The story of Preben på Eventyr (Adventures of Preben)

ORIGINS (1995)

Back in high school, I was trying to teach myself QuickBasic for DOS. Grabbed from my dad's home office, I had a 500 page brick of a manual in English, droning on and on about Booleans and other stuff I had no idea what meant.

But somehow, out of that thick book, the nerdy youngster made a small game. It was a collaboration with my friend Jesper — he made the graphics (pixel by pixel), I made the code (bug by bug).

We named the protagonist Preben — a Danish name which, at the time, was the silliest name we could come up with. In order to prove himself worthy of the awesome name, he had to pass four tests. We only ever got around to building one: Preben is trapped in a cave, fighting off killer bees and mutant flying elephants, with only his trusted rifle by his side.

To our surprise, it turned out to be quite fun to play: Fast, challenging, and with a weird sense of accomplishment if you managed to survive all 3 minutes of play. Crude graphics, questionable code, but as a game, it worked.

In the following years, Jesper and I would play the game on and off and have a healthy competition going on who had the high score. In 1997 Preben (obviously) got his own website, which got waaay out of hand as a hobby for me. But it did mean that the game got a tiny bit of distribution and even a few reviews from game publications! In 1999 I rebuilt the game for Windows, using Delphi, and added a few bells and whistles (like SOUNDS…!)

And then the world moved on, the domain lapsed, and Preben spent two decades asleep in a folder of files that would open in nothing. Sometimes I considered picking the code up again and make a mobile version, or an online version, or whatever. But with no time on my hands it would always come to nothing.

RESURRECTION (2026)

And then, 30 years after the original was painstakingly and badly made by me, AI and vibe coding happened. What you're playing now was brought back to life over a Sunday afternoon. Not by me carefully re-reading my teenage code, but by giving the source code to Claude Fable, and then pretty much watching it happen. It read the original QuickBASIC source code, extracted the pixel-perfect sprites from a 1995 custom image format, dug the timing out of the BIOS-tick loop, and rebuilt the whole thing for the browser — with a global highscore where every game is replay-verified on a server, something 1995-me wouldn't have dared to dream about.

The Website

All three generations of preben.com, preserved exactly as they were — dead links and all. Exhibits open in a new tab.

The fine print

Copyright Preben Technologies Inc. 1995
Original DOS version: MBM Products, 1995 — Web port: 2026, from the original QuickBASIC and Delphi sources

Visit Preben on the Internet: www.preben.com  •  E-Mail: mail@preben.com
(preserved for historical accuracy — Preben Technologies Inc. has, tragically, exited the market)

Every named game ever recorded — not just the top 10 the in-game board shows. Click an entry for its full replay-verified stats.

Preben explained

You're the guy in the bottom middle of the screen (Preben). From the left and right at the top of the screen come atomically mutated green elephants with fly-wings. At the same time, vicious killer-bees are attacking Preben from both sides at the bottom of the screen. The object of the game is quite simple: Survive 3 minutes in this inferno, by shooting the bees and elephants, and collect as many points as possible.

How to play

Press the left and right arrows to make Preben move.
Press Spacebar to shoot. When you die or the 3 minutes are over, press Enter.

Point System

For each bee you shoot you get 3 points.

The points you get for shooting an elephant depends on how long it's been on the screen: The faster you shoot it, the more points you get. Preben has five different positions he can be in when shooting an elephant. Depending on whether the elephant is heading left or right, these are the points:

        1. position: 7 points
        2. position: 5 points
        3. position: 3 points
        4. position: 2 points
        5. position: 0 point

If an elephant gets all the way across the screen you loose 10 points. If you shoot, but don't hit anything, you loose 2 points.

All in all, you get the most points if you are fast and accurate...

Bonus Systems

'DYGTIG' bonus: If you complete a 3 minute run without letting any elephant leave the screen, and have a hit ratio of 91.0% or above, you will receive 100 bonus points.

'HARDCORE' bonus: If you complete a 3 minute run without letting any elephant cross the middle of the screen, and have a hit ratio of 93.0% or above, you will receive 200 bonus points.

'ULTRA-HARDCORE' bonus: If you complete a 3 minute run without letting any elephant even reach the middle of the screen, and have a hit ratio of 95.0% or above, you will receive 300 bonus points.

Hit Ratio

The hit ratio is only important if you want the bonus points. It has no relevance on the highscore. That is why you can see a run with lower hit rate than another placed higher on the highscore. The only thing that matters in the end is how many points you have, but then again: If you have a high hit-rate, you have the chance to score 100, 200, even 300 bonus points, so be accurate...