About

Every programmer starts somewhere, and for me, that start was QBasic. It was the first programming language I learnt, and it introduced me to the wonders of software development. And yes, they were wonderful: such was the perfect time, during the late 1990’s and early 2000’s, where you had enough power at your fingertips to bring your ideas to life, yet such limitations that it didn’t matter that their manifestation was pretty crappy.

I was fortunate to grow up during that moment, and being a fan of DOS gaming back then, I had inspirations to make my own games, along with anything else that tickled my fancy. My skills back then were limited: you won’t find good graphics, sophisticated movement, or anything that took full advantage of the machine. Just a bunch of Basic apps and games I had fun making back then, mainly for my own amusement, that I’d like to preserve.

And frankly, I’d like to share them. I wished I shared them much earlier, back when I was making them and Geocities was all the rage. I kinda feel like I missed out of something by not taking the opportunity back then. Well, I’m sharing them now. Better late than never. Thankfully, due to Moores Law, these apps are completely runnable within modern-day browsers, so there’s no need to muck around with Dosbox.

So here they are: 22 apps I made in Basic. And so by putting them here, I hope to ensconce them in amber for as long as the web is around. To anyone besides myself who comes across them; well, I’m not naïve in thinking they’re good enough to be “liked”, but I hope you find them interesting.

— Leon Mika, May 2023

P.S. These apps are presented as is, and most have been unmodified for about 25-30 years, so it may not be accessible to everyone. Apologies in advanced for that. Also, it’s recommended that this website be used with keyboard and mouse.

Acknowledgements

This site was built using the etch theme for Hugo, by Lukas Joswiak.