
BASIC Computer Games - martincmartin
http://www.vintage-basic.net/games.html
======
AndrewStephens
Readers in the UK or Commonwealth might be more familiar with the Usborne
series of books for 8 bit computers.

The publisher has made them available from their website[0]. Here is a series
of modern reviews from a friend of mine[1].

My favorite when I was a kid was the one that taught assembly language to pre-
teens. I still think of cartoon robots putting notes into boxes whenever I
assign something to a variable.

[0] [https://usborne.com/browse-books/features/computer-and-
codin...](https://usborne.com/browse-books/features/computer-and-coding-
books/)

[1]
[http://www.asciimation.co.nz/bb/category/usborne](http://www.asciimation.co.nz/bb/category/usborne)

~~~
bloopernova
Thank you for that nostalgia trip!

Computer Battlegames and Computer Spacegames were much loved in my youth. I
wish I had seen some of the other books in the programming series from
Usborne.

I remember my dad being super frustrated with me when I was very young. He was
on such a different level (chip/board designer) that everything was so
effortless to him, and he had serious trouble relating to anyone "beneath"
him. It only got worse when he left when I was about 9. I always had trouble
self-motivating, and it would hurt like hell when he'd show up out of the blue
and express disappointment that I wasn't writing assembly yet or building my
own circuits.

But the Usborne stuff, and the spectrum/vic20 games I played around that time,
are treasured memories. Thank you for reminding me :)

------
simmons
Like others have posted, my childhood included a lot of typing in BASIC
programs from books and magazines. What I remember most is staying up late one
night when I was ten years old to type in the text adventure game from the
back of "Basic Fun with Adventure Games" [1] on my TRS-80 MC-10 with 4K RAM.
Before I could finish typing it in, I was shocked to get "?OM ERROR" \-- out
of memory. My first ever experience with running out of resources. :) I knew I
was going to need a better computer...

[1] [https://www.amazon.com/Basic-Adventure-Games-Susan-
Lipscomb/...](https://www.amazon.com/Basic-Adventure-Games-Susan-
Lipscomb/dp/0380874865)

~~~
shakna
Same book, same game, and same error.

The only difference with my introduction during my childhood was my father had
a friend, who was building RAM extension boards (and other things) out of his
garage, and he, excited that a kid was into computers, extended our TRS-80 for
free. I can't remember the exact number at the moment, but it was something
insane like 40Kb of RAM (But it was sometimes... Unstable).

I was the only one of my friends with a computer at the time, and we used to
gather round and play BASIC games we either wrote ourselves, or write up the
latest magazine game.

------
5trokerac3
If you want to type one of these out right now, I recommend JS99er [0]

[0] [http://js99er.net](http://js99er.net)

~~~
stackthatcode
Oh, good on you for posting this. This takes me back to childhood summers
spent hacking away at TI Extended BASIC trying to write my own games - with
admittedly humble results. Or the evenings spent reading dot matrix printouts
of other games' code trying reverse engineer the text parser. Or memories of
playing Scott Adam's text adventures, the flight-sim SPAD, Parsec, Infocom's
Witness, etc. Or attending Chicago TI user group meetings with my Dad - who
eventually became the president of such IIRC. Or my Dad dialing up 300 baud
modems to a BBS. Those were definitely good times.

------
royjacobs
The interesting podcast "They Create Worlds" recently had an episode on this
topic, it's worth a listen: [https://tcwpodcast.podbean.com/e/computer-game-
basics/](https://tcwpodcast.podbean.com/e/computer-game-basics/)

Growing up I had a Commodore 64 and for some reason came into possession of
another of David Ahl's books ("More Computer Games" I think it was called). It
contained Eliza as one of the listings and it was a program that fascinated me
so much I ended up creating a ton of clones, in horribly nested BASIC (though,
to be fair, is there any other kind?)

