Next up, we have Gamnim, or Nim as the game calls itself internally. This is another of the 3rd of September crew of games (of which there is a second Nim game). I've already covered one Nim game, the Polish Marienbad, though I couldn't play it, making this the first Nim video game to be played on OGC (and it definitely won't be the last).
Once again, the author is unknown. BASIC Computer Games suggests the game originated at Dartmouth College, but provides no author. A modified version would appear on the Sol-20 microcomputer in 1977, once again courtesy of Ralph E. Hopkins. That version appears to be where the Gamnim title comes from.
Completely free to set the game up the way you want.
I think this might be the first game with options to modify gameplay - the game setup is fully customisable! It asks first for the win condition you want to play by: either as taking the last object, or forcing your opponent into taking the last object. It might be a small detail taken for granted nowadays, but I think that's pretty neat compared to the text games I've played so far. Afterwards, it asks for the number of object piles you want to play with, and how many objects to be in each pile. Even better. BASIC Computer Games recommends the traditional setup of Nim, which is 4 piles with 7, 5, 3 and 1 objects respectively. So that's what I go with.
It's been a little while since I played Nim - I think the last time would've been the Fairchild Channel F's version, hunting RetroAchievements. Vaguely, I remember there being some trick to win concerning odd and even numbers - can't quite remember specifically.
Just a bit rusty... yeah, let's go with that. Rusty.
I lost the first game. I think I'm remembering the trick being to make sure the pile is on an odd number if you play with the traditional win condition (taking the last object). Anyway, I play a few more times, losing every single time while I try to remember how to win.
Eventually I had to go to the internet to refresh myself on the Nim strategy. There's this whole thing about the "Nim sum" and making sure that it equals zero at the end of your turn. I found the article that I used previously, and it makes decent sense of it. Other articles I looked at were a bunch of gobbledygook that overcomplicated things wildly, bringing binary multiplication and all sorts of other weird mathematical stuff in that I, frankly, don't care to read.
The most important thing that linked article notes is that, with the traditional setup, the player going first is disadvantaged. If you're playing a computer that is programmed to play perfectly, this means you'll always lose going first. It's the reverse of Tic-Tac-Toe, in that sense.
Having reminded myself of these facts about Nim, I won a game with the traditional settings going second. The "Nim sum" rule works the same way regardless of win condition, so going second will always net a win in this version if you play perfectly. I know because I tried the "avoid last object" win condition, thinking this would reverse the rule, but I quickly found out it doesn't.
It took me about 30 minutes until I decided to refresh myself on how to win Nim.
Winning a game with each win condition was good enough for me. So, I decided it was time to push the limits. I was wondering - how many piles can I have? And how high can the numbers go?
You'd have to be really keen on Nim to try this...
I discovered that you can have up to 100 piles of objects, with a maximum of 2000 objects in each. I cannot even begin to fathom why you'd want to play a game of Nim that massive, or how long it would take to complete (and I'm not intending to find out, either). It's there if you're an absolute die-hard Nim fan, though, and have a few hours to kill. That's all there is to Gamnim, so on to the scores.
Time Played: 40 minutes. I did something a little differently, recording my playthrough while simultaneously note-taking and researching Nim strategy, hence why this number is a little higher than previous games.
Difficulty: 5
It's really tricky to judge, since it's so heavily user-defined. Putting it in the middle is fair, based on that. Plus, you're going to have a hard time winning, since the computer always plays perfectly.
Game Design: 3
It's quite standard as a Nim simulation, and doesn't do anything apart from allow you to simulate various Nim scenarios. But, on that point, I do have to give the game props for allowing you so much choice in how you set up the game. No other game up to this point has allowed for customisation, so it gets bonus points for that. The other issue is that you can only play against a computer that plays perfectly; this would be perfect as a two-player game. It essentially means that, to make use of the customisation, you have to really enjoy Nim as a game already.
Controls: 9
Can't complain much, has those comma inputs, but is otherwise very simple.
Visual: 3
That paragraph of instructions is quite an ungainly mess. The game itself is presented quite plainly.
Functionality: 5
I had no issues with stability, nor were there any glitches.
Accessibility: 3
Fairly standard for a text-based game; helps that it's based on a simple game concept.
