Games you program yourself, or at least typed in yourself

[neuropolitique]

When classic computers weren't so classic, you could find code in many magazines. You simply typed this code into your computer and wham-o, you got a new game to play.

One game I remember "programming myself" is Save the Turtles. It was basically a text adventure in which the goal was to ensure successful mating seasons for sea turtles. You were in control of certain variables, which in turn would have a direct effect on the sea turtles. When the turtle population reached a certain level, Hurray! You won.

Let's hear about your games you typed in, or games you even had a hand in creating for classic computers.

[Darth Sensei]

I don't remember the actual games but I do remember as a kid typing in several pages of code to play these games and then having no way to save them. Kids today think its' too much inconvenient for them to wait for the Xbox to boot up.

[GrandAmChandler]

ZZT - Several Video game incarnations. Particularly a Donkey Kong Adventure, as well as a Mega Man themed game. Somewhere in my house they are on a 3.5" Floppy....

[YoshiM]

Over the years I typed in a LOT of programs for the CoCo from both Rainbow and Hot CoCo magazines. I think the first one I ever typed in was "Snail Maze" where you moved this snail upwards through a simple maze, blasting an enemy when it got close. In essence, a lame game but I typed it in all by myself (I was like 7 or 8). Saved 'em to audio tape.

Over the years I made a few of my own games, though most got left behind unfinished. The ones I finished were a Ghostbusters-type ("Ghost Hunter") game on my TI-99 4a, an "escape the pyramid" text adventure ("Pyramid Panic") and a Klax-like game for my CoCo, all in BASIC.

[Damaniel]

I was really into programming when I was younger (actually, considering that's what I do for a living, I guess I still am ;)), and did a lot of simple games in BASIC for the Apple II and various Atari 8-bit computers -- mostly text-based, but a few graphical things as well. I also did my fair share of typing in programs from books and magazines. Unfortunately I don't have any disks with the stuff I did, nor do I really remember much of it, considering that was nearly 20 years ago. @_@

[j_factor]

I wonder if there's some sort of underground, internet-based type-in enthusiast community that still does this stuff. That would be neat.

[Damaniel]

I wonder if there's some sort of underground, internet-based type-in enthusiast community that still does this stuff. That would be neat.

Probably. There's an underground, internet-based enthusiast community for just about everything these days. :) I have some old C64 mags with program listings -- maybe I should fire up the C64 and type some in...

[Pantechnicon]

For me, typing in your own programs was an inseperable aspect of classic computing, particularly since I had a TS-1000 and could never get the programs correctly saved to audio tape. The notion that you could "load" a program rather than laboriously keying it in eluded me for years. I still have a few books and magazines - mostly UK publishings - full of old BASIC code listings for simple games and graphic demos.

About a decade ago I was really into Tandy "Model T" portables. There were quite a few good resources on the Web for these. The cool part was that these sites would have a lot of BASIC apps and games listed. What you could do was copy the code into text files, then use a Windows-based terminal program and a null-modem cable to dump the code straight into your Model T. I thought that was really cool stuff. It beat the hell out of typing at any rate...

[Jibbajaba]

A long time ago, I programmed a BASIC version of "Drugwars", just to see if I could do it. About a year ago I worked on creating a clone of Drugwars that would involve buying and selling classic video games, but I never got around to finishing it. Maybe at some point I will work on that again. It would be mroe fun if I wrote it for a classic platform though, like the Apple II or the Atari 400/800.

Chris

[ubikuberalles]

Like Pantechnicon said, you couldn't get by in the classic computing world without typing in a few programs from a magazine.

That was especially true when I first got into computing on the Altair. Buying a program via cassette tape or paper tape was expensive. Since every Altair had a slightly different configuration (different memory, different I/O cards etc.) you had to customize the software anyway and so buying the software on cassette or paper tape didn't save you much time. As a result, most software for sale also included the source code so you could easily do the customizations.

I must have typed in about a dozen game programs into the Altair including a Star Trek game I got from a magazine. I also wrote my very first game program on that machine (I called it "3-D maze").

