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As a sporadic member of the video game industry, the issue of violence-in-video-games is not at all new or novel to us. Nor have we been deliberately ignoring it. Far from it. Game authors have been considering the issue for about as long as video games have existed.

In 1977, a man named Steve Dompier wrote a game for the Sol-20 Terminal Computer called TARGET. Ships flew across the screen, and it was your job to shoot them down. I'd like to share with you a thought from the game's author, printed in the manual. It seems that video game violence was on his mind as well:

There are several types of spaceships containing dangerous cargoes of pesticides, DNA experiments, artificial flavorings, TV commercials and so on. They should be stopped before they reach a civilized area of the universe and endanger the populace. [ ... ]

[Author's note: The game player may relate to the ships and missiles of TARGET as objects personally imagined by him. The above scenario is provided for those with an aversion to the destructive type games who may otherwise mistake the robot spaceships as earthly in origin. Aggression, still being a common human trait in 1977, is better exercised with a zero-sum game than spent on the physical real world. Besides--it's fun.]

The above quote serves as evidence that video game authors have been thinking about violence in games for thirty years, if not longer. So if you think some zeitgeist-chasing politician or religious extremist who just started shrieking about the issue last week has any deeper insights than we do... Well, then you may be interested in this bridge I have for sale.

Schwab

P.S: If you're interested in finding out what was so horrific about TARGET, download the Sol-20 emulator and try it yourself:

1. In the release folder, run the program solace.exe. You will be presented with a very unhelpful command prompt window.
2. From the File menu, select "Load Program..."
3. Select "targ.ent" and click OK.
4. In the command prompt window, enter the command:
   EX 0
   and press Enter. You must enter the command in upper case.
5. The game will launch. Follow the on-screen instructions. (You can steer the missiles in flight with the aiming keys, crucial for getting high-value combo shots.)

As a sporadic member of the video game industry, the issue of violence-in-video-games is not at all new or novel to us. Nor have we been deliberately ignoring it. Far from it. Game authors have been considering the issue for about as long as video games have existed.

In 1977, a man named Steve Dompier wrote a game for the Sol-20 Terminal Computer called TARGET. Ships flew across the screen, and it was your job to shoot them down. I'd like to share with you a thought from the game's author, printed in the manual. It seems that video game violence was on his mind as well:

There are several types of spaceships containing dangerous cargoes of pesticides, DNA experiments, artificial flavorings, TV commercials and so on. They should be stopped before they reach a civilized area of the universe and endanger the populace. [ ... ]

[Author's note: The game player may relate to the ships and missiles of TARGET as objects personally imagined by him. The above scenario is provided for those with an aversion to the destructive type games who may otherwise mistake the robot spaceships as earthly in origin. Aggression, still being a common human trait in 1977, is better exercised with a zero-sum game than spent on the physical real world. Besides--it's fun.]

The above quote serves as evidence that video game authors have been thinking about violence in games for thirty years, if not longer. So if you think some zeitgeist-chasing politician or religious extremist who just started shrieking about the issue last week has any deeper insights than we do... Well, then you may be interested in this bridge I have for sale.

Schwab

P.S: If you're interested in finding out what was so horrific about TARGET, download the Sol-20 emulator and try it yourself:

1. In the release folder, run the program solace.exe. You will be presented with a very unhelpful command prompt window.
2. From the File menu, select "Load Program..."
3. Select "targ.ent" and click OK.
4. In the command prompt window, enter the command:
   EX 0
   and press Enter. You must enter the command in upper case.
5. The game will launch. Follow the on-screen instructions. (You can steer the missiles in flight with the aiming keys, crucial for getting high-value combo shots.)

As a sporadic member of the video game industry, the issue of violence-in-video-games is not at all new or novel to us. Nor have we been deliberately ignoring it. Far from it. Game authors have been considering the issue for about as long as video games have existed.

