In 1981, Microsoft was supposed to develop the software for the first IBM PCs. This also included some PC games. Bill Gates personally contributed to it and programmed a game himself. At the time, Apple considered it the worst game of all time.
43 years ago, the IT landscape was still very manageable. Microsoft, for example, was founded just a few years ago and Bill Gates still had an eye on all employees. For this reason, the small software manufacturer looked for new business partners in order to continue growing.
The then Microsoft CEO Bill Gates found such a partner in IBM. IBM needed an operating system for its first personal computer. The agreement also included games that IBM wanted on its PCs.
To ensure this, Bill Gates personally developed a game called Donkey. The simple racing game, which was programmed over a long night, received a lot of criticism from Apple. In the eyes of one Apple employee, it was nothing less than the most embarrassing game of all time.
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Bill Gates is programming the worst PC game of all time
What kind of game was that? 43 years ago Bill Gates programmed the PC game Donkey. In this racing game you had to avoid donkeys on a road. You could have your racing car switch between the left and right lanes.
Bill Gates and Microsoft developer Neil Konzen sat in a locked room until 4 a.m. to finish the game for IBM. The game was developed in the BASIC programming language.
A short excerpt of the game on YouTube
How did Apple react to this? Apple, like Microsoft, was not a global corporation over 40 years ago, as it is today. Interested in what the competition was doing, the Apple Macintosh team looked at Microsoft’s work because it was only founded a few years ago.
Former Apple developer Andy Hertzfeld was particularly disappointed with Bill Gates’ own game development. He said at the time that Donkey was the most embarrassing game of all time and that the game’s concept was as bad as the crappy graphics it used. (via businessinsider.de)
Why did Gates write the game? Microsoft had made a deal with IBM in 1980. The software manufacturer was supposed to supply the operating system for the first IBM PC. Microsoft bought the software from elsewhere and then sold it on to IBM under a different name.
However, the deal also included the provision of the BASIC programming language on IBM PCs. In order to promote the programming language for beginners, appropriate games should be pre-installed. In 1981, Gates sat in front of a prototype of the IBM PC to write the game in secret.
Over the years, Microsoft has gained more and more market share and has become a large global corporation with its software products. A student wanted to benefit from this and used his similar-sounding name for advertising. But Microsoft didn’t like that at all: The student Mike Rowe took on Microsoft – a website with his name had almost the same name as the Windows company