Yesterday I looked at the Star Wars Q&A Book about Computers. It featured a history of the computer (through 1983) and some awesome art by Ken Barr. Today, I’m looking at another awesomely vintage computer book, it’s the Marvel Super Heroes Computer Fun Book Two from 1984.
This book is LOOOOOOOOONG and it features A LOT of programs. I’ll just be looking at some of the more notable programs and artwork. You can check out my Flickr set to see more.
Here’s the cover to the activity book and the intro page telling you what to expect inside.
And here’s the Fantastic Four to tell you how to use this book (in case you weren’t already aware that you used it to, you know, program your computer).
Here’s Capt America reminding you to code your 900 lines. He gives you 9 examples (there’s another page of code I’m not showing you) of 900 lines from different BASIC environments like the Commodore 64, IBM PC and Apple II.
Here’s a program featuring Cap called Menace of the Gray Gargoyle. It’s a “fence busting” program. See the code here. Man, that Gray Gargoyle looks lame.
This program is called Iron Man to the Rescue. It’s a game in which Iron Man has to stop a ship from shooting missiles at a school filled with children. Hope you get them all or the deaths of thousands of small schoolchildren on your head. Is it just me or does that seem like a needlessly violent scenario for a kid’s computing activity book?
There are two other Iron Man programs. The first is called Robot Retriever. It’s awesome because the title page features MODOK and ROM: Spaceknight. The other is Iron Man’s Lock Problem. I like the artwork on the title page. I didn’t realize Iron Man was popular enough in the 1980s to get three programs in this book.
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Cavalcade of Awesome 