~~~
duxup
Horribly nested BASIC is just what you did before you did it better.

~~~
jerf
On the Commodore 64, it was the only option. It had minimal support for a
thing it called a "subroutine", but what it really was was a GOTO that pushed
the source on to the stack and could be RETURN'd to that source. In
particular, no concept of return value, no concept of parameters; everything's
global. Modification of global values prior to the "call" is the argument
passing, and modification of global values is the "return".

Commodore 64 BASIC, and 8-bit BASIC in general, was fully in the paradigm that
Dijkstra was referring to when he wrote Goto Considered Harmful. (Not
exclusively, of course.)

~~~
0815test
The 6502 processor itself also has very poor "stack" support, the hardware-
supported stack is limited to 256 bytes at a fixed location. It's one of the
things that make it hard to compile a modern language like C for the
architecture, so even among compiled languages one would prefer something
FORTRAN/BASIC-like.

~~~
bopbop
To be fair, the 256 byte stack can essentially be used in assembly as 256
registers, which is also one of the features (along with indirect addressing)
that make assembly on it awesome.

My relatively poorly researched impression of it is that it's half-way to
portable C, with a proto-stack and pointers, essentially.

~~~
jim_lawless
You're thinking of zero page ($0000-$00ff), not the stack $0100-$01FF).

~~~
bopbop
Yes I am! Thanks!

------
JackFr
There was an earlier version of this book -- less slick -- that you could buy
from DEC. I had gotten a copy from my uncle.

At my public library we had a teletypewriter, with an attached paper tape
punch and reader, and a phone-cradle modem, with which you could connect to
the the PDP-8 at the local high school.

Between this book [https://www.amazon.com/Illustrating-Basic-Simple-
Programming...](https://www.amazon.com/Illustrating-Basic-Simple-Programming-
Language/dp/0521217040) and "BASIC Computer Games" my friend and I taught
ourselves BASIC programming.

It was about 42 years ago, but I remember to this day the initial astonishing
joy of making the computer do something new that I had thought of.

~~~
jackhack
It is a feeling of limitless boundaries.

I recently bought an Osbourne "portable" \-- seeing my children's delight as
we booted up that ancient machine (from actual 5.25" floppy discs, no less)
reminded me of own own sense of wonder at the same age, 40 years ago. Of
course my middle-aged eyes didn't tolerate a 7" amber screen as well as they
once did, but we proceeded to create an adventure type game, in MicroSoft
Basic. The kids actually squabbled over who would get to play that simple
game, very unlike them, such was their enthusiasm. And play they did, for
many, many hours!

We had a bug where the player's "hit points/HP" could go negative. I loved
watching my children deduce where the problem must lie, and debugging the
problem. (comparison of <, rather than a <= )

They had lots of ideas for additions, some of which we implemented (others
were very ambitious, bordering on Dwarf Fortress!) And even though what we
created was very simple and crude, their pride in ownership was clear.

------
alexkearns
Brings back fond memories. That was the book that got me started programming.
I didn't even have a computer at the time but loved reading about the games
and trying to understand the code by going through it in my head.

------
lucb1e
The game lunar explains itself:

> the on board computer has crashed (it was made by xerox) so you have to land
> your lunar module manually

Back when games could just make jokes about existing companies without getting
into trouble.

~~~
Jedd
Space is big // space is dark // it's hard to find // a place to park.

Some things stick unnaturally well in the brain.

(Yes, I realise this was a Luna Lander clone on the Amiga desktop, but for me
it's roughly equivalent time ago.)

~~~
Intermernet
Hey, I can still remember most of the copy protection poem from Faery Tale
Adventure. Them's some valuable neurons that won't be repurposed any time
soon.

------
miohtama
Here is the 80s Disney book "Disney's Computer Fun" that taught me Basic
programming:

[https://jbretro.wordpress.com/2015/02/09/retro-book-
disneys-...](https://jbretro.wordpress.com/2015/02/09/retro-book-disneys-
computer-fun-now-available-for-
download/amp/?fbclid=IwAR3cSq_53emwE5uuXgnmB7MKrtBLc-
VmO_Cue8kNtYnjCrL_QT8mRoiME-c)

You did not need even a computer for the first exercises.

