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First Graphics Game Written On/For a 16-Bit Home PC
The GPI writes with a story about Scott's Space Wars, a piece of gaming history:
"This game was written by the famous game author Scott Adams, who founded Adventure International, the first multimillion dollar PC game company. It was founded over 30 years ago and developed for early 8-bit home PCs, i.e. TRS-80, Apple II, Atari. Scott's Space Wars is the first graphics game that was ever written at home, for a 16-bit home computer. The original source code is available as photos of the original 1975 hand-written manuscript. The last purchaser of the manuscript paid $197,500 in 2005. A brief video shows how the game was played."
It had better controls and playability than anything on the PS3 or XBOX 360.
APK quotes people (including myself) without context and should not be trusted. Just thought you should know.
The first computer I ever saw in person and worked on was a TRS-80 model III. I was in the 7th grade and my junior high school had a lab with a bunch of them. I can remember playing games that looked very similar to the video. This was 1982, so it was probably something different, but the same idea, using letters and symbols. We learned basic in that class and did a little bit of graphics stuff ourselves. I don't remember it all that well now, but I do know that I loved it.
I enjoyed it enough that my dad bought the family a Commodore Vic-20. That was a big deal as our family didn't have a ton of money. I don't think we even owned a vcr yet at that point. I spent tons of time on that thing, and took all the classes I could get in jr. high and high school. It really was a cool time to be messing with home computers. I had a friend in the 8th grade that wrote a text adventure and was selling it out of a local computer store. He didn't make a lot but it was just fun to be able to do that kind of stuff. I'm not sure if there is a similar environment or feel like that anywhere any more. (Or more likely - it's somewhere I'm just not in it, too old to see it, etc.)
It's hard to believe that's how Micronians are made. Why don't we see it right now by having you both kiss one another?
wow, that was a really informative video.
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Side effects may include gullibility and temporary retardation
I mean at least space wars at least had real graphics and not a bunch of ASCII characters. I guess this qualifies for some minor footnote in history, somewhere, somehow, but I'm really at a loss as to where. While we are at it do we know who A) wrote the first 8-bit PC game? B) Wrote the first 32-bit PC game? and C) Wrote the first 64-bit PC game? Ok...now how about the first C64 game? What about the first PC game? What about the first Apple II game? I could probably think of a million "firsts."
Any takers? :P
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Just because a game is old, doesn't mean it's a classic. A classic is a game which stands as a pinnacle representative of its type, an archetypal game that defined or created a genre, or a game so supremely crafted and so well-loved, that its appeal transcends its era.
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was stroker: http://www.lemon64.com/?mainurl=http%3A//www.lemon64.com/reviews/view.php%3Fid%3D142
Although utterly mediocre (at best) by comparison with the work of his contemporary Infocom, Scott Adams' adventure games, complete with typos, tacky jokes/puns, outright bugs, and illogical "solutions", were endearing in their own way.
Spent quite some time playing Adventureland; Voodoo Castle (with the periodically exploding test tubes which you needed to wear a suit of armor to carry); and The Count on a VIC-20 with and without my family as a child, and I have many fond memories.
> smoke cigarette
OK. There's a coughin (sic) in the room.
> open coffin
"They were pure niggers." – Noam Chomsky
So what if this was written on a 16-bit hardware computer. I know of graphic games written in the Apple ][ Sweet-16 interpreter (a 16-bit machine in software installed on all Apple ][ machines) long before this. And, this machine was a one-of-a-kind creation that had no meaningful volume, even by the standards of the time. Lastly, it isn't graphical if it used TEXT CHARACTERS to represent the game elements. There were other games written on PDP-11 and LSI-11 machines (also true 16-bit hardware) that predate this.
If I am not for myself, then who will be for me? If I am only for myself, what am I? If not now, when?
Young man, I still have my flowchart template around here somewhere. If I could remember where I put it. :P
...hmm, I wonder if it runs on Linux. /ducks!
Seriously, I wonder if there's an image. I have both Apple II and TRS-80 emulators.
The Kai's Semi-Updated Website Thingy
that this can be called a "graphics" game. Looks to me like 16x32 text mode, with some of the characters re-defined. As I recall, you could re-define characters in software in some of the lower-resolution text modes.
was a bit of a curiosity. They did indeed use them in Sun engine analyzers. My brother has one of those if you'd like to see what a real National IMP 16 processor card looks like.
The determined Real Programmer can write Fortran programs in any language.
Ascii version of Unreal Tournament?
Rap his knuckles with your slide rule.
Dark Reflection
Hmmph! Unless that typewriter had a tape punch attached to it, you can GET OFF MY LAWN!
if those are 'graphics', see what they think
My first computer was a TRS-80 MC-10.
