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Nethack 20 Years Old Today
An Anonymous Reader wrote in to mention that, according to an informational page about the venerable game Hack, today is Hack's 20th birthday. From the page: "In December 1984 I distributed Hack 1.0 in the newsgroup net.sources.... [T]here were 15 pieces, all sent out on 17-Dec-84." From the reader: "This was the first widespread distribution of the game, which was created by Jay Fenlason a couple of years previously. Nethack's history continues here. You can download this descendant of Rogue from its home page, or connect to a nethack server. Many nethack veterans try their hand at Slash'EM, a.k.a., "nethack on amphetamines". Here's to another 20 years of training your dog to rip off shopkeepers."
I was 6 when it was released, so could someone please give a basic rundown of what Hack and its many variants are?
If you mod me down, I shall become less powerful than you could possibly imagine.
Nethack also worked on SO MANY platforms, I heard about it on a bbs, and was able to download a copy for my atari ST. I also had a shell account at work that I compiled it on (we had vt 100 terminals on our desk back then). I looked on the downloads page, and there are unofficial versions for things like a psion and zaurus, and official versions for dos, all windows releases, atari, amiga, os/2, mac, windows ce, and linux. People will port it to any platform. Back then it was the best dungeon game you could play, and once you are hooked on it there is no turning back. I had never played a game that seemed so simple (kill bad things, get treasure, escape) that could become so complex. My nethack buddy always compared it to chess, in that you have to try to think ahead always. Do you really want to drink that unidentified potion in the gnomish mines and risk hallucination ? etc etc..
Nethack players are used to the rest of the world 'not getting it', but we love showing the door to newbies, knowing that there is a certain kind of nerd that lives for things like this.
Funny story, one of the network administrators was at my desktop helping me with something, and I had to explain the Nethack icon on my desktop to her... I saw she was looking at it very nervously....muahahahahaha
music lover since 1969