During my Atari 8-bit days I would type in programs from magazines like Antic and A.n.a.l.o.g. My favorite game from a magazine was a Tempest clone. I played it a lot. The only other game I played more on the Atari 8-bit was Defender. I also ported some programs from the Altair including the Star Trek program. Most of my type-in programs came from the "Current Notes" magazine. "Small Miracles" was a regular column that featured short demo programs (20 lines or less of Basic code). I still have a few more programs to type in and so, every once in a while when I feel like running my Atari 8-bit, I'd breakout some old issues of "Current Notes" and test out yet another "Small Miracle".

When I got my Atari ST, I didn't enter in very many type-in programs. That's mainly because many of the magazines at the time (Compute's Atari ST, Start) included a floppy holding the programs featured in the articles. However, I got hold of a copy of DBASIC and ported the Star Trek program to test DBASIC. I was also able to download code from various BBS's in the area. As a result, the majority of the code I typed into the Atari ST were programs I created myself (graphic demos, mostly).

[dj898]

back in 89/90 I used to type in long list of one and zero from I/O magazine into FM-NEW7.

for the program I made. that would be the graphic editor for then just released MSX2+. It ended up published on one of MSX magazine. ^ ^

[Dave Farquhar]

The best (and probably longest) game I ever typed in was a game for the C-64 called Crossroads, published in Compute!'s Gazette, probably in 1987 or so. It was about 5K or so in length, machine language--so you had to type in more than 5,000 hexadecimal sequences, not counting the checksum numbers. It took a while. Killer game though. I guess in a way, it was like a 2-D Doom. A year or so later when Compute published a bigger, better, and longer sequel, I bought the companion disk rather than typing that in again. I played that game for hours. I still think it's one of the best-ever games for the 64, even if you count the commercial games.

I only had a hand in creating one thing that got published. In early 1991 a buddy of mine called me up. He was writing a game, and he'd written a tool for the C-64 that let him position sprites on the screen and then it generated the Basic code to duplicate the display for him. He wanted to know what I thought of the tool. So we booted up our terminal programs, hooked up, and he sent it to me. I took a look at it and I liked it a lot. I'd never seen another tool like it. I know I tweaked it a bit, but I don't know if I added features or if I just made it run a bit faster. I started working on a version for the C-128 that did the same thing, but generated Basic code for the 128. While I was doing that he came up with a few more improvements, and I added those to the 128 version. When we reached feature parity, we wrote documentation and submitted it to Compute. They accepted it, and it got published (October 1991). I think we got $350 or $375 for it. I was 16, and he was a year or two younger. That was a lot of money to us then, because minimum wage was $4.25.

I submitted several things to Compute, and this was one of two things they bought, but it was the only thing of mine they ever published. It sure was cool seeing my name in my favorite magazine.

[Gapporin]

Besides typing in the usual programs from library books and such, I once created, programmed and typed in a BASIC program from scratch. It was a Tamagotchi-like management program that played out like a text adventure. It was pretty linear, given the genre and language used, but I was (and still am) pretty proud of myself for creating something like that, by myself, around the age of 12.

EDIT: Huh, that sounded a lot like the program neuro created himself. Weird.

[Ze_ro]

I typed in plenty of games from magazines back in my VIC-20 and C-64 days... although typing in a game and actually writing one yourself are VERY different. Typing in BASIC programs can be educational, but typing in all the MLX games that Compute!'s Gazette printed wasn't educational at all, since you had absolutely no idea what any of the numbers meant.

As for stuff I actually wrote myself, I had some very very basic BASIC games... nothing I'd want anyone to ever see though, as I'd probably tarnish my reputation if anyone actually saw how bad I was at coding back then :embarrassed:

--Zero

[FantasiaWHT]

I had totally forgotten about typing in programs! But now I remember my dad's magazines always having a few games. Can't recall what magazines though.

We had a Sinclair ZX-81 basic with a tape drive. When I was 5, I wrote my own casino program! It had roulette, blackjack, and keno, and I loved showing it off to my friends.

