Faithful modern recreations of all 20 BASIC programs from "Marvel Super Heroes Computer Fun, Book One" (Donald I. Fine, Inc., 1984), playable in any browser and in any Python 3 terminal — behind one retro green-CRT menu.
🎮 Play the menu in your browser →
In 1984, Donald I. Fine published a kids' "type-in BASIC" book starring the Marvel Super Heroes — 20 little programs you'd painstakingly type into your Commodore 64 / Apple II / IBM PC / TRS-80, save to cassette, and run. Spider-Man's tax calculator, Thor's chain-breaking spell, Dr. Strange's bomb decoder, a Concentration game with the X-Men — that sort of thing.
This is every program recreated faithfully — bugs and all — on the modern web (and in any Python 3 terminal), with a retro phosphor-green CRT aesthetic and a launcher that lets you pick which one to run.
| # | Program | What it does |
|---|---|---|
| 1 | Chains of Loki | Sine-wave "chains" scroll up the screen |
| 2 | Alpha Sort | Selection-sort visualizer; decodes Loki's spell |
| 3 | NIM | Misère subtraction game vs. the computer |
| 4 | Time Spirals | A turtle fills the screen in spiral order |
| 5 | Roman Denumeralizer | A "machine" eats Roman numerals and prints decimal |
| 6 | Maze of Doom | Invisible 7×11 maze; map it on paper |
| 7 | Scramble Drop | Unscramble falling Egyptian words |
| 8 | Challenge Game | Concentration / memory match (2×2, 4×4, 6×6) |
| 9 | Disarm Bomb | Debug challenge: subroutine END instead of RETURN |
| 10 | Phone Book | Sorted directory with letter filter |
| 11 | Death Meter | Reaction-time fraction-stop game |
| 12 | Encoder | 5-row columnar transposition cipher |
| 13 | Decoder | Inverse of #12; decodes Iron Man's message |
| 14 | Typeup | Falling-letters typing game |
| 15 | Sketch Pad | Blinking-cursor real-time drawing |
| 16 | Wordweaver | Turn names into binary-pattern textiles |
| 17 | Backwards Spell | Type and watch words appear right-to-left |
| 18 | Bat Fly | Fly Dr. Strange (as a bat) without hitting walls |
| 19 | Flash By | Decode Doc Ock's password (debug challenge) |
| 20 | Broken Calculator | Debug challenge: missing GOTOs cascade operators |
Just open index.html — or visit the live site.
python menu.pyThen pick a program by number. A few of the interactive ones (Sketch Pad, Bat Fly, Typeup, Death Meter, Flash By, Backwards Spell) use Windows msvcrt for non-blocking keypress; the others run anywhere Python does.
Each program uses the book's "900-Line" hardware-abstraction shim (Commodore 64 screen profile: 40×24). Where the original code had quirks or bugs, they're preserved:
- The suboptimal NIM AI at S÷4 (line 270
T=-1 → T=1) — the book promises "tough," not unbeatable - The book's typo "YOU GOT THEN ALL IN"
- The cascade bugs in Disarm Bomb and Broken Calculator — both ship buggy-by-default with a "fix it" toggle
- The "too fast to read" puzzle in Flash By with a speed slider so you can actually solve it
- The bat sprite alternation and the wall-check inconsistency in Bat Fly
Where the original is genuinely broken at certain settings (the Challenge Game LEFT$(...,N*N) cap that only works at skill 3), the clear intent is implemented and noted in code comments.
Pure HTML/CSS/JS — no build step, no dependencies. Each program is a single self-contained .html file that draws on a green-CRT-styled <pre>. The menu (index.html) hosts them via iframes. The Python ports are stdlib-only.
The 900-Line API is exposed as small JS/Python helpers in each file:
cls()— clear screen (GOSUB 900)put(VT, HT, text)— print at cursor (GOSUB 910)random— random int (GOSUB 930)keypress— non-blocking key check (GOSUB 940)
with SW=40, SH=24 (the Commodore 64 profile) hard-coded.
Original book: "Marvel Super Heroes Computer Fun, Book One" (Donald I. Fine, Inc., 1984). © 1984 the respective rights-holders.
No book pages, scans, or copyrighted artwork are included in this repository. The recreations here are modern original implementations written from the printed BASIC listings — an educational / historical preservation project. The recreation code is licensed under MIT. If any rights-holder requests removal, please open an issue and we'll do that.
🦸 Made with reverence for a 40-year-old artifact, type-in programs, and the era when "loading a program" meant typing it yourself.