I was a failed teenage game developer (part 1)

Hi.  My name's MrPigeon, and I suck.  No really, I do.  At first, I wasn't sure why Ferris would let me post in his blog, because I'll probably suck at this too.  I figure I may as well write about what I'm good at, so my first three entries will be dedicated to how my inherent suckfullness got me to this sorry point in my life.

My passion for programming started at a young age, probably around ten or eleven years old. I remember that one of the first things I wrote was a text adventure game in BASIC (using the free GWBASIC that came with MS-DOS 3). It was loosely based around a freeware Commodore 64 game called Grod The Demented Pixie.

The game itself was quite terrible and only barely qualifies as being called a text adventure because:

1. It contained text.
   
2. I'm sure at the imaginative age of 10 it seemed like quite an 'adventure'.

It also contained my very first easter egg, in that if you typed in a secret phrase at the end (probably something like "ATARI LYNX RULEZ") you were treated to pages upon pages of a ten year old's wisdom. I would come back day after day to pour more words into it, transforming it from a simple "hello everyone this is a secret message!" to a epic record of my simple little life at that point. Sadly, I no longer have the game itself, but below is a 99% accurate recreation of what it would've contained.

I have been playing Double Dragon 2 a lot today and
it is really hard.  If you press punch and kick at
the same time Billy does a really cool jump kick it
is awesome. It gets really hard at the farm level though
and I can't get past it because of all the punk girls
with the chains.  Luke says that when you complete it
you get a picture of a naked woman which is pretty weird
and I hope my mum does not find out. Anyway it is a
good game and I give it 95.7 out of 100 and I hope that
they make Double Dragon 3 because that will be even
better.

In high-school, I befriended a guy named Tony. As far as high-school friendships go, ours was a fairly competitive one. Not out on the track, however.  Ours was a friendship fueled by the fury of QBASIC pogramming. I had just finished reading about billion-dollar maverick Bill Gates' founding of Microsoft, and now had a burning passion to create my own software company offering quality, QBASIC-written wares to.. well, no-one really. But that's beside the point. And thus, BARGOSOFT was formed on one dreary winter's day in June of 1994. Tony, meanwhile, had created his own 'company', BISHTRONICS, founded on much the same principles.

It was healthy and fun competition. Each day we would arrive at school with boxes of 3.5" disks containing our latest creations, for the other to drool and be jealous over. I tended to be caught behind the 8-ball a lot of the time, and as such it was often I who was left blinking in amazement as BISHTRONICS showed off its new software. I still vividly remember the day that Tony showed me his newly-implemented menu system featuring a 'highlight' bar that could be scrolled up and down using the arrow keys. I'd never seen anything like it.  All through lunch I was sitting in stunned silence, trying to figure out how it could be done.

Our competitiveness soon blossomed into all-out war.  We started doing early morning raids upon the classroom computers, unleashing our homebuilt DOSShell replacements upon them, hoping to hear the positive swoons of the teacher when they next turned on the computer - knowing full well how much it would torment the other.

The terrible software I invented during that period came thick and fast. There was "Bargosoft Quik-Ad Micro", which proposed to do the following:

Ever wanted to display your own ads for software? This
program will create your ad with a touch of colour and style.
Just type in your message after you choose to write your ad.
Unfortunately I haven't figured out what to do after that so
you will have to write that section by yourself. Anyway,
have fun!"

So ultimately if you typed in your advertisement text, it would display it in the middle of the screen surrounded by flashing, rotating ASCII asterisks. Who needs expensive PR departments when you can harness the raw power of Bargosoft Quik-Ad Micro FOR FREE?

Quik-Ad in Action!

There was also "Bargosoft Music Manager", which prompted the user to enter in an octave, tempo, and notes that they wanted played through the PC speaker. The most amusing thing in retrospect about this and many of the other applications is that they all featured huge video-game like introduction sequences, featuring flashy logos and overbearing PC speaker music. Music Manager itself was quite a stand-out, because not only did it feature the aforementioned logo presentations, it also featured about a minute's worth of fake magazine quotes (from equally fake magazines) praising it before it even got to the main menu:

`A powerhouse achivement!' - Computer Utility Magazine
`The best QBASIC utility we have seen so far!' - PD Monthly
`Definetly Bargosoft\Heatwave's best effort yet' - PC Domain
`Another winner for Bargosoft!' - PC Upgrading

Then there was also the ill-conceived "Bargosoft Homework Manager". This thing would ask you what subject the homework was for, what the homework was about, the due date, and any other "relevant information" you might have to offer. What might the program do next, you might wonder? Well, it sure as hell doesn't do the homework for you. In fact, all it does is send the following to the printer:

--------------------------------------------------------
**THE BARGOSOFT\HEATWAVE HOMEWORK MANAGER VERSION 1.0**
--------------------------------------------------------
Subject: <...>
Assignment: <...>
Due Date: <...>
Relevant information: <...>
--------------------------------------------------------
Copyright 1994. Bargosoft\Heatwave.

How useful! Surely such a program would be the wildest dream of any overworked student looking for assistance in their studies.

The observant amongst you would've noticed the rather curious "BARGOSOFT\HEATWAVE" up above. What's that all about, you might wonder? Well, to find out, you're going to have to wait until tomorrow's update for part 2. In the meantime, inspire yourselves by witnessing the Bargosoft mission statement:

(PS: The **EDITED FOR SAFETY REASONS** bit was already there. I guess even as a fourteen year old I was paranoid of crazy internet people)

(PPS: Anybody willing to send me "a sample of their QBASIC skills" can still feel free to do so, and make me feel even more embarassed about myself)

In tomorrow's entry: Bargosoft becomes a force to be reckoned with in the imaginary "demoscene" of Stanthorpe.