[Dave Farquhar]

I typed in plenty of games from magazines back in my VIC-20 and C-64 days... although typing in a game and actually writing one yourself are VERY different. Typing in BASIC programs can be educational, but typing in all the MLX games that Compute!'s Gazette printed wasn't educational at all, since you had absolutely no idea what any of the numbers meant.

True. The nice thing about Gazette, though, was that it did have a regular column that taught programming in machine language. The ML type-ins didn't teach you anything, but at least there were a couple of pages in the magazine that did. That was why Gazette was my favorite magazine.

And I did eventually figure out that "A9" meant "LDA," but you're right, most of us didn't have the opcodes memorized, and very, very few people could disassemble a sequence of hex numbers in their heads.

In the crowd I ran around in though, having typed in one of the really long ML programs from Gazette was considered an achievement. Looking back now, I guess it meant we had a LOT of spare time.

[Flack]

I typed in a program for the Commodore 64 one time that allowed you to digitize audio from your Datasette. After typing in the program you would record your voice on a cassette tape with another tape recorder, then you could feed it into the computer. I can't remember how big the files were, but the quality was terrible (it sounded like an AM radio with the dial slightly off the station) but it worked and was pretty impressive at the time.

[kainemaxwell]

Many my old C=64 games I still have were form Compute! magazines my friend and I found. Idol of Orion, Gators & Turtles (I think that was the name), Action Biker, the Hermit...

[Daltone]

I remember typing some of the games out of 2000AD annuals. I've also messed about with Dark Basic a little and tinkered with some of the sample games. Never really had enough time to get into it fully though.

[sickdrummer420]

Some typed in games that come to mind for the C64

-Jungle Jake
-Sam & Ed
-Omicron
-Crossroads (This game rocked!)
-Front Line
-Utopia

I remember having at least 5 disks full of typed in games. My friends would freak when telling them that I typed them all in. I was very young at the time. Had tons of C64 mags to help me out.

[Vengevar]

The first ones I remember typing in were for my Intellivision computer system. I didn't have the tape drive, so nothing was ever saved, but I imagine that was my first intro to BASIC. There was even the Intellivison game Mr. BASIC Meets Bits N Bytes (I think), where if I remember correctly you had to do basic commands to progress in the game or something like that. You could even use some of the Intellivision sprites.

Next up was the CocCo 2, and I can't even imagine how many games I typed in from the Rainbow magazines. Thankfully I had a tape drive (and later floppy drives). That was when I kind of experimented on my own stuff too. Ahh, good times....

[cyberfluxor]

I did a bunch of game programing while in middle and high school, haven't seemed to do much since then though and I should. I wrote a few 2D racing games where the track shrunk as you got farther and would get more turns. I also wrote a nice casino game that was similar to the Vegas games on older consules and contained up to 10 save slots. There was also a time where I did Minesweeper and a knock-off of Drug Wars so people could play them at school in class off their TIs. There were also Pac Man, Jungle Hunt, Jezzball, and Pitfall clones I made. Although I only made 1 text adventure everything else was visual because it was what others wanted and I had to compete with other programs available at the time. It's a shame I'm no longer busy doing all that but I plan on in the near future to begin making games again and actually share them with a larger community than others at school. :P

[Jorpho]

There were two reasons why typing in BASIC programs from books was a source of endless frustration for me: First, the books were always several years out of date and used a slightly different command set from BASICA/GWBasic/QBasic, and frequently figuring out the correct equivalent was nontrivial.

Second, some of the best books used a really crappy font where you couldn't tell the zeroes from the O's or the I's from the ones, and if you were young and not terribly clever about these things, you were in for some real pain.

Some books I fondly remember are the ones that tried to tie together different programs with a story. Remember Micro Adventures? The Byte Brothers? Arcade Explorers? (The programs in that last series were so immense I never even tried to type then in, though they sounded quite cool. The writing was both rather imaginative and utterly horrible, and the illustrations were crap, though.)