Fun Factor: 2
To be honest, it's not that enjoyable for me. I don't really care for Nim as it is, especially when I have to play against a perfect computer opponent. While the customisation options are neat, I don't see myself ever coming back to try them out. This would work much better as a two-player game.
That's a total score of 25/70 (35.71%), placing Gamnim in the E tier, between 1Queen and PDP 10 Timesharing Basketball. Sounds about right.
[Add.] Upon completing the rescore project, Gamnim took a bit of a hit to its score, losing 4 points down to 21/70 (30%)
Next up is Horserace. Joy. I love horse racing.
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Telling you right now, this is going to be a quick one. This barely counts as a game, to be honest with you.
I had to skip over Apawam and declare it lost, as the only seemingly surviving version of the game is one modified by Steve North for the 1978 edition of BASIC Computer Games, and from what I read from the descriptions of both games, North's version isn't so much a modification as it is a complete overhaul. I'll be treating that as a separate game.
Digits is one of about half-a-dozen titles with the same release date - 3rd of September, 1970. I don't know where MobyGames gets these dates from, but I'd love to know (possibly the DECUS program library?). The original author is unknown; all that is known is that the program originated at Dartmouth College - specifically the Kiewit Computation Center at the college (a project spearheaded by John Kemeny and Thomas Kurtz - the inventors of BASIC, which Digits was programmed for).
Digits presents a rather odd concept: you are to come up with a random string of 30 numbers between 0 and 2, and the computer will try to guess your numbers using something BASIC Computer Games called "pattern recognition techniques." These numbers are inputted 10 at a time, and to win, the computer must make less than 10 correct guesses (which the game claims it should be able to do "by pure luck"). That's the game. It's beyond simple.
The game's instructions. It's cute that it asks you to write on paper. Who does that these days?
I find it amusing that the author of the game writes the computer to speak in first person. It's endearing, somewhat. For my first attempt, I thought I'd have a laugh. I got my phone's notepad out, and randomly smashed the 0, 1 and 2 keys until I had at least 30 numbers. Inputting them was actually a bit annoying, as the game doesn't tell you how it wants the numbers inputted. The required syntax is to type the numbers in, with a comma after each number, but no spaces.
I confused the poor thing.
Eventually, after looking at the game's page in BASIC Computer Games, I managed to get the numbers in correctly.
There we go.
So it managed 4 correct guesses on that pass. Not the best start when I want it to guess less than 10.
Ugh, and there's still one set to go.
It got 6 right on the second set, so there goes that game.
My last set was an improvement, at least.
As a consolation, it only scored 2 correct guesses on the third and final set. I noticed that it didn't select 0 as a guess at all that round. I could've selected 0 30 times in a row and it wouldn't have got one right...
I decided I had to win, so another round was required. Taking what I learned from that first game, I took a different approach to choosing my numbers - I selected longer strings of the same number, interspersed with solitary numbers along the way. It seems to me like the computer prefers to guess long strings of one number.
I'll take that as a small victory.
My strategy appears to be paying off. It only guessed 3 right in the first round this time.
Ha! Some "pattern recognition techniques" these are...
Oh dear, the computer had a bit of a disaster on the second set. Only 1 correct. I noticed from the first round that it seemed to be preferring 2 this game, so I tried to avoid overusing it.
Maybe I should've done the all zeros thing.
I went a little silly on the last set, doing zero 5 times in a row. You'd think it'd catch on after maybe the third one, but it missed the whole lot! It got 4 of the last 5 right, but that only got it up to 8 correct guesses, so I win. There's nothing else to say, so score time.
Time Played: 6 minutes. That's how long the two rounds took.
Difficulty: 1
It's a guessing game, do you really expect any challenge? You just plonk in numbers and hope to computer doesn't guess them. All luck, no skill.
Game Design: 0
Barely a game at all; it's just a lucky guess simulator, so there is literally nothing to say about it.
Controls: 7
I'm knocking off points for the weird syntax stuff with commas, and because the game doesn't tell you that that's what you need to do. Otherwise, it's easy.
Visual: 5
It's presented decently. All the text is neatly formatted, no typos, and the guess spreadsheet is clear. The game is very polite, always saying please when asking for my numbers, so I can at least give it that.
Functionality: 4
Again, that syntax thing is silly, but it works fine otherwise.
