A horse-race betting game for up to five players. Each player can bet up to $200 on one of five horses, with four kinds of bet: WIN pays 4 to 1, PLACE 3 to 2, SHOW 2 to 3, and PARLAY, which means picking both the winner and the horse that comes second, pays 15 to 1.
Derby was written by Kristian Boisvert and published on the November 1986 issue of the Byte Power tape magazine, where it is listed as a simulation with a loading time of 1 minute 20 seconds. The previous issue had announced it as a coming horse-race game.
Program Analysis
The 15,196-byte BASIC program auto-runs at line 1 and is a loader only: line 2 runs the machine code with RANDOMIZE USR 33855, and line 3 resets the computer with PRINT USR 0 when it returns. The race graphics and game code are in the REM of line 0 and were not disassembled.
Notable Techniques
- Game code held in a line-0 REM, loaded as one BASIC block.
- Like the other Byte Power programs, it checks the system variable at 23681 on start-up: the magazine told readers to
POKE 23681,0before loading so that the program would stop and list line 9999, which saves a personal backup copy.
Image Gallery
Note: Type-in program listings on this website use ZMAKEBAS notation for graphics characters.