Editing DONKEY.BAS (section)

==Development==
[[File:PC DOS 1.10 screenshot.png|thumb|DONKEY.BAS in IBM PC DOS 1.10]] 

When [[IBM]] was developing its [[personal computer]] in the late 1970s and early 1980s, it contracted Microsoft to develop an operating system and a version of the [[BASIC]] programming language to release with the new computer. The operating system was released as [[IBM PC DOS]] when included with IBM PCs and as [[MS-DOS]] when sold separately by Microsoft. Both included versions of [[Microsoft BASIC]].

''DONKEY.BAS'' was written by [[Bill Gates]] and [[Neil Konzen]] to demonstrate the IBM&nbsp;PC and the BASIC programming language's capability to produce interactive programs with color [[computer graphics|graphics]] and [[sound]]. The game continues to generate interest, in part because of the involvement of Gates at a time when Microsoft was relatively small and only six years old. According to a speech delivered by Gates in 2001:<ref>[http://www.microsoft.com/presspass/exec/billg/speeches/2001/06-19teched.aspx Bill Gates Speech Transcript – Tech Ed 2001]. {{webarchive|url=https://web.archive.org/web/20120213015238/http://www.microsoft.com/presspass/exec/billg/speeches/2001/06-19teched.aspx |date=2012-02-13 }}.</ref>
{{quote|
Actually, it was myself and Neil Thompson [sic] at four in the morning with this prototype IBM&nbsp;PC sitting in this small room. IBM insisted that we had to have a lock on the door, and we only had this closet that had a lock on it, so we had to do all our development in there, and it was always over 100 degrees, but we wrote late at night a little application to show what the Basic built into the IBM&nbsp;PC could do. And so that was ''Donkey.bas''. It was at the time very thrilling.
}}

[[Apple Inc.|Apple]]'s [[Andy Hertzfeld]] mentioned the game in a description of the Macintosh team's reaction to the 1981 IBM&nbsp;PC purchased for them by Steve Jobs "to dissect and evaluate", noting that the new computer shipped with "some games written in BASIC that were especially embarrassing":<ref>{{Cite web |url=http://www.folklore.org/StoryView.py?project=Macintosh&story=Donkey.txt |title=Donkey |website=Folklore.org |access-date=2009-02-23 |archive-date=2006-09-01 |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20060901190907/http://www.folklore.org/StoryView.py?project=Macintosh&story=Donkey.txt |url-status=live }}</ref>{{long quote|date=October 2020}}
{{quote|
The most embarrassing game was a lo-res graphics driving game called "Donkey". The player was supposed to be driving a car down a slowly scrolling, poorly rendered "road", and could hit the space bar to toggle the jerky motion. Every once in a while, a brown blob would fill the screen, which was supposed to be a donkey manifesting in the middle of the road. If you didn't hit the space bar in time, you would crash into the donkey and lose the game.

We thought the concept of the game was as bad as the crude graphics that it used. Since the game was written in BASIC, you could list it out and see how it was written. We were surprised to see that the comments at the top of the game proudly proclaimed the authors: Bill Gates and Neil Konzen. Neil was a bright teenage hacker who I knew from his work on the Apple&nbsp;II (who would later become Microsoft's technical lead on the Mac project), but we were amazed that such a thoroughly bad game could be co-authored by Microsoft's co-founder and that he would actually want to take credit for it in the comments.
}}

The first version of ''DONKEY.BAS'' was released in 1981, followed by version 1.10 in 1982. The operating systems with which the game was first distributed still work on modern computers with compatible [[BIOS]] and 5.25-inch floppy drives; however, [[IBM BASICA]] which ran the program under PC DOS 1.x requires [[Read-only memory|ROM]]-based [[IBM Cassette BASIC]], which modern computers do not have. The [[source code]] is still available. The game may be played with the [[GW-BASIC]] (original code) or [[QBasic]] (adapted code) interpreters or in [[compiler|compiled]] form (see "[[#External links|external links]]" below).