Too bad that the kids have to begin with JavaScript today.

~~~
OJFord
Do they? I had a childhood with Basic when JS and Python would've been
available to me, basically because I didn't know better.

I made silly little programs with a friend, and we had grand plans for a Harry
Potter themed MMO. Naturally, we started with a loading screen on a timer,
(because that's what comes first, right?!) and got no further.

~~~
ashleyn
I grew up in the mountains, where everything was at least 20 years behind, and
our school was well-stocked with 80s-era BASIC books in the library back in
2003. This was well into the Visual Basic era if we're talking beginners'
languages. I still had the experience of typing stuff into Qbasic and I
remember that fondly.

------
bluedino
We had a book or two of Apple II BASIC programs in the school library. They
had just enough Apple-specific BASIC in them that only the simpler, text-basd
games were usuable at home on my PC with QBASIC.

For some reason nobody ever thought to put those books in the computer lab
which was full of various Apple II's.

I wish there would have been more explaination of the code, it was pretty much
a couple hundred lines of LET X1=15 IF L2 < 1 GOSUB 12100

------
brox
I remember young me spending hours on a VIC-20 version of animal.bas
("Computer guesses animals and learns new ones from you"). Given enough time
and training input the computer could answer any question put to it! It helped
open my eyes to the magic of computation and still gives me a bit of a tingle
when I think about it.

~~~
cbm-vic-20
Congratulations, that makes you a ML expert! Put that on your resume and rake
in that sweet west-coast VC cash! :)

------
ptidhomme
My first programming experiences were on a CASIO Graph 65 calculator, with
BASIC style language.

My greatest accomplishment was a _Stronghold_ -like simulation/management
game, of several hundred lines. Got some success among my pals.

What a time... and what a painful language.

------
jptoto
Dawww. I had this book when it came out and used to type the programs into my
Commodore PET by hand! Boy does this bring back memories.

~~~
bespoke_engnr
I really think there's something magical about beginners typing in whole
projects by hand (instead of the modern copy-paste). It really helped me when
I was getting started with programming.

To me, it feels like typing each character manually cements the knowledge in
there much deeper than 'oh, I think I understand what I'm copy/pasting.'

Maybe that's a shallow truism by now, but I still see people struggling to
learn programming via copy/paste from examples.

~~~
jptoto
That's a smart take. Even today when I'm learning something new I try to do as
much physical typing as possible from the example because I feel like I learn
it better.

~~~
mntmoss
The other day I had the thought of "all memory is muscle memory" \- it's not
_literally_ true, but memorizing in an associated form builds up so many cues
that it's worth applying to any study: do warm-ups and repetitions, speak,
move, and think in sync.

~~~
ddingus
I tend to think of it is holistic memory or whole body memory. The more
functions you can involve subsystems in your body the more it hangs together
in your brain for longer terms I think.

------
dang
From 2015:
[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=9026063](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=9026063)

------
gorb314
I've got a related question: I'm looking for a (BASIC) programming book I
loved as a kid. I can't quite remember the title, but it was something like
"Programming for kids from 8 to 80".

Googling for it doesn't help, all I get are references to the 80s, or the TRS
80, or some such.

Does anyone remember this book, or where I can find it?

------
xbryanx
I have such fond memories of coding in these BASIC games with my dad at our
C64 when I was six or so. Honestly the most memorable part was the night I got
to stay up late, while he and I spent hours trying to figure out why this one
little problem kept appearing. My first late night debugging session.

------
jeffwass
Nice blast from the past.

I taught myself to code by typing these in by hand on my TRS-80. And trying to
debug when something wouldn’t work.

Back in the day when something didn’t work and you had nowhere to turn, you
had to bang your head against the code until you figured it out.

------
scottlegrand2
Also:

[https://archive.org/details/Whattodoafteryouhitreturn/page/n...](https://archive.org/details/Whattodoafteryouhitreturn/page/n15)

With my personal favorite BASIC game: Star Traders

