes! To the extent that it's not a feature but a game mechanic I would say it's interesting enough for one HN post in the top 10. That's what it was recently, and all was good. Today implementations of the opcodes take up four of these posts, for apparently no other reason than "Notch is a pretty cool guy with the ability to make this happen." And that's my point. It's the ability to make it happen, not the thing in itself, which makes it newsworthy.