Have one to sell?

Flip to back Flip to front

Listen Playing... Paused You're listening to a sample of the Audible audio edition.
Learn more

See this image

Follow the Authors

David H. Ahl

Steve North

BASIC Computer Games: Microcomputer Edition Paperback – November 1, 1978

by David H. Ahl (Author)

20 ratings

See all formats and editions Hide other formats and editions

Price

New from

Used from

Paperback

"Please retry"

—

$129.36

Paperback
from $129.36

1 Used from $129.36

Print length

183 pages
Language

English
Publisher

Workman Pub Co
Publication date

November 1, 1978
ISBN-10

0894800523
ISBN-13

978-0894800528
See all details

Customers who viewed this item also viewed

Page 1 of 1 Start overPage 1 of 1

David H. Ahl; Steve North; Christopher Cerf
10
Paperback
3 offers from $44.00
4
Paperback
6 offers from $161.12
James S Coan
20
Paperback
$167.37
retrogames
989
Not Machine Specific
$34.99
Mark Jones Lorenzo
43
Paperback
$9.95
Derek Morris
220
Paperback
$16.99

Customers who bought this item also bought

Page 1 of 1 Start overPage 1 of 1

James S Coan
20
Paperback
$167.37
Mark Jones Lorenzo
43
Paperback
$9.95

Special offers and product promotions

Amazon Business: Make the most of your Amazon Business account with exclusive tools and savings. Login now
Amazon Business : For business-only pricing, quantity discounts and FREE Shipping. Register a free business account

Product details

Publisher : Workman Pub Co; Microcomputer ed edition (November 1, 1978)
Language : English
Paperback : 183 pages
ISBN-10 : 0894800523
ISBN-13 : 978-0894800528
Item Weight : 1.06 pounds

Best Sellers Rank: #558,383 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)
- #687 in Board Games (Books)
- #2,456 in Computer Software (Books)

Customer Reviews:
20 ratings

Customer reviews

5 star		54%
4 star		20%
3 star		15%
2 star 0% (0%)		0%
1 star		11%

How are ratings calculated?

Top reviews from the United States

There was a problem filtering reviews right now. Please try again later.

Daniel Papajohn

Good place to find lots of BASIC programs

Reviewed in the United States on August 24, 2016

Verified Purchase

The games in this book are pretty hit or miss, but I suppose that's to be expected given the sheer number (101) of them. Presumably for maximum portability from platform to platform, none of these BASIC programs use real time interaction. For instance, there is a lunar lander game, but instead of firing your thrusters with a button press, the game prompts you for what level to set your engines to for the next ten seconds, which you type in, and the simulation carries on.

That said, I have yet to find a better collection of old BASIC games, and this includes some classics, like Battleship, Conway's Game of Life, and Checkers. I would also point out that the book does a good job using very portable basic commands that are ubiquitous among the many versions of BASIC, which is nice.

Helpful

Programming Dragon

A nostalgia copy to claim a prime spot I every 70s/80s geeks bookshelf.

Reviewed in the United States on September 4, 2014

Verified Purchase

This was one of my first computer books, and started my way into the field as a career... Looking back at how simple these programs are, and how I initially struggled back in the day... Yeah I could write any one of these in my sleep after having "one or two too many" now, and in a multitude of any of the languages of days gone past our cutting edge, but these programs have a nostalgia that is true to my heart. Maybe to simplistic these days, and since BASIC is a thing of the past, it is well worth getting a hardcopy if you grew up I the late 70s/early 80s, just to replace the copy of your youth, since we all know you had a copy of this book, if you grew up during that era, we all did!!