In 1977, a man named Steve Dompier wrote a game for the Sol-20 Terminal Computer called TARGET. Ships flew across the screen, and it was your job to shoot them down. I'd like to share with you a thought from the game's author, printed in the manual. It seems that video game violence was on his mind as well:

There are several types of spaceships containing dangerous cargoes of pesticides, DNA experiments, artificial flavorings, TV commercials and so on. They should be stopped before they reach a civilized area of the universe and endanger the populace. [ ... ]

[Author's note: The game player may relate to the ships and missiles of TARGET as objects personally imagined by him. The above scenario is provided for those with an aversion to the destructive type games who may otherwise mistake the robot spaceships as earthly in origin. Aggression, still being a common human trait in 1977, is better exercised with a zero-sum game than spent on the physical real world. Besides--it's fun.]

The above quote serves as evidence that video game authors have been thinking about violence in games for thirty years, if not longer. So if you think some zeitgeist-chasing politician or religious extremist who just started shrieking about the issue last week has any deeper insights than we do... Well, then you may be interested in this bridge I have for sale.

Schwab

P.S: If you're interested in finding out what was so horrific about TARGET, download the Sol-20 emulator and try it yourself:

1. In the release folder, run the program solace.exe. You will be presented with a very unhelpful command prompt window.
2. From the File menu, select "Load Program..."
3. Select "targ.ent" and click OK.
4. In the command prompt window, enter the command:
   EX 0
   and press Enter. You must enter the command in upper case.
5. The game will launch. Follow the on-screen instructions. (You can steer the missiles in flight with the aiming keys, crucial for getting high-value combo shots.)

A Wang 2200 in the mid-1970 in the eleventh grade trig class.

This, by the way, was a life changing moment for me. Up until this point, I was convinced I would be an auto mechanic. It was strange for me, but I was in honors math, but taking shop classes. However, once I had my hands on that computer, my whole career outlook changed forever.

This is why I go to school district meetings (where my kids are currently going to) and pushing them not to cancel technology or GATE program. Because you just never know when you change one student's outlook through introducing them to new things coming out...

Very similar to this machine:

http://www.thebattles.net/wang/wang.html

Eventually I got a paper tape punch, but I had no reader... also had a removable hard drive with a 5 megabyte platter.

I cut my teeth on a Wang 2200B. Load from cassette, text-mode only, no attributes, nobbled Wang BASIC the only language available. Lucky to get keyboard time, too, they wanted us to all use MiniWaft cards.

It was a great deal of fun sitting down with the manual and a copy of creative computing typing in the programs and learning at the same time. My favorite games that came with it were Trek-80 and target (a shooting gallery type game).

For some links to PT stuff try out the following:
http://www.geocities.com/~compcloset/ProcessorTech Sol20.htm
http://www.corestack.com/machines/sol.html
http://www.old-computers.com/museum/computer.asp?c =344
and for an SOL-20 emulator: http://thebattles.net/sol20/sol.html

I also learned to program in 8080 assember, and played with focal and anything else I could find included with it.

The one we had had a dual drive Helios II 8" floppy drive.
These things were the oddest drives I've seen. They had motorized eject and loading ... you slide the disk most the way in and it would "suck it in", and you would push a button and it would whirr and eject the disk. A bad think to do with these was to was to grab the disk as it was still being ejected ... would as often as not cause the drive to jamb.
The other odd thing about the drives is that both drives had their heads mounted to a single voice-coil positioner ... the drives sounded like somebody bouncing on an old bed when they were busy seeking.

Enough reminicing from an old fart computer geek!

- subsolar

• Stan Viet's History of the Personal Computer

The first computer I programmed on was in highschool in 1977 on a Processor Technolgy SOL-20 ... a cool machine with a wopping 32KB of RAM and dual 8" floppy drives the likes of which I have seen noplace else ... really weird motorized eject & insertion that quite often jammed. I learned BASIC, FOCAL and 8080 assembler on that box.

My first home system was an Ohio Scientific C1P that I bought in 1978 with money from a part-time job instead of a Car like the rest of my friends. Leaned 6502 assembler and FORTH on that box, and programmed several games and a "word processor". I also wrote an AI program that was like ELIZA, but on steroids and actually learned words and phrases and understood grammer.

For information on the SOL-20 and an emulator check here, and for information on the C1P check here or here.

GOD I FEEL OLD!!!

- subsolar