The first program I did in my Bally Astrocade so many years ago was Life. I remember thinking what a dream it would be to be able to run a 100x100 grid at one generation per second. I could not have dreamed of this.
People who are intrigued by Conway's Game of Life and cellular automata (CA) in general may enjoy tinkering with them in Golly [0], an open source sandbox for CAs.
The Game of Life is probably the first program I ever wrote. I (somehow) managed to get it working on a Timex Sinclair 2068 using a BASIC compiler which could only support one dimensional arrays.
OTCA Metapixel - Conway's Game of Life http://www.instructables.com/id/OTCA-Metapixel-Conways-Game-...
http://www.conwaylife.com/wiki/OTCA_metapixel
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Moir%C3%A9_pattern
https://thewalnut.io/visualizer/visualize/3631/987/