~~~
drallison
The People's Computer Company published _What to do after you hit return_. It
was a large format book that collected many of the games published in _PCC
Newspaper_ , _People 's Computers_, and _Recreational Computing_. PCC, before
the microprocessor, ran storefront computer centers in the Silicon Valley and
promoted the personal use of computers worldwide. There is a whole generation
of kids who celebrated birthdays by going to PCC to play BASIC games.

Bob Albrecht, the Dragon and fellow PCC founder, has always been passionate
about teaching kids BASIC programming and still volunteers in local schools.
He has written multiple books on BASIC mostly targeted at newbies.

One thing no one has mentioned are the BASIC functions PEEK() and POKE() which
allowed BASIC programs to read and change memory. Many people learned about
control registers and machine language experimenting with PEEK and POKE.

PCC also published _The Computer Music Journal_ and _Dr. Dobbs Journal_. _Dr.
Dobbs Journal: running light without overbyte_ started when the Altair
microcomputer was delivered with almost no memory and no software. PCC curated
the development of personal computer software including Tiny Basic. The TRS-80
integer BASIC was a variant of Tiny Basic.

The Dave Ahl books include many games that initially appeared in PCC
publications.

------
mr-ron
Some of these can work pretty well in this browser emulator for people that
want to see it demo'd:

[https://www.calormen.com/jsbasic/](https://www.calormen.com/jsbasic/)

------
millette
I learned programming on a Timex Sinclair (2 KiB) with the book Brain games
for kids & adults using the Timex/Sinclair 1000, 1500 & 2000 series. There
were other editions for other platforms (Apple, Commodore, etc.)

It consisted of 26 games/puzzles, one for each letter of the alphabet. Went
looking and found this little treasure trove:

[http://www.gamebase64.com/search.php?a=5&f=3&id=9556&d=42&h=...](http://www.gamebase64.com/search.php?a=5&f=3&id=9556&d=42&h=0)

------
ansible
Had great times with this one and the "More Basic Computer Games" book.

My favorites were the Eliza clone, and ICBM, where you are trying to intercept
an incoming ICBM with a anti-ballistic missle. My first use of trig functions,
which really helped solidify the concepts to me. I also converted the 2-D
version to 3-D (with altitude) for even more fun.

I was originally using a TRS-80 Color Computer, with a slightly different
dialect of BASIC, so I was usually having to make modifications. Which also
helped me learn programming.

Great, great times.

~~~
khazhou
Raise your hands everyone who typed in Eliza clones in the mid-80s and thought
you would solve general AI using BASIC in the not-too-distant future.

~~~
cr0sh
Between those, tic-tac-toe learning systems, the various 20-questions
things...

Later I played with various "expert system" stuff, then there was David L.
Heiserman's "Machine Intelligence" and "Robot Intelligence" books...

I tried to understand early neural network stuff, but I could not get my then
teenage head around it; in fact, none of it became clear until I took Andrew
Ng's "ML Class" in 2011 as an adult (part of the key was understanding the
role of linear algebra and matrix math in the system - among other things -
that class was the first that explained it very clearly, and the use of octave
was also a revelation).

Since that class, I've continued to play with ML/AI, mainly via a couple of
courses thru Udacity (including their "self-driving car engineer nanodegree").

So - one could say I still have hope? Ha!

------
hateful
I had an Atari XE when I was 9. I used to write all sorts of games with it,
starting with simple which way book type games and then moving on to 2 step
animation and movement. I didn't have the optional floppy, so when I shut off
the computer, my work was gone. I used to write the code in a notebook and
have to type it in again. I used to keep it on and switch the TV back to TV
and raise hell if my mom turned off the unit.

