--- title: DONKEY.BAS — IBM PC (1981) | daily.dev description: A browser-based recreation of DONKEY.BAS, the color graphics and sound demo game that shipped with early IBM PC DOS in BASICA, written by Bill Gates and Neil... canonical: https://daily.dev/posts/donkey-bas-ibm-pc-1981--nue8hiidm twitter:card: summary_large_image twitter:site: @dailydotdev og:type: website og:site_name: daily.dev og:title: DONKEY.BAS — IBM PC (1981) | daily.dev og:description: A browser-based recreation of DONKEY.BAS, the color graphics and sound demo game that shipped with early IBM PC DOS in BASICA, written by Bill Gates and Neil... og:url: https://daily.dev/posts/donkey-bas-ibm-pc-1981--nue8hiidm og:image: https://api.daily.dev/og/posts/Nue8HiidM.png og:image:alt: DONKEY.BAS — IBM PC (1981) og:image:width: 1200 og:image:height: 630 og:locale: en --- > ## Documentation Index > Fetch the complete documentation index at: https://daily.dev/llms.txt > Use this file to discover all available pages before exploring further. # DONKEY.BAS — IBM PC (1981) **[Hacker News](https://daily.dev/sources/hn)** · 1 min read · 0 upvotes · 0 comments ## Summary A browser-based recreation of DONKEY.BAS, the color graphics and sound demo game that shipped with early IBM PC DOS in BASICA, written by Bill Gates and Neil Konzen in 1981. The recreation marks the 45th anniversary of the IBM PC and reimplements the original CGA gameplay in JavaScript, with source available on GitHub. ## Full article daily.dev links to this article rather than hosting it. Read it at the original source: ## Questions this post answers ### Who wrote the DONKEY.BAS game that shipped with early IBM PC DOS? Bill Gates, co-founder of Microsoft, wrote DONKEY.BAS along with Neil Konzen in 1981, with version 1.10 following in 1982. It shipped with early IBM PC DOS as a demonstration of color graphics and sound capabilities written in BASICA, and the gameplay involved switching lanes to avoid hitting a donkey. _daily.dev surfaces stories like this for developers curious about computing history and vintage software._ ## Community take How the wider developer community reacted, aggregated from 1 discussion and 89 comments across hackernews (as of 2026-08-14). **TL;DR:** The recreation triggers a wave of nostalgia for early DOS-bundled BASIC games like DONKEY.BAS, GORILLA.BAS, and NIBBLES.BAS, with people fondly recalling learning to code by tinkering with them, alongside side discussions about old hardware, PC speakers, and whether something has been lost in modern dev environments. **Sentiment:** 70% positive · 25% mixed · 5% skeptical **The case for** - Many recall this and similar BASIC games as their first exposure to programming, often by hacking the code to modify gameplay. - People appreciate how compact and approachable these old BASIC games were compared to modern game frameworks. - The sound and visuals evoke strong nostalgic memories, including the shared 1812 Overture musical motif across several BASIC games. **The pushback** - Some note the recreation's sound effects are too advanced for what early IBM PC speakers could actually produce. - One commenter found the collision detection buggy, similar to the original game's flaws. - A commenter dismissed the project as 'nothing novel', pointing to several pre-existing browser ports of similar games. **By community** - hackernews (positive): Overwhelmingly nostalgic thread reminiscing about learning to code via DONKEY.BAS, GORILLA.BAS, and QBasic, with only minor technical nitpicks and one dismissive comment. **Open questions** - Whether the rumor that DONKEY.BAS was the last code Bill Gates personally wrote at Microsoft is actually true. - Whether the grayscale donkey image shown on a bad loss was technically possible within BASIC's original color constraints. **Highlights** > This is what got me into programming. When I was a kid, I had a shitty 386 because my father got a computer second hand from a friend (we were poor). I was playing the game and then pressed a key and it took me to the basic editor. I was confused with what I saw and started changing things. I changed a number and the size of the explosion on the banana got bigger. My best friend at the time went to computer camp and explained to me that it was code. 30 years later I'm still programming. > — [mempko on hackernews · 1 comments](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=49290884) > Someone gave my grandfather a Games BASICA floppy that had this and other games on it. But this copy had a few games that had been "modified". I remember in DONKEY.BAS, it would curse at you if you hit the donkey. "YOU STUPID SONOFABITCH". We thought it was hilarious. My grandfather was less pleased. He took it away from us when he found out. > — [friarpuck on hackernews · 3 comments](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=49290197) > It says something about what a thoughtful development environment these early BASICs were, that you could make a full simple little game like this in only 131 lines even though they're ostensibly far less powerful than modern languages. I'm not sure if you could even get an SDL window open and game loop running in 131 lines of (non-golfed) C. Never mind how compact, beginner-friendly, and just plain fun they were to use. It's been said countless times but I'll say it again - we've lost something over the years. > — [wk\_end on hackernews · 8 comments](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=49289978) > nothing novel? just a generated port? - https://gorillas.zone - https://codepen.io/manz/pen/RmEQgv - https://github.com/rizwan-virani/gorillas - https://github.com/theraccoonbear/BrowserGORILLAS.BAS > — [grimgrin on hackernews](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=49291211) > I haven’t looked at the code but the collision detection was buggy even back in the day. You have to switch lanes while there is nothing or a donkey in front of you. If the donkey is in the other lane it registers a hit even if it looks like you passed it Edit: line 1750 is where it does a simple collision check and yep looks like it registers a collision without checking you’re past the donkey or not > — [smackeyacky on hackernews](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=49293397) **Source threads** - [hackernews](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=49289465) · 193 points · 89 comments ## Similar posts on daily.dev - [PCjs Machines](https://daily.dev/posts/pcjs-machines-teulc76kk) · Hacker News · 0 upvotes · 0 comments - [BASIC Code](https://daily.dev/posts/basic-code-pbp32tcp0) · Two Stop Bits · 0 upvotes · 0 comments - [DOOM Runs \(slowly\) In A IBM PC-Compatible CSS Sheet](https://daily.dev/posts/doom-runs-slowly-in-a-ibm-pc-compatible-css-sheet-e0cpnccap) · Hackaday · 3 upvotes · 0 comments - [15 incredible DOS classics you can play in your browser](https://daily.dev/posts/15-incredible-dos-classics-you-can-play-in-your-browser-4nwbk6npj) · XDA Developers · 0 upvotes · 0 comments --- Tags: [#javascript](https://daily.dev/tags/javascript) [View this post on daily.dev](https://daily.dev/posts/donkey-bas-ibm-pc-1981--nue8hiidm) ```json {"@context":"https://schema.org","@graph":[{"@type":"Organization","@id":"https://daily.dev/#organization","name":"daily.dev","url":"https://daily.dev","logo":{"@type":"ImageObject","url":"https://daily.dev/apple-touch-icon.png","width":180,"height":180},"sameAs":["https://twitter.com/dailydotdev","https://github.com/dailydotdev","https://www.linkedin.com/company/daily-dev-ltd"]},{"@type":"WebSite","@id":"https://daily.dev/#website","url":"https://daily.dev","name":"daily.dev","publisher":{"@id":"https://daily.dev/#organization"},"potentialAction":{"@type":"SearchAction","target":{"@type":"EntryPoint","urlTemplate":"https://daily.dev/search?q={search_term_string}"},"query-input":"required name=search_term_string"}}]} {"@context":"https://schema.org","@type":"TechArticle","headline":"DONKEY.BAS — IBM PC (1981)","url":"https://daily.dev/posts/donkey-bas-ibm-pc-1981--nue8hiidm","mainEntityOfPage":{"@type":"WebPage","@id":"https://daily.dev/posts/donkey-bas-ibm-pc-1981--nue8hiidm"},"datePublished":"2026-08-13T19:01:26.931Z","dateModified":"2026-08-14T02:37:27.632Z","description":"A browser-based recreation of DONKEY.BAS, the color graphics and sound demo game that shipped with early IBM PC DOS in BASICA, written by Bill Gates and Neil...","image":"https://media.daily.dev/image/upload/s--HRgLpUt6--/f_auto/v1722860399/public/Placeholder%2003","thumbnailUrl":"https://media.daily.dev/image/upload/s--HRgLpUt6--/f_auto/v1722860399/public/Placeholder%2003","isAccessibleForFree":true,"articleSection":"Hacker News","inLanguage":"en","publisher":{"@type":"Organization","name":"daily.dev","url":"https://daily.dev","logo":{"@type":"ImageObject","url":"https://daily.dev/apple-touch-icon.png","width":180,"height":180}},"author":{"@type":"Organization","name":"Hacker News","logo":"https://media.daily.dev/image/upload/t_logo,f_auto/v1/logos/hn","url":"https://daily.dev/sources/hn"},"commentCount":0,"discussionUrl":"https://daily.dev/posts/donkey-bas-ibm-pc-1981--nue8hiidm","interactionStatistic":[{"@type":"InteractionCounter","interactionType":{"@type":"LikeAction"},"userInteractionCount":0},{"@type":"InteractionCounter","interactionType":{"@type":"CommentAction"},"userInteractionCount":0}],"keywords":"javascript","timeRequired":"PT1M"} {"@context":"https://schema.org","@type":"BreadcrumbList","itemListElement":[{"@type":"ListItem","position":1,"name":"Home","item":"https://daily.dev"},{"@type":"ListItem","position":2,"name":"Hacker News","item":"https://daily.dev/sources/hn"},{"@type":"ListItem","position":3,"name":"DONKEY.BAS — IBM PC (1981)"}]} {"@context":"https://schema.org","@type":"FAQPage","@id":"https://daily.dev/posts/donkey-bas-ibm-pc-1981--nue8hiidm#faq","mainEntity":[{"@type":"Question","name":"Who wrote the DONKEY.BAS game that shipped with early IBM PC DOS?","acceptedAnswer":{"@type":"Answer","text":"Bill Gates, co-founder of Microsoft, wrote DONKEY.BAS along with Neil Konzen in 1981, with version 1.10 following in 1982. 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