Preservation note: This is a preserved retro-computing artifact originally published on idtprof.net in 2016. The two magazine scans below are the surviving original source for this restoration. The historical program contains period language that is retained for documentary fidelity, not adopted as current editorial language.
In this game of high adventure, your objective is to travel 200 miles across the great Gobi Desert while being chased across the sand. High adventure, indeed.
Run Camel
This is a dependency-free browser compatibility runner for the preserved Camel program, not a claim to be a complete Microsoft BASIC emulator. Type RUN to play or LIST to inspect the scan-derived BASIC transcription. The runner follows the listing’s control flow, including the unusual line 500 behavior in which commands 1–5 are explicit ON ... GOTO targets and command 6 falls through to the following help routine.
Compatibility repair
The printed listing initializes Q, tests Q at line 390, and clears Q after the ransom sequence, but it never visibly sets Q when the player is captured. Without that missing state change, choosing to wait for payment cannot return to the ransom menu as the surrounding code clearly expects.
The browser runner therefore applies the equivalent of Q=1 when the capture/ransom sequence begins. That repair exists only in the compatibility runner. It has not been inserted into the scan-derived BASIC transcription.
Source and transcription
The authoritative artifacts are the two surviving magazine scans. In 2026, the listing was transcribed from those scans and checked using two independent OCR passes plus comparison against surviving public transcriptions of the same Creative Computing program. Obvious OCR substitutions were corrected only where the scan and program structure supported the reading; historical spelling and typographical errors visible in the listing were retained where practical.
The text file is therefore labeled a TRANSCRIPTION, not an original source file. The browser runner is a COMPATIBILITY-RUNNER. Neither replaces the original scans.
View the BASIC transcription directly
View the transcribed BASIC source
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Original scans
The original scans remain at protected legacy-media URLs on idtprof.net. They are the preservation authority if the transcription and image ever disagree.