Bill Gates has had an indirect but significant relationship with the video game industry over the years. Although – we believed – that Gates has not been directly involved in the development or production of video games, Microsoft has played a crucial role in it growth and evolution of video games in the field of personal computers and consoles.
Windows has been a popular choice for PC gaming and the company has launched the console series Xbox, competing with giants such as Sony and Nintendo in the video game console market. However, Microsoft always has a lot of story to tell and the one in this note has to do with a game and an animal.
Once upon a time there was a rather peculiar game, one of dodging donkeys. Well, actually it was more about avoiding them, although unfortunately some ended up crushed. This game, developed in a work day that lasted until the wee hours of the morning, It was the work of Bill Gates. However, to understand the story behind this curious game, we must go back a little in time.
The year was 1980, and Microsoft was just an emerging startup, overshadowed by the rapid growth of Apple. With just five years since its founding with Paul Allen, Bill Gates sought to demonstrate the capabilities of a small PC using only the BASIC language for 86-DOS. Aware of the limitations of the machines of the time, the magnate set himself a challenge.
DONKEY.BAS
The result was successful. The DOS software was sold to IBM for the not insignificant sum of $430,000. Meanwhile, quietly acquired the rights to QDOS from Seattle Computer Products.
However, in the contract with IBM there was an additional clause: creating a beginner's version of BASIC along with some simple games to demonstrate the language's capabilities. All this in a system with just 8 KB of memory. And so it was born, in a matter of hours, 'DONKEY.BAS'.
“Donkey” was the name of the game and the BAS extension indicated that it was written in BASIC. At a partner conference in 2001, Bill Gates recounted the development experience:
“Neil Konzen and I were at 4 am with the IBM PC prototype, sitting in a small room. They insisted that we lock the door. We only had one closet with a lock, so we had to do all the development there and it was always over 37°C. But we were coding late into the night on that little app to demonstrate what 'BASIC' could do. And that was DONKEY.BAS. At that moment it was very exciting.”.
A piece of rubbish?
However, There was someone at Apple who did not receive the game kindly. Andy Hertzfeld, one of the company's first employees, known for his work on Apple II and later became a technical leader at Microsoft, expressed his discontent: “DONKEY.BAS is the most embarrassing game I have ever seen. The concept of the game is as bad as the crude graphics it uses”.
Hertzfeld, a BASIC expertwas surprised to discover that the game had been co-written by the Microsoft co-founder, which confirmed his opinion of it.
Despite the criticism, 'Donkey' became the precursor to many games for the IBM PC. And the most ironic thing of all is that Microsoft continued this story. In 2001, a 3D version of “DONKEY.BAS” called “DONKEY.NET”. Even MIT has a browser-based copy. But the irony peaked a decade later, when 'Donkey.App' arrived on iTunes as a mobile game available for iOS and watchOS for 0.99 euros.
And there it remains, available for those who want to relive this curious episode in the history of computing.