Then I moved on to a PC JR with Cartridge Basic and after that QuickBasic on
Windows 3.1.

Fun times.

------
merolish
Back in the 90s I learned a lot from the Prodigy QBasic community. There were
some really cool games that people contributed, they have to be out there on
the web somewhere.

~~~
cr0sh
Heh - you may have ran into some of my old stuff from back then, up thru the
late 1990s or so. BASIC still holds a place in my heart (if you haven't played
with QB64, you owe it to yourself to look it up).

For that old stuff, "Pete's QB Site" still holds a lot of it:

[http://www.petesqbsite.com/](http://www.petesqbsite.com/)

Also, check out the old ABC Packets - they're still available, and also have a
ton of code worth looking into (I was a frequent contributor):

[http://www.phatcode.net/downloads.php?id=204](http://www.phatcode.net/downloads.php?id=204)

------
jdlyga
BASIC was the best. Very simple language that's very accessible. In high
school, we programmed Lego robots using BASIC to follow a black line.

------
rollover
Are there any books of this kind for modern languages?

~~~
NikkiA
No, and the only reason why not is because people would want/expect to be able
to just download the source code and run it without typing it in.

But there's absolutely zero reason why this couldn't be replicated with
pygame, nodejs or even just a modern BASIC interpreter/compiler.

~~~
bluGill
Not just that we expect to, we can. Back in the day you could download them as
well, but it costs a lot of money: someone had to pay for the computer and
phone line and then one computer per phone line was common. It also took a
long time to download files at 300 baud, and often you were paying long
distance rates to the phone company (which was far more expensive than long
distance rates now despite inflation). Most of us were using audio cassettes
to store our programs on, dreaming of a floppy disk that held 80k... (we knew
hard drives existed, but they were so expensive that we didn't dare dream of
them)

While it was possible to buy a multi-user computer, or a connection to the
internet, we didn't even know such a thing existed. Not that it mattered, as
practically the cost was far our of reach.

~~~
laumars
I'm guessing where you live radio stations / TV shows didn't air the data
noise of BASIC code like they sometimes did in the UK?

You could record it straight onto your audio cassette (like you would record
any song on the radio) then play that on your BBC Micro.

It was cheap, accessible and effectively the analogue equivolent of
downloading.

~~~
bluGill
I never heard of that until much latter. There wasn't a dominate computer
platform: as a kid I knew people with Apple II, C64, Atari, or TI. They were
not compatible in general, so it doesn't really make sense to air such things.
Even assuming the recording would work, my memory of cassette systems is they
rarely worked. I typically saved everything to 3 different tapes to have a
hope of reading back correctly eventually.

~~~
laumars
There wasn't a dominant platform in the UK either. We had multiple machines
from Acorn (inc BBC Micro), Sinclair, Dragon and Amstrad plus the Commedores
and Atari's you had too.

I don't think Apple really came to Europe until much later.

------
quickthrower2
Such nostalgia. That’s how I got into programming.

~~~
NikkiA
Typing in a program from a paper source forces you to think about each line
you're entering, it's more than just a 'slow way to distribute a program',
it's also a teaching exercise along the same lines as how writing your notes
in class are part of the learning exercise that reinforces your mental model
of the subject.