What I learned it after about an hour of playing with the basic on it, was that I needed a better computer.
It is a lesson I am still using almost every day, as I sit at my duel core processor with 6 gigs of ram and raid 0. I still need a better computer.
Living in Chile
Its the first graphics game written on/for a 16-bit home pc on record. There's always the possibility that someone wrote one before Scott Adams and didn't "publish" their work.
Pen and paper is an enviable deveopment environment that never suffers from crashes or data loss. I used to use the same technology in my early days of programming.
Though I remember once during the 80s my big brother deliberately hid my workbook and I couldnt finish my project.
I suppose youd call that a denial of service attack now.
------
beware he who would deny you access to information, for in his mind he dreams himself your master
So, Scott Adams thought 'Klingon' was spelled with a 'C'...
While this may be the first game for a 16-bit personal computer, I don't believe it is the first game for any personal computer.
I will offer a more likely contender: TARG for the Processor Technology SOL-20. I recall typing this game (and several others I've forgotten) into my SOL back in 1975. TARG became available commercially on a cassette called GAMEPAC 1, I just happened to have the GAMEPAC 1 manual sitting here and it's copyrighted 1977.
Since the article claims sometime in 1975 as the "release' of Space War, it is probably going to be difficult to pinpoint exactly which app was written first, they appear to date to almost exactly the same time. But since Space War was a one-off production for a unique custom computer, it hardly had the impact of an app like TARG that was widely available on a commercially produced personal computer (that came as a kit or pre-assembled).
In case you're interested in TARG, it was a dart throwing game done entirely in text mode, with animated graphics. IIRC you used keys to move a cursor up and down and the space bar to toss a dart at a target. A little custom character flew across the screen. I'm restoring my SOL now and TARG is the program I'm trying to get to run first. The CPU is working but alas my RAM boards are dead so there's no memory space to run even small apps.
I call shenanigans on the claimed $197,500 purchase price. The whois data for the web site says that it's controlled by Richard Adams himself. It looks like he's also the author of the Wikipedia pages about himself and his company.
I have no problem with the guy writing about himself in the third person, but I can't bring myself to believe that he paid his brother six figures for a twelve-page program listing.
I remember this game well. We used to play it on a VAX at uni. It had Tholians in it too that would spin a web around you (well, draw a box around you). A good proportion of my computer allocations were used up on it (good thing you could allocate other terminals and steal people's accounts - oops, was that my outside voice?). It was a highly addictive game.
"A cynic is what an idealist calls a realist" - Sir Humphrey Appleby
Wasn't the TI-99/4 the first 16 bit home computer? While it wasn't until 1981's TI-99/4A that you could play Parsec, there were many classic games you could play on either: Munchman. Car Wars. Hunt The Wumpus.
Fire and Meat. Yummy.
"It turns out that both the game software and the computer hardware were created at home by three brothers all in college in the mid '70s"
"A cynic is what an idealist calls a realist" - Sir Humphrey Appleby
From the article: This first and only one of its kind manuscript was last purchased by a private collector in 2005 for US $197,500. That's the year of authorship times 100. To own it yourself now, contact the collector through the librarian at the link at the bottom of this page.
So if this is the first "graphics" game for the 16 bit pc, what did non-graphic games look like? Did they put text on the screen too? What makes it graphics? If it doesn't spell words?
After reading the story, this sounds like a sure-fire "Outliers" scenario. The Adams brothers lived near Cape Canaveral. Richard constructed a video camera as an adolescent, before building a custom 16-bit computer from scratch, when all of the kits were strictly 8-bit. Richard, Scott, and Eric programmed the system initially from front panel switches, until Richard build a keyboard, based on existing designs. Just as Bill Gates created Altair BASIC at what was most likely the earliest possible moment, so with the Adams brothers getting their start.
It would be interesting to know what the family, school, and social background that gave them the shot at such an early entre into digital hacking.
Luke, help me take this mask off
I first encountered Empire on VAX machines, but I believe it was originally written for 16 bit machines in 1972. Home machines? - I guess not. http://www.langston.com/#OlderP
There ain't nothing easier than to write a game and never publish it.
An entire "technology first" thread without a single snarky post from some American-hating European claiming that some obscure European with no real proof actually was the REAL first inventor? That's got to be a first itself!
SJW: Someone who has run out of real oppression, and has to fake it.
Unless someone else in the family chimes in that it was all the doing of space aliens, I think you two covered the query. Kudos to your folks for the great prep work.
Luke, help me take this mask off
He creates Dilbert AND designed video games.
This guy's a god.
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