Slashdot Mirror
Domain: nickm.com
Stories and comments across the archive that link to nickm.com.
Stories · 3
-
The Murky Origins of Zork's Name
mjn writes "Computational media researcher Nick Montfort traces the murky origins of Zork's name. It's well known that the word was used in MIT hacker jargon around that time, but how did it get there? Candidates are the term 'zorch' from late 1950s DIY electronics slang, the use of the term as a placeholder in some early 1970s textbooks, the typo a QWERTY user would get if he typed 'work' on an AZERTY keyboard, and several uses in obscure sci-fi. No solid answers so far, though, as there are problems with many of the possible explanations that would have made MIT hackers unlikely to have run across them at the right time." -
Makeovers For The Mystery House
nickmontfort writes "In Mystery House Taken Over, a group of us reverse-engineered and reimplemented Mystery House, the 1980 Sierra game. With some others, we've created eight "occupied" houses (remakes and mods of the original) and provided a downloadable kit (for Windows, Mac, and Linux) and a web-accessible system to let people easily create their own versions." -
History Of Gaming Featured In New Media Book/CD-ROM
nickmontfort writes "The New Media Reader is out now from MIT Press. The book tries to shed light on how people have used computers to create and communicate. Also included is a cross-platform CD with original programs from the past four decades, some documented, some running in emulation." With a book and CD including vintage articles and classic titles like Spacewar!, Hunt The Wumpus, Yar's Revenge, and Karateka, this is an interesting, if quite theory-skewed look at computer interactivity - check out excerpts at the official website.