~~~
bluGill
Most of the lines I typed in where "2050 data 100,98,0,0,45,128,..." up to the
maximum line length (256 character?) at which point it was "2060 data...."
Nothing to learn there. I suppose I could look up each opcode and figure it
out, but even then there were no names to guide me as to what anything means.

~~~
cr0sh
You were either typing in mostly game code (with a simple BASIC HEX ML
loader), or were using a machine with a limited form of BASIC that didn't
allow for easy graphics manipulation (the C=64 and VIC-20 were famous in this
regard).

While I recall doing the same on my machine (TRS-80 Color Computer) - it was
usually to get functionality that was lacking otherwise. I recall having to
type a ton of DATA statements for an ML program that would give you
simultaneous graphics and text on screen, like it was a native mode. Then
there was another program (called "Bells and Whistles") that was essentially a
4-track music editor, similar to 90s era "tracker" programs; you could define
simple waveforms as different "instruments", then build your music in a note-
by-note "tracker" style - except the tracks ran left-to-right, not top-to-
bottom! It would then output the music and show the notes playing (scrolling)
- four channel, 6 bit music, with user-defined waveforms and envelopes. Truely
amazing at the time!

Especially considering the TRS-80 CoCo did -not- have a sound chip. It was all
done by the CPU and a 6-bit DAC (which was also used by the cassette tape
interface for storage, as well in a convoluted manner by the joysticks).

~~~
bluGill
I was probably typing in a program that was written in assembly language, and
then the bytes were output so that I didn't have to type in the assembly code
(which would be even more keystrokes with only limited additional ability to
understand, not to mention everybody has BASIC, assemblers were rarer).

I was doing this on an Atari 400. There was plenty of power available from
BASIC to get at the graphics and sound, but there wasn't the speed. BASIC was
an interpreted language and so you had to drop to assembly to get enough speed
for a large program to not feel slow.

------
tapland
I picked up the book in the title post from my library for 50 cents ~year 2002
or so.

The one I was a fan of before then was 'Computer Spacegames', which you can
read here:
[https://archive.org/details/Computer_Space_Games/](https://archive.org/details/Computer_Space_Games/)

~~~
arnado
There is a project to port games from that book (among many other Usborne
books) to python:
[https://yorkshire4.readthedocs.io/en/latest/](https://yorkshire4.readthedocs.io/en/latest/)

------
ryandrake
Wow, I had this exact book and I believe I typed every last program into my
Commodore 64. Including the (to me) massive _Super Star Trek_ game, which I
did over the course of several evenings. Ended up porting that one to the PC
as a way to learn Pascal. What a trip down memory lane.

------
baldfat
This is how I got into debugging :)

------
mlukaszek
No donkey.bas? :)

~~~
indentit
I guess Gorillas and Nibbles didn't come with that book from the article, but
with MS-DOS, so to have it with the book would have been a waste of space as
they were already present on most systems

~~~
pvg
The book was originally published before there was an MS-DOS or IBM PCs.

~~~
cr0sh
That book was somewhat "old" when I first encountered it as a kid in the
1980s. Most of the code in it was first created for minicomputers in the
1970s, probably running some form of Dartmouth BASIC.

~~~
pvg
Created maybe but they were published in a sort generic MS BASIC with some
tweaking required to get them to run on different machine implementations.

[https://www.atariarchives.org/basicgames/showpage.php?page=i...](https://www.atariarchives.org/basicgames/showpage.php?page=i12)

------
orsenthil
Can I run these using PC-Basic:
[https://github.com/robhagemans/pcbasic/](https://github.com/robhagemans/pcbasic/)
?

------
russellbeattie
I'm surprised some geek hasn't converted all those programs into Python, Java
or JS and put up a website.

I still have my original 1982 TRS-80 Color Computer 2 in the garage. My oldest
possession.

------
T-A
There was a sequel, too:

[https://www.atariarchives.org/morebasicgames/](https://www.atariarchives.org/morebasicgames/)

------
dekhn
this book brought me so many hours of joy as a child. I typed these programs
in and read it over and over again. I remember now parts that I didn't
understand (like Nim) and being amazed at some things people could do in BASIC
([https://www.atariarchives.org/basicgames/showpage.php?page=4](https://www.atariarchives.org/basicgames/showpage.php?page=4)).

For fun recently I ported zork to an esp32.

