Let's Play OXO (006) - The Impossible Game

Release Date: 1952

Platform: EDSAC

Genre: Board Game, Strategy

Developer(s): A. S. "Sandy" Douglas

Publisher(s):

Special milestone today - this is my 100th post! Took a bit longer to raise the bat than I thought - been at this almost three-and-a-half years. But it's pretty special to hit my first century.

And now, back to your regularly scheduled article.

OXO holds a series of unusual firsts in video games. One, it's the first "repeat" game. A Tic-Tac-Toe game has been done before in Bertie the Brain, marking OXO as the first time a game concept has been revisited. Of course, Josef Kates and A. S. Douglas likely knew nothing of each other (that's what I'm assuming, having done no research for this game yet), so this is only mere coincidence.

Before I forget - here's a link to the EDSAC simulator, where you can play OXO.

However, OXO also holds a first that I'd consider somewhat undesirable - it's the first impossible game. You can't beat the computer here - it's programmed to play a perfect game of Tic-Tac-Toe. Best you can manage is a draw, unfortunately. In some way, it's actually a bit disappointing that this is the first unwinnable game. No extravagant programming blunder or monstrously poor piece of game design rendering the game broken and unbeatable. Nope, it's just... you can't win, and that's the way it was always meant to be. How boring. I've got nothing to riff on with that.

I guess you could call this the "title screen."

I guess we'll just have to talk about managing a draw, then. But first, let's talk controls, because OXO is also quite unique here. You control the game via a rotary phone dial. Some of you younger readers might have no idea what a rotary phone is, so I'll provide a picture for reference.

This was state-of-the-art tech in the 1950s.

OXO is well thought out in that you're provided with a visual key of which number represents each position on the game board. The good thing about playing this on a simulator is that you don't have to actually rotate the dial to input a move - a simple click of the mouse will do. Yet another first you will discover while playing OXO is that it has sound! I'm assuming that the sound played when you make a move replicates the sound of rotating the phone dial. That would not make the sound particular to OXO, so on a technical level, it's not built-in sound generated by the game - we'll have to wait a few more years for that yet.

Now, back to the drawing board. It's significantly easier to achieve this going first. Tic-Tac-Toe is technically a game of strategy, so at least a few brain cells are required to know what spots to put your crosses in. 

This was peak strategy gaming in the 1950s...

The first bit of good strategy is going first - if you know how to play, you cannot lose. Starting with the corners is typically the way to go. When I've done so, the computer most often responds by placing its first nought in the centre square. It's a forgone conclusion at that point, with the round devolving into defensive moves until the board is filled.

Even from a sub-optimal position, a draw is possible.

Going second, it's a little trickier to draw, as the computer is now in the advantaged position. Again, sticking to the corners is advisable - but copying the computer and going for a centre move first is probably best practice. A sure fire way to lose is going for any of the cardinal direction squares early. I did try that for the sake of experimentation, but it resulted in a swift defeat- recorded to satisfy your schadenfreude, of course.

This was not peak strategic gameplay.

This was a quick one - we're on to the scores already!

Scores

Time Played: 5 mins

Difficulty: 10* (Impossible)
Only gets a 10 by technicality. Technically, the game is impossible to beat, but it was also designed that way. So it's not a true 10 in my mind, and won't be considered if I do any "hardest game" lists in the future.

Gameplay: 1
Tic-Tac-Toe is as rudimentary a form of gameplay as you can get. Less technical than even something like Nim, and I gave that a 2. Therefore, the only appropriate score here is a 1.

Controls: 6
By way of comparison to previous games, OXO is incredibly easy to control. Sure, the rotary phone dial is strange by today's standards, but it's actually quite intuitive for a game like Tic-Tac-Toe, when used in combination with the reference key provided by the game.

Sound: 3
Gadzooks! There's sound! First time for everything, I suppose. Again, I'm not sure if the simulator is replicating the sound of the rotary phone controls, or if that's the actual noise the computer makes, but I do at least appreciate it as a form of auditory feedback from the game. Not the most pleasant noise, but it's better than not having sound at all, in my opinion.

Visual: 2
Graphically, it's quite similar to Draughts - only a lot more zoomed in. That's not enough to give it an extra point in my mind, seeing as the actual game graphics themselves are nigh-on identical to Draughts.

Story: N/A

Functionality: 5
Nothing's ever gone wrong over the multiple sessions I've played this game, so free points here. Additionally, it's very snappy and responsive, again in comparison with Draughts.

Accessibility: 4
Can't really go wrong with such a simple game. Taking off one point for the antiquity of the technology being a slight barrier.

Fun Factor: 1
About as much fun as an unwinnable game of Tic-Tac-Toe could possibly be. I can't give it a zero because it's actually a functional, playable game. And you can at least try to beat the computer, futile as it may be.

Overall: 22/90 (24.44% | E-tier)
A weighted score of 24.44 puts OXO just below Bouncing Ball on the tier list. Bouncing Ball is certainly the superior game in terms of pure gameplay and replay value - but only marginally. The shallowness and simplicity of these games are going to keep them in the lower tiers for some time to come. Anything E-tier or above is at least worth trying once in my scoring system, so it's worth your while if you want to experience the earliest stages of video game history. Though I'm sure there's one strange soul out there whose all-time favourite video game is, in fact, OXO. If that's you, please leave a comment.

As always, here's the video playthrough.

Up next: MIDSAC Pool

Let's Play (005) - Bouncing Ball: The First Puzzle Game!

