
Atari Archives: BASIC Computer Games - shawndumas
http://www.atariarchives.org/basicgames/index.php
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jdludlow
Oh wow. This was the first computer book I ever owned. My parents bought me an
Apple IIc when I was 11, causing me to nearly wet my pants, and I'm quite
certain that everyone in the neighborhood heard the screaming.

I spent hours and days typing these programs in. Occasionally, they even
worked.

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nantes
I was 10, but this pretty much describes word for word what happened in my
house.

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ed2417
I was 28 but pretty much had the same reaction.

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savetz
I gotta say, it was weird for me to do my daily visit to Hacker News and see
my own site on the homepage.

I run www.atariarchives.org and www.AtariMagazines.com (started that site in
1996. It has the full text of a bunch of old computer magazines including
Creative Computing and Antic and more). I also run FlightSimBooks.com, full
text of classic flight simulator books.

If you want to help out with this stuff, find me at www.savetz.com. Need
reliable volunteers.

~~~
savetz
Also, if you love and remember the robot cartoons in the book, visit the
artist's page at www.bekerbots.com

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osswid
I've got most of those games up in <http://telehack.com/>

Just type basic and then dir to list them.

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hammock
Just played Hammurabi. Never seen it before but that's a fun game!

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Malic
The follow up book, "More BASIC Computer Games" is also there:
<http://www.atariarchives.org/morebasicgames/>

You can show your age by pointing out that BASIC is an acronym and should be
all-caps... :\

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rjd
Oh man, I remember going to my uncles house and spending hours trying to
decide which program to choose, this book and others. Then Id spend the
afternoon typing it in and trying to get it working.

If I was real lucky I'd get it going and get to show it off, or occasionally
if there was time Id try and write out a two player one so I could share with
my sister.

I must have only be 7 or something. I used to look forward to those visits so
much... and being blown away by "The Hobbit" I wanted to play that game so
much...

<http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Hobbit_(1982_video_game)>

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colkassad
My fingers started to hurt when I saw this...my first programming environment
was flat-keyboard Atari 400 with a BASIC cartridge.

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bobochan
Oh man, the membrane keyboard. Now, did you save your files to cassette or did
you have the Atari disk drive? The Atari 800 was a very decent machine. I
remember having to translate some statements into Apple Basic on the ][+ and
getting confused trying to debug things after running renum when then line
numbers no longer matched what was in the book.

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colkassad
Cassette of course! If I remember correctly, it took 30 minutes to load
programs I had written. Maybe it just seemed that long to me, or maybe that
was the write times.

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protomyth
I was so happy when I saved up enough money to buy an Indus floppy drive. It
was heaven compared to the damn 410. I still cannot believe how much typing I
did on the Atari 400's keyboard.

I miss Antic and Creative Computing.

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sehugg
I typed in many of these, but I still don't remember any that were
particularly fun, even back then :)

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wyclif
This was the book I learned how to program with. I had actually not seen the
cover since I lost it way back when. So, thanks for the trip down memory lane.

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protomyth
Out of curiosity, did any Atari computer owners on HN, have the Action!
Programming language cartridge?

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jeffreymcmanus
I had this when I was a kid. I picked up a copy on eBay a few years back.

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AzAngel
Blast from the past- I remember typing these in as a kid.

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zandorg
Is that Bill Gates right of the robot?

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rbanffy
To be fair, all the 8-bit computers I used in the 80's had Microsoft BASIC in
ROM. Oddly enough, the Ataris didn't use Microsoft's interpreter.

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watmough
And the Atari 400 my brother had, we had to buy the damn BASIC cartridge
separately.

Of course, my brother became a Star Raiders ace, rather than a programming ace
like me, ahem.