Accessibility: 3
It's one of the more accessible text games thus far, due to its simpler-than-simple concept.
Fun Factor: 1
Yeah, there's nothing here for me. Plonk in some numbers and hope for the best. Next.
This gives Digits a score of 20. Percentage wise, it's - miraculously - not the worst game on the tier list. At 28.57%, it's above Qubic in the E-tier. While I hated Qubic, I'm not sure I'd agree with that result. Although I'd rather play neither, I think I would play Qubic ahead of this any day of the week. Perhaps a revision of Qubic may be needed in the future?
[Add.] Upon completing the rescore project, this game managed to get even worse, dropping to a 19/70 (27.14%).
In any case, I'm glad this one's over and done with. Gamnim is up next - one of many, many, many versions of Nim released across the 70s.
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Developer(s): Original developer unknown; modifications made by Richard Hart and T. Edwards
Publisher(s): DECUS
Now it's time to enter the 1970s. This is a tumultuous yet crucially formative decade for video games; from the birth of the arcade and console industries, to the continued experimentation in computer games and the arrival of the first generation of home computers. It's quite a foreign and often bizarre time to look at by contemporary standards, as much of it seems like a chaotic free-for-all. Nothing was standardised, so many strange, obscure consoles, companies and computers appeared, vying for a market share of the burgeoning industry.
As for 1970 as a year, there's still no commercial industry, so all there is to look at are computer games - mostly BASIC software. The range of ideas and concepts being implemented is expanding, which is mostly good, but I expect will lead to a lot of strange and outright terrible software. Hopefully there will be a couple of gems within the 1970 list, but judging by what's coming up, I'm not getting my hopes up.
I've already chosen to rule out Stock: Stock Market Simulation for effectively being a non-game. It's just an RNG simulator, and I therefore really don't have anything to say about it.
That brings us to 1Queen, or Queen as it's put by 101 BASIC Computer Games. This is a puzzle game apparently based on Chess rules. I think I'd consider this the first real puzzle game I've played on the blog. The original author of 1Queen appears to be unknown, as MobyGames and Arcade-History don't list an author - only a "modifier": Richard Hart. We don't have info on what system it was originally written on, either. BASIC Computer Games gives no insight, either, as it doesn't even bother listing a source - let alone an actual author. MobyGames lists this as Hart's only game. MobyGames also lists a T. Edwards as having converted the game to "U1106". I have no idea what U1106 is, and internet searches provide no help with this.
1Queen's page from BASIC Computer Games, 1978 edition.
The game's instructions do a fairly good job of explaining how the game works. It claims to be based off of the rules of Chess, but I only see a vague resemblance. You play against the computer, with the aim of being the one to move the lone queen on the board into the bottom left corner. The chess board is represented by numbers. You take turns with the computer in moving the queen, but the only directions it can be moved in are down, left, and diagonal down-left.
The in-game instructions are pretty good.
You go first, and your first move must be to place the queen somewhere on the top row or rightmost column. Despite the game's decent instructions, I was still confused, and on my first game I placed the queen on 11, only for the computer to move it immediately to the parallel leftmost corner (158) for the win. Whoops. I tried again immediately afterwards, but the game kept calling me a cheat for trying illegal moves. I didn't record this part of my gameplay, which I played yesterday, but I eventually realised I didn't read the instructions properly, and promptly re-read them. Then it finally clicked. At that point I stopped playing, deciding to come back today.
I came back to 1Queen today with a simple, systematic plan to beat it. I would try every starting square (except for the corners that would cause an immediate loss). I knew 71 wouldn't work either, so in my first attempt I chose 61. The computer chose 127, and at that point I knew I'd lost. I had no choice but to move it to a square adjacent to 158, allowing the computer to take the win on its next turn.
A loss was inevitable from the start...
I started to realise what the key to winning was at this point: I needed to force the computer into that same situation it forced me into, where its only available moves would allow me to win on my next turn. So I went down the line, trying all the starting points to find out which one would work.
51 didn't work; the computer moved to 73, and from there no moves I could make would allow me to win. For some reason I tried it again, with the same result occurring. With 41, the computer just moves to 51 and it's the same story all over again. Looking back on this now, I realise that I had a potential win scenario here if I had moved to 73 as the computer had done previously. Ugh. I was not paying much attention while playing, clearly.