Release Date: 1952

Platform: Whirlwind 1

Genre: Puzzle, Simulation

Developer(s): Charles Adams, Oliver Aberth

Publisher(s):

PSA: The structure of the blog has changed. Please read the most recent update for details.

I first became aware of the Bouncing Ball simulation when I first watched Stuart Brown's "The First Video Game." However, what he covered wasn't a game - it was just a physics simulation. What I didn't know until recently was that that simulation was converted into a game. That revelation came courtesy of Ethan Johnson's response blog to Stuart's video, which goes into great detail regarding the existence of the Bouncing Ball game variant.

That being said, the Bouncing Ball game was kind of staring me in the face this whole time. Because, there's a playable version out there that comes from a familiar place.

RetroGame Deconstruction Zone, which has the Cathode-Ray Tube Amusement Device simulator, also has a Bouncing Ball simulator. I knew it was there, but brushed it off under the assumption that it wasn't a game. Naturally, Ethan's blog caused me to revise my assumption, and it turns out that RDZ's Bouncing Ball is, in fact, the game version of the program!

Here we are again, old friend.

Bouncing Ball has probably the most simple premise of any game I've played across this reboot series: get the ball in the hole. You do this by adjusting the speed, bounce and gravity parameters, until the desired result is achieved. Basically, this is a physics puzzle - and the first of its kind at that. Physics-based puzzlers are a dime-a-dozen now, the most famous of all likely being Portal. Yet, here we are in 1952, seeing the very first one!

I'm so very glad that I don't have to write a doctoral dissertation to describe how to play Bouncing Ball as I did with Draughts. Adjusting the physics parameters couldn't be simpler - each of the three parameters can be adjusted with a dial. On the simulator, you click the right of the dial (clockwise) to increase the strength of the parameters, and left (anti-clockwise) to do the opposite. Clicking allows for a good level of precision for a game based on trial-and-error like this. There is also a little silver button that toggles a visual indicator for where the hole is.

Going for a hole in one.

As I say in my video, the gameplay here very much reminds me of Jim Storer's Lunar Lander. You want to make small adjustments to one parameter at a time, judging if the ball over or undershoots the hole. Keep making small adjustments until you get the ball in the hole. Very much trial and error, like making miniscule adjustments to fuel consumption each second in Lunar Lander. Of course, I think Lunar Lander is a more technical game, in the sense that there are more points of error, and more precision required in figuring out fuel consumption.

For Bouncing Ball, it didn't take me very long to get success. From eyeballing the time on my video, it took me about 2-and-a-half minutes to get the ball in the hole. That was easy. Too easy. The solution was incredibly simple, which took me by surprise. From what I read, several college students were failed in the course this game was used in back in 1951/2. Maybe we're just smarter than they were back then? Ha.

Well, that was easy.

I wasn't overly satisfied with beating the game so quickly. It seemed likely that there could be multiple solutions, so I had another go to see if I could find another solution. Along the way, I had some funny interactions with the simulator. I had one successful solution, only for it to not work on the next cycle. 

How does this not count?

The ball went in - I didn't touch anything - and then the next time around, it didn't go in. How terribly rude of the game. Now, I don't know if this was a quirk of the simulator, or if this sort of thing could happen in the original game. I haven't got my Tardis working yet, so I can't test that, unfortunately.

Needless to say, I was able to quickly rectify that situation after recovering from the shock of the game changing its mind. All of this madness took place over the course of a mere seven minutes, from when I began first playing. 

A second victory.

It's like scoring a first date, thinking "gee, that went well," organising the second one, only to be stood up last minute courtesy of a text saying "I've decided I'm not ready for a relationship yet." Only for her to change her mind, and you end up scoring the second date the day after. Did I just compare video games to women? Yes. Yes I did.

Anyway, here's the scores. Best get on with it before I say something offensive.

Scores

Time Played: 7 minutes

Difficulty: 2 (Very Easy)
A rather simple game of trial and error. Success is inevitable with these sorts of games - it just depends on how long. I was successful in about 5 minutes.

Gameplay: 2
Bouncing Ball is pure trial-and-error gameplay. While that does it make it more interesting than, say, a game of Tic-Tac-Toe, it's not by much. Bouncing Ball probably gets a little bit of a boost in that there's multiple ways to win, which can allow for creative solutions.

Controls: 6
What I played on the simulator was quite easy and intuitive to control, and it made sense for the type of game this is. The adjustable dials compliment the real-time gameplay, not disturbing the flow of the game.

Sound: N/A

Visual: 2
While it's only a black-and-white game with extremely minimal graphics, they are real-time graphics, which is a significant jump from the static graphics of Draughts, and thus boosts the score up from a 1 to a 2.

Story: N/A

Functionality: 5
I mean, I question the hitbox of the hole... but that could be a simulator thing. In terms of the game actually working properly, I have no complaints.

Accessibility: 4
This is a simple game to comprehend and pick up and play.=

Fun Factor: 2
I did have more fun with this than with Draughts. Again, the fact that there are multiple solutions available gives Bouncing Ball an edge in replayability for me. Also a bonus that it doesn't take several years to complete a game.

Overall: 21/80 (Weighted 26.25)
A much better game than Draughts, that's for sure. That's not to say it's a good game, but it's at least recommendable to sample, which I cannot say about the former game. It's the first puzzle game, and a quick little one at that.

As always, here's the video if you'd like to see the game in action:

Next up: OXO