3 people found this helpful

Helpful

M. J. Musante

The classic of the classics

Reviewed in the United States on June 17, 2002

Verified Purchase

Back in the Golden Age of Microcomputing (roughly from '75 to '89 or so) the way people shared programs wasn't through the internet. Instead, it was through typing in program listings in the backs of magazines. "Compute!'s Gazette" was my means of getting software.
When I recently came across a copy of Ahl's "Basic Computer Games" I had to snatch it up immediately. There, contained in 101 program listings are games of varying degrees of quality, but many the games from that Golden Age are in there. Especially that Star Trek(TM) game. [Star Trek is a trademark of the Paramount Pictures Corporation]
Many of the games are just plain silly. Who knows why Ahl included them? Bunny, Poetry, Combat, just to name a few. But there are enough good ones in there to elicit a wave of nostalgia in those of us who lived through (and gamed through) those golden times.

6 people found this helpful

Helpful

Stephen John Smoogen

Basic Computer Games is a great bit of nostalgia

Reviewed in the United States on October 15, 2013

Verified Purchase

Written for a time when most computers were still tied to teletypes and not "screens", this book covers various games from the day of 64k was a large system. The games while filled with spaghetti cover the foundation of the games that are still played (Civilization, Angry Birds etc) if only from a text way.

2 people found this helpful

Helpful

Super dork

Reviewed in the United States on April 14, 2019

Verified Purchase

Really good

Helpful

Luis E Rordiguez

Great Book and In almost great condition until pages fell out

Reviewed in the United States on November 1, 2016

Verified Purchase

I remember this book being in my dad's library along with MORE Basic Computer Games. We used to sit in front of the computer for hours and use the examples within and even modified them to make our own games. Those books were lost in time and I was very happy to find these available on Amazon. There is a lot to learn from these books and they really give insight into the old days of home computing. My copy looked brand new and was in excellent condition until I opened the book to thumb through, the glue binding the books is very dry and the pages started to separate, I will likely re-bind them my self or put them in a ring binder. The issue with the glue could be due to how they were stored, It looks like the spine had been facing a window allowing the sun to deteriorate the glue(spines are sun bleached on both BCG's and More BCG's) other than that the pages are crisp and white and the front and back covers are vibrant in color with no stains at all. Its hard to believe that this book is 35 years old. Would have received 5 stars if the pages didn't start to fall out.

Helpful

nathan virgil

The Original

Reviewed in the United States on September 13, 2012

Verified Purchase

A classic book on programming, this has helped many game designers start working over the past three and a half decades.

Unfortunately, the fact that the book is so old means it's written for an obsolete dialect of BASIC; Microsoft 8080 BASIC (MITS Altair BASIC, Rev. 4.0). As-is, this book is useless to modern programming. The only solution, of course, is to translate it from the obsolete dialect, to a newer dialect that's actually supported by modern computers. With any luck, doing so will help me (and you!) get a better understanding of the modern dialect-of-choice (FreeBasic, for me), as well as the features that dialect presents. Good luck!

Update: The code actually isn't as obsolete as I thought it was. It still works with qb64. It's even fun updating the code from Microsoft BASIC to QuickBASIC. It's still only four stars, though. Why? Well, for one thing, the coding style is insanely inconsistent. This is understandable The games are apparently collected from magazine articles. It would still be nice, however, if there was at least proper credit to the programmers that wrote the articles, so that the readers would have an idea what to expect in terms of style.

Not only that, but some of the code simply does not work. I wrote the code for War exactly as it was in the book, and it kept freezing up. Taking a closer look at the code, the shuffling algorithm wasn't just an infinite loop, it was an infinite figure eight! I've since cleaned this up and got it working, but now I'm suspicious of the code in the rest of the book.

2 people found this helpful

Helpful

... of my childhood and is still one of the best programming books ever

Reviewed in the United States on May 18, 2016

Verified Purchase

This book is part of my childhood and is still one of the best programming books ever.

One person found this helpful

Helpful

Pages with related products. See and discover other items: computer basic language programs, basic electronics, basic programming languages

Follow the Authors

Similar authors to follow

Similar authors to follow

BASIC Computer Games: Microcomputer Edition Paperback – November 1, 1978

Customers who viewed this item also viewed

Customers who bought this item also bought

Special offers and product promotions

Product details

Customer reviews

Reviews with images

Top reviews from the United States

There was a problem filtering reviews right now. Please try again later.

Top reviews from other countries