Starting on 31 and 21 end the same way; the first move the computer makes puts me into unwinnable scenarios. At the time I thought that wrote off the entire top row, but I now know that starting on 41 is the only spot where a win is possible.
I realised that 22 and 77 wouldn't work on the right column, so I started with 33 there instead. The computer moves to 73, and a loss in inevitable once again.
Next was 44. The computer moves to 65, and I stop for a bit and think. I might have a chance to win here, if I make the right move. I take some time to consider the possible moves, and then I choose 75 as my next move. The computer moves to 96. Got 'em. I move to 126, and the game's over. The computer can only move to 147, and I thus take the win!
And thus the puzzle is solved.
That takes care of that. 1Queen is an mildly interesting little puzzle, but that's all it is - a little puzzle. Once you figure out the solution, you're basically done with it. It did receive a couple of ports, one to the Sol-20 in 1981 courtesy of Ralph E. Hopkins, and another, more curious port in 1976 to the HP line of programmable calculators. I honestly forgot games on calculators were a thing before looking into this, and I'm honestly not sure how to deal with them. I briefly looked into emulation for the HP calculators, and it seemed needlessly complicated. I haven't looked into other calculators, so I'm not sure how they fair. Will cross that bridge when I get to it.
Now, on to the scores. Sound and Story are N/A.
Time Played: 15 minutes
Difficulty: 2/10
It's not a terribly hard puzzle to figure out, since it's confined to such a small board with such simple, strict rules.
Game Design:4
I don't so much have an issue with the puzzle - as basic as it is - but rather how it's presented. I dislike the choice of numbers, how it's a mix of 2-digit and 3-digit numbers. It causes the board to become crooked and hard to read properly. That's a significant oversight for me; the board really needed to be only 2-digit or only 3-digit numbers. 1Queen also feels like a bit of a throwaway, one-and-done type of game; more like someone's coding practice than a proper game.
Controls: 10
Same as all the other text-based games so far; simple inputs that are just numbers.
Visual:2
Again, seriously disliking the board. It's crooked, and it annoys the stuffing out of me. The text formatting is fine, otherwise, and the writing has some personality to it.
Functionality: 4
Only taking a point off for the dodgy formatting of the chess board.
Accessibility: 3
Still a text-based game, but a much simpler and easier one to pick up and understand.
Fun Factor: 4
It was decent for what it is. Figuring out the solution was satisfying to some extent, but I'm done with the game once I figure that out, and I see no reason to go back.
So that gives 1Queen a score of 27/70 (38.57%). That puts it at the top of the E tier, which is fair. It's a throwaway game, but a moderately decent one.
[Add.] Upon completing the rescore project, 1Queen dropped a few points, down to 22/70 (31.42%)
Not sure what is coming up next. Apawam is next (despite the strange name, it's actually a Golf game), but I'm unsure if it's lost. Otherwise, Digits is next after that.
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Printout of a DEC newsletter where someone fails spectacularly.
Release Date: Spring [Fall in North Hemisphere], 1969
Platform: PDP-8
Genre: Space Flight Simulation
Developer(s): James A. Storer
Publisher(s): DECUS
Time for another legendary game. As it turns out, this'll be the only game I'm covering for 1969. Skipping over Eight (Men) and Take-A-Way as I found no way to access them from my research. The former of those gets ported to the Sol-20 microcomputer, so we'll at least get to see it then... in 1981. Not gonna be for a looooong time. Whereas the latter two, Spacewar and Space Travel, are off for different reasons. Spacewar is a PLATO port of the 1962 classic, meaning it's a multiplayer-only game, and Space Travel, while its source code is available, hasn't been made into a easily playable package anywhere, so it's out.
[Add. Information about Space Travel is incorrect. There is in fact a browser-based conversion of Space Travel available. I'm still not going to cover it, as I consider it to be in the "non-game" category.]
This game and Hamurabi also prompted to me to add in all their various ports into my master spreadsheet, which will help clean up the release info in my articles. The release history of these early computer games is a tangled mess of ports, revisions and renaming that's hard to keep up with, especially when info on each version is scarce.
