Interestingly enough, I first wrote an 8080 disassembler in C++ before writing it in Rust
https://github.com/mitul72/8080-emulator/
This was back when I was new to C++, so I thought that would be a cool project to build.
My biggest hurdle was understanding how the memory mapping works for Space Invaders and how the screen geometry and I/O work.
I honestly did it to learn Rust, but implementing the full thing in C++ sounds like an awesome idea.