~~~
cr0sh
> being amazed at some things people could do in BASIC

My first software engineering job out of highschool used a version of BASIC; I
was originally hired as an "operator" because I didn't have a degree, and they
wouldn't hire programmers without degrees. So they trained me on how to load
9-track tapes on a vacuum-column drive, as well as how to load up greenbar and
run reports on the system. It was an IBM RS/6000 running AIX (my first
encounter with Unix), and VT-100/Wyse-370 terminals via a serial concentrator
- but our main system ran on top of that; it was called UniVERSE, and ran a
variant of Pick BASIC:

[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pick_operating_system](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pick_operating_system)

They gave me access to the system, and their sysadmin gave me a copy of a
"Learn Pick BASIC" book. The company was a small mom-n-pop shop that created
insurance claims management software for small insurance companies
administering our state's indigent health care system.

I started writing various pieces of software - an adventure game, playing with
the printers (made one of them play music - not a good use of company
resources), just having fun while in between actual "jobs" given to me by the
real programmers (run this report, or load this tape). Well...someone was
monitoring me and my coding.

They started to give me small tasks - fix this problem with this piece of
code, or build this kind of report, or can you make the printer do this?

Within six months - after I had graduated a local tech school and got my
"degree" \- they hired me (at a pitiful rate that irks me today, but I was a
young-n-dumb teenager at the time). I stayed there for a couple of years,
learned more Unix, became intimately familiar with terminfo settings, helped
to build a text-mode windowing system for their product, got involved with the
Amiga scene...

Ultimately, it was my beginning of a career I enjoy and love to this day; but
I do have to say I miss the Wyse-370 terminal (it had a Textronix vector
graphics mode I played with as well - plus it was just a great terminal
overall - they can still be purchased today, but supply vs demand has kept
their cost high, so I've never purchased one).

~~~
emmanueloga_
I never heard about Pick Basic before. Apparently, Dick Pick (!) was news
worthy back in the day...

"If you want the track record of Dick Pick, just hang upside down" [1]

1:
[https://secure28.securewebsession.com/jes.com/gfx/people/csn...](https://secure28.securewebsession.com/jes.com/gfx/people/csn_1983_11_28_antigrav_dick_001.jpg)

------
_bxg1
What would be cool is an embedded BASIC interpreter/emulator, so you can play
(and perhaps even tweak) them inline.

------
zwieback
I had this book and typed in several of the games. Horserace was surprisingly
fun to play with my friends.

------
rbanffy
I wonder what Mr. Ahl has been up to. Last thing I heard was Small Basic with
Microsoft.

~~~
mwexler
It's fun to check out
[http://www.swapmeetdave.com/Home.htm](http://www.swapmeetdave.com/Home.htm)
and
[http://www.swapmeetdave.com/Ahl/DHA.htm](http://www.swapmeetdave.com/Ahl/DHA.htm)
every once in a while.

------
Jupe
What, no TYPO2 checksums? :)

------
chii
i had expected that there's a javascript emulator to try the games without
having to download one and setup yourself.

------
mistermaster
those were the days!!!

------
sausage_gumbo
all those gotos could cause some serious harm

~~~
cr0sh
Back then, you didn't have a choice. Most microcomputer BASICs did not have
any other kind of "infinite" looping construct beyond a GOTO. FOR-NEXT was
about the only other option.

There wasn't a WHILE or a DO-UNTIL construct in those BASICs, with the
exception of (IIRC) or the BASIC used in the MSX systems (which didn't see
much action outside of Japan) and in BBC BASIC (it was probably the best BASIC
out there along with Microsoft's - but again, not as well known outside of the
UK).

~~~
allenu
I think he was referencing a famous Dijkstra letter "GOTO Statement Considered
Harmful".

~~~
kevin_thibedeau
We had GOSUB for high level structured programming EWD would approve of.

------
martincmartin
Can we fix the title? It should be capitalized as BASIC, the programming
language, an acronym for Beginners All purpose Symbolic Instruction Code.

~~~
sctb
Done!