I digress, here we have Lunar, or as it's more commonly known today, Lunar Lander. This is the father of the whole subset of games bearing that name, which focus on landing a lunar space module on the moon. The original was designed by Jim Storer as a teenager on the PDP-8 minicomputer at Lexington High School - the same school that Civil War and a number of other games originated from. It's quite interesting that several of the extant early computer games originate from this one school. Storer himself would produce one more game - Pollution Game - in 1973, a variation on Hamurabi. He's also set up an online archive featuring many documents and other items relating to both games. From here is where I was able to more precisely identify the date of Lunar's creation. Storer explains that he wrote the game "in Fall 1969..." [that's Spring for us in the Southern Hemisphere] "...in recognition of the July 1969 Apollo moon landing."
Storer submitted the game to the DECUS program catalogue in early 1970, under the name Apollo. This game's got so many names it's hard to keep up with; it's referred to as Lunar, Lunar Landing Game, Rocket and Apollo. From there, it seems that it spread like wildfire, with many different versions and modifications being made to the game; some of which we'll see later on, such as Rocket and LEM. David Ahl got a hold of several versions of Lunar, converting them into BASIC for publication in 101 BASIC Computer Games, where he describes Lunar as "by far and away the single most popular computer game" in all editions. In the original edition, he includes the game under the title Rocket, along with two other versions labelled Rockt1 [Rocket] and Rockt2 [LEM], written by Eric Peters and William Labaree II respectively. Those are far more complex games that will get their own articles. I briefly looked at them and my brain just about melted. Technical stuff.
Lunar's influence goes much further than just the computer gaming scene as well. Probably the most famous of all the versions is Atari's 1979 arcade version, Lunar Lander. This one is not text-based, with a vector graphics display and with you controlling the Lunar Module in real time. Only God knows how many clones and variants of this one exist out in the world today. Often "Lunar Lander" is prescribed as a genre or subgenre of video games in general. I'm not sure if I'd subscribe to that notion, seeing as it's a very specific corner of Space Flight Simulation games; though we do have Roguelikes, so naming a genre after a game is not unprecedented.
Anyway, that's more digressing (I appear to be doing that a lot in this post). Back to Lunar. The core premise of the game is rather simple - land a lunar space module on the surface of the moon. There's only one decision for the player to make, which is how much fuel you spend and when you use it. It sounds simple in theory, but it's much trickier to land the module in practice.
Before I get into my experience with the game, I just want to briefly note that this is another game that I've played before. As with Hamurabi, it was the Apple I version from my MAME explorations a year or two ago. If my memory serves me right, I recall getting a perfect landing. Hopefully I can do it again. The version of the game I'm playing is a browser-based simulator of Storer's original code, written by Stefan Trenkel in 2019. I found this through Storer's archive also.
The opening paragraph within the game explaining the scenario is not as clear as it could be. It explains all the facts and figures regarding the current state of the lunar module, but I question how much of it is necessary and how it's presented. For instance, it provides the weight of the capsule as 32,500 lbs. This doesn't make any material difference as far as playing the game; it's simply irrelevant. The important numbers to know are how much fuel you start with [16,000 lbs.], and the amount of time you have before impact [120 seconds]. The game also blocks your fuel use into 10 second increments, allowing you to either use no fuel or between 8 - 200 lbs. for each 10 second block. All this information is simply presented in the lone block of text; it isn't formatted at all, so processing it all is harder than it needs to be.
Below the paragraph is what's essentially a spreadsheet where gameplay actually takes place. This is formatted in a rather messy fashion as well. It's broken up into five rows, which are from left to right: time (in seconds), altitude (in miles and feet), velocity (mph), fuel (in lbs.), and fuel rate, where you input the amount of fuel you desire to expend. Altitude has two rows, one for miles and the other for feet. The table's titles don't have any spacing between characters, making it all feel rather cramped, and thus a little hard to read at first.
My first attempt. Most attempts end in similar disaster.
However, once I got past the dodgy formatting, the gameplay ended up being rather compelling. The overwhelming majority of initial attempts end in blasting a new crater into the moon's surface as I figure out how best to use my fuel reserves. After about 45 minutes of experimenting and failing, I managed to get a landing that wasn't totally awful - the game graded it as "poor." A working strategy for a good landing was forming:
No fuel until the 70 second mark
6x200
150
110
50
30
20
After 45 minutes, progress. Finally.
