Show HN: Banana Battle – DOS Gorillas rebuilt as a web game

michael480th.github.io

2 points by arrozconcosas 1 week ago

As a kid, I loved to play the DOS Gorillas game where you would throw bananas at your opponent, smashing cities as you go.

I wanted to play it, so I rebuilt the classic QBasic/DOS "Gorillas" game from scratch as a mobile web app. It is playable in the browser and installable to your iPhone home screen.

It's all vanilla HTML/Canvas/JavaScript. No frameworks, no build step, no dependencies, no tracking. A single static page served from GitHub Pages.

A few bits that were fun to build: - Destructible terrain: buildings are painted to an offscreen canvas and explosions erase pixels - Ballistic physics with wind, sub-stepped so a fast banana can't tunnel through a thin building between frames. - Native share sheet (Web Share API) so you can text a friend your result with a "beat my score" challenge link

It's hot-seat two-player (pass the phone, or share a keyboard: arrows to aim, space to throw).

No original Microsoft code or assets — the code and pixel art are all my own (with some help from Claude :) ).

Feedback welcome!

kownse 6 days ago

The graphics are quite minimal, but the core mechanics feel surprisingly solid. It's a great, lightweight tribute to the original Gorillas.

operaopera 6 days ago

Small improvement suggestion, disable contextual menus on long taps, while adjusting the slider.

Thank you for bringing back childhood memories!