Highnoon

About Highnoon

Highnoon is a BASIC game developed by a student from Syosset High School, NY in early 1970 on a timeshared computer system. The game is single player and set in the Wild West. The objective of the game is a show down between you and Black Bart. Turns are taken to either move closer, run or shoot. Both the player and Bart have four shots and the odds of hitting each other increase as you close the 100 paces between you.

Development and Resurrection

The creator recalls Highnoon was written on a timeshared system leased by Syosset High Scool from ‘Call-a-computer’ company (Later named Advanced Systems Labs) on Long Island, NY. The program is written in early BASIC and is less than 4 pages printed out. Development was all done via teletype terminal dialed into the server with a maximum user storage of 6.4K. Due to the limited persistent storage, other programs including Highnoon were transfered to paper punch tape off the mainframe. The author still has a copy of the binary program file and an ASCII print out of the code.

Highnoon was a popular game on the Call-A-Computer system and the compiled version was included as a system wide game by administrators.

In early 2007 I discovered the printed out BASIC code and set to making a web based emulation of the code. An initial version of the web adaptation of this game can be played here at myBitBox. The web based version of the game uses javascript to minic the typing of a teletype.

Pictures

Photocopy of the original code:

highnoon_web

 

Close up of the copyright date:

highnoon_zoom

Terminal message with CAC:

cacletter_web
 
 


>>> Play Highnoon Here <<<

>>> Download the emulated PHP code <<<


 
Source code
 
 

Highnoon source code page 1 Highnoon source code page 2 Highnoon source code page 3 Highnoon source code page 4

2 Comments

  • By Zsolti, March 19, 2009 @ 12:38 pm

    Thank you the source code, good page and good game…
    Can you recommend me a good freeware basic program, which can use this kind of basic (not the newer one) and save it into *.exe?

  • By Daniel, March 1, 2010 @ 5:30 am

    The code is very simple and should work with minimal, if any, syntax modifications on most BASIC dialects. You could try your luck with a free compiler such as FreeBASIC.

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