So, at least something was starting to work. Just needed to fiddle with it slightly to get that perfect landing. During my second session, after fiddling with the numbers for about 20 minutes, I found that upping 50 > 51 and adding 2x10 and a 9 at the end got me a "good landing (could be better)" rating. I assume that's the second best rating, so the perfect landing must be close...
And that's pretty much the game; it's almost one big puzzle of trial and error, incrementally adjusting the numbers to improve the landing until you get it just right. Usually I groan at extensive amounts of trial and error baked into a game's design, but in this instance it managed to draw me in. I was constantly thinking to myself "just one more go and I'll get it right." No other game's managed to do that to me thus far.
However, after another 30 minutes of experimenting, I couldn't get it right, despite my hopes. None of the adjustments I made got me closer to that perfect landing. So I decided to use a guide. Or, more specifically, I looked at a solution provided by Jim Storer on his website. A game like this isn't worth spending 2 more hours on, which I could easily do at this rate.
One of two solutions provided by Jim Storer.
It's... extremely specific. In order to get a perfect landing, you need to get both your altitude and velocity as close to zero as possible to ensure a landing where you're moving at under 1 MPH. The best I managed on my own was around 2 MPH. I at least figured out that the 70 second mark is the optimal time to start burning fuel. I could've spend at least another hour fiddling with the numbers to try get there myself, though I still probably wouldn't have come up with something like this. I think I managed to get the perfect landing on the Apple I version of the game by using some cheesy strategy where I just descended the fuel rate by like, 10 each time or something silly like that. I tried that sort of strategy here and it didn't work.
On to the scores. Sound and Story are N/A, as is standard.
Time Played: I'll round it up to 2 hours.
Difficulty: 7/10
It's actually very challenging to get a perfect landing; getting a good landing is still tricky, but manageable. It will still take a lot of trial and error to get even a good landing.
Game Design: 6
In essence, Lunar is an exercise in trial and error; you simply mess around with the numbers until you get it right. While the specificity required to achieve a perfect landing and progressing towards it is moderately satisfying - aided by the game's grading system egging you on to do better - there comes a point where it becomes excessively tedious. Finding a solution for a perfect landing becomes a process of incrementally changing one or perhaps two numbers per attempt over dozens - if not hundreds - of attempts. It does well in the sense that there are multiple possible solutions for the perfect landing, but once a solution is found, there's no reason to continue playing.
I don't care much for how the game presents it's information, either, I find it cramped and a little confusing. Civil War and Hamurabi have it beat in that regard. The comparison between Lunar and these two games is also interesting because you have games with multiple choices and gameplay mechanics to consider versus Lunar, which effectively has one. It's a matter of if the one choice Lunar gives is more robust and substantial than the several Civil War and Hamurabi give. I think it has more depth than Civil War's, as some of those choices made little material impact on the outcome of a battle (and in some instances there was nothing you could do to win); but Hamurabi's network of decisions are more well thought through and compelling, making for a more immersive experience than the "just-chuck-in-the-numbers-and-hope-they-work" gameplay of Lunar.
Controls: 10
Basically the same as Hamurabi; the only inputs are numbers, and they're simple and easy to input.
Visual: 3
Formatting sucks, it feels cramped and is difficult to process the game's information. The spreadsheet is interesting, as it presents far more information at one than probably every game combined up to this point. It can be overwhelming, but it also assists with immersion, as the whole screen is covered with information, all of which is relevant to the gameplay.
Functionality: 4
I'm knocking off a point for the poor formatting, but otherwise there's little to complain about.
Accessibility: 2
Despite it being very confusing at first to understand the game, thanks to the poor opening explanation, it does gain back some ground for being simple to play. It's a rather intimidating game on first look, too.
Fun Factor: 6
It managed to draw me in to a point; once I got stuck, the tedium of incrementally changing a number or two each attempt got frustrating, hence my going to a guide. There's also no urge to return to it, unlike with Hamurabi, which is the reason for giving Lunar a lower score here.
That gives Lunar an even score of 31/70 (44.28). That's a D-tier placement, and tied with Civil War. In instances like this, I use the Fun Factor score as the tie-breaker, so Lunar takes the higher spot. I think that's appropriate to my thoughts, as I'd play this again over Civil War. The lower tiers are starting to get some filling out, which is to be expected at such a formative time in gaming history; everyone's just experimenting and figuring things out at this stage, and so the