1981. The legendary DONKEY.BAS game which was the first ever PC game.
A short video clip of the game:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kymzTlqi1SY
In an earlier entry, we read about Bill's deal with IBM for MS-DOS and the launch of PC in 1981:
https://www.facebook.com/photo.php?fbid=2004178633359&set=a.1921166078097.235311.1510418566&type=3
Along with the MS-DOS deal with IBM, Bill had agreed to provide BASIC as well which could be used to write simple programs. During the contract, IBM wanted this project to be confidential and hence had insisted Bill and his colleagues to use the IBM-PC prototypes only in locked rooms. Just a few days before launch, Bill & another co-programmer named Neil Thompson were the only ones who were using the prototypes for last minute touch-ups. At 4 in the morning, Bill realized that providing just BASIC without any sample demo would not make justice to such a great IBM machine. Bill shared this concern with Neil, and in a flash, they started writing a simple game. In just a matter of few minutes, the program was ready and and the game was all set to play. This was shipped as an addon to the BASIC in IBM PC and the game became popular across all age groups for a long time.
When the IBM PC was launched with much fanfare, Steve Jobs on the other side of the industry and still working on his flagship product (Macintosh) asked his team to buy an IBM PC from the store and find out if it could be of threat to his business. Steve never never left any stone unturned when it came to attacking IBM. Earlier when IBM had revealed their intentions of finally stepping into the PC industry, Apple had reacted with a full page ad:
https://www.facebook.com/photo.php?fbid=1938142582499&set=a.1921166078097.235311.1510418566&type=3
When his team purchased and demonstrated the PC to Jobs' and his team, everybody heaved a sigh of relief because they thought it was "shoddy", "immature" and lacking in elegance which in no way would pose a threat to their Macintosh. Since the Donkey game was included in the PC, they opened it and had a gala time laughing over it. They reverse engineered the game program to extract it's source code and found that Bill had proudly mentioned his name along with Neil in the comments on top of the code. They were surprised to see that such a "bad" game was co-authored by Bill Gates, the founder of Microsoft.
You can read more about the Apple team's reaction about the game here:
http://folklore.org/StoryView.py?project=Macintosh&story=Donkey.txt
You can download the game from the following link (Remade using QBasic but has the same look and feel as the original. It is an EXE file and your antivirus sw might suspect it as a virus. Go ahead and download it. I have validated that link and the game works fine)
http://drivey.com/DONKEYQB.EXE
(This was the first game I played when I started using the PC in mid 90s and has been one of my favourites along with Prince).
31 years later, in 2012, the same game has been remade by XVision for iPhone/iPad & WP7 as a homage to the original game. Although criticized by expert programmers for the "shoddy job", Bill Gates has always been very proud to proclaim it as his creation. Here is a recent photo which shows him playing the game on a tablet:
http://m.iphonesoft.fr/images/_012012/donkey-bas-gates.jpg
You can find the remade game in appstores here:
iOS:
http://itunes.apple.com/us/app/donkey.bas/id496795223?mt=8
WP7:
http://www.windowsphone.com/en-US/apps/3e3a43a5-baa9-419a-be3a-bb1e440dc56c
A short video clip of the game:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kymzTlqi1SY
In an earlier entry, we read about Bill's deal with IBM for MS-DOS and the launch of PC in 1981:
https://www.facebook.com/photo.php?fbid=2004178633359&set=a.1921166078097.235311.1510418566&type=3
Along with the MS-DOS deal with IBM, Bill had agreed to provide BASIC as well which could be used to write simple programs. During the contract, IBM wanted this project to be confidential and hence had insisted Bill and his colleagues to use the IBM-PC prototypes only in locked rooms. Just a few days before launch, Bill & another co-programmer named Neil Thompson were the only ones who were using the prototypes for last minute touch-ups. At 4 in the morning, Bill realized that providing just BASIC without any sample demo would not make justice to such a great IBM machine. Bill shared this concern with Neil, and in a flash, they started writing a simple game. In just a matter of few minutes, the program was ready and and the game was all set to play. This was shipped as an addon to the BASIC in IBM PC and the game became popular across all age groups for a long time.
When the IBM PC was launched with much fanfare, Steve Jobs on the other side of the industry and still working on his flagship product (Macintosh) asked his team to buy an IBM PC from the store and find out if it could be of threat to his business. Steve never never left any stone unturned when it came to attacking IBM. Earlier when IBM had revealed their intentions of finally stepping into the PC industry, Apple had reacted with a full page ad:
https://www.facebook.com/photo.php?fbid=1938142582499&set=a.1921166078097.235311.1510418566&type=3
When his team purchased and demonstrated the PC to Jobs' and his team, everybody heaved a sigh of relief because they thought it was "shoddy", "immature" and lacking in elegance which in no way would pose a threat to their Macintosh. Since the Donkey game was included in the PC, they opened it and had a gala time laughing over it. They reverse engineered the game program to extract it's source code and found that Bill had proudly mentioned his name along with Neil in the comments on top of the code. They were surprised to see that such a "bad" game was co-authored by Bill Gates, the founder of Microsoft.
You can read more about the Apple team's reaction about the game here:
http://folklore.org/StoryView.py?project=Macintosh&story=Donkey.txt
You can download the game from the following link (Remade using QBasic but has the same look and feel as the original. It is an EXE file and your antivirus sw might suspect it as a virus. Go ahead and download it. I have validated that link and the game works fine)
http://drivey.com/DONKEYQB.EXE
(This was the first game I played when I started using the PC in mid 90s and has been one of my favourites along with Prince).
31 years later, in 2012, the same game has been remade by XVision for iPhone/iPad & WP7 as a homage to the original game. Although criticized by expert programmers for the "shoddy job", Bill Gates has always been very proud to proclaim it as his creation. Here is a recent photo which shows him playing the game on a tablet:
http://m.iphonesoft.fr/images/_012012/donkey-bas-gates.jpg
You can find the remade game in appstores here:
iOS:
http://itunes.apple.com/us/app/donkey.bas/id496795223?mt=8
WP7:
http://www.windowsphone.com/en-US/apps/3e3a43a5-baa9-419a-be3a-bb1e440dc56c
0 comments: