About
DONKEY.BAS is the original 1981 driving game -- players avoid hitting donkeys crossing a two-lane road -- written by Microsoft co-founder Bill Gates and Neil Konzen, and distributed with early versions of PC DOS/MS-DOS for the IBM PC. This repository republishes the original BASIC source-code listing. The game uses the IBM PC's CGA display mode, the only color graphics mode the original machine offered, typically showing three of its four available colors on screen at once.
Getting started
The player controls a car that can't steer, accelerate, or brake -- only switch between the road's two lanes by pressing the space bar -- to dodge donkeys that appear one at a time at the top of the screen and scroll downward. Hitting a donkey ends that attempt with an explosion, a short PC-speaker tune, and a "BOOM!" message; successfully dodging one shows "Donkey loses!" Score is tracked between the player and the donkeys with no fixed end condition, and Esc quits the game.
History
IBM contracted Microsoft to build the IBM PC's operating system (released as PC DOS/MS-DOS) along with a version of Microsoft BASIC; DONKEY.BAS was written by Gates and Konzen to demonstrate that BASIC's ability to produce interactive programs with color graphics and sound. The first version was released in 1981, followed by v1.10 in 1982. It still runs on modern hardware with compatible BIOS and 5.25-inch floppy drives, though the original BASICA interpreter used under PC DOS 1.x required ROM-based IBM Cassette BASIC, which modern computers lack.