Short Bytes: Did you know that Bill Gates programmed the world’s first computer game? Named Donkey, Bill Gates wrote this game in BASIC with the help of his friend Neil Konzen on an IBM prototype machine. If you want to take a trip down visit to the memory lane, you can do so with the help of online simulators.
If I look at today’s philanthropist Bill Gates, it’s very hard to imagine that in the early days of Microsoft, he was an actual programmer. Born on October 28, 1955, he wrote his first computer program at the age of 13. You might have read the famous story of how Bill Gates hacked his school computer to meet girls.
In 1975, he met his hometown friend Paul Allen and developed software for the first microcomputers. They worked together to adapt BASIC for using it on the microcomputers. Thanks to his project’s success, later he left Harvard and formed Microsoft.
During the same journey, Microsoft licensed MS-DOS to IBM, the world’s biggest computer supplier of the world. A fact that’s lesser known is that Bill Gates is also the creator of first-ever PC game–here’s the code of the same.
Named DONKEY.BAS, this simple driving game was written by Bill Gates and his friend Neil Konzen at 4 am in the morning. It was programmed on a prototype IBM machine and came free with the early versions of MS-DOS operating system for IBM PCs.
Bill Gates himself told the history of the game during a TechEd keynote in 2001. Here’s what he had to say:
The first version of DONKEY.BAS was released in 1981. To showcase its new .NET platform and Visual Basic .NET programming language, Microsoft created a game named DONKEY.NET in 2001. It was a three-dimensional game that aimed to hit donkeys. 
If you are ready to go down the memory lane, here’s the link to play the game right now.
This simulation runs at 64Kb of RAM, a CGA display, and a clock speed of 4.77MHz–the original configuration of IBM PC Model 5150.
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Also Read: “How To Become A Successful Person Like Bill Gates” — According To Bill Gates
