Gorillas

The original Gorillas was written in QBasic and was first shipped with MS-DOS 5 in 1991. It, along with a handful of other programs, was included as a demonstration of QBasic, which was also new in MS-DOS 5. The goal of our project is to recreate Gorillas in QB64, which is a BASIC compiler designed to play nicely with modern computers. Our project, like the original game, draws an arena with two gorillas that fling bananas at each other. Taking turns, the players input a desired velocity and angle for their banana and attempt to hit the opposing gorilla. Winds of variable speeds blow through the arena, and players must take its effects into account in order to hit their target. The rotation of the bananas is animated as they fly through the arena, and when they land, they produce an explosion which destroys a small part of the arena around it. Once one player hits their opponent three times, they are declared the winner and their gorilla performs a small dance animation.

Our project is interesting in terms of computing history thanks to the importance of the original game. Due to its wide distribution alongside QBasic, Gorillas, along with Nibbles, which was distributed in the same fashion, became one of the most well-known games coded in BASIC. BASIC, thanks to its ubiquity on early home computers, played a major role in the early history of video games, and was the language of choice for many of the Game Hackers. As a result, Gorillas stands out as an important artifact in the history of gaming, which is the reason why we chose to recreate it for this project.

Running the Game

1. Download QB64 here: https://www.qb64.org/portal/
2. Download our game from GitHub: https://github.com/sambattalio/gorillas/archive/main.zip
3. Extract both archives.
4. Run qb64.exe
5. File -> Open -> Navigate to the Gorillas directory -> Select gorillas.bas and hit OK
6. Run -> Start
7. Enjoy! To play the game, simply input a number for the angle at which to throw the banana, hit enter, input number for the speed at which to throw the banana, and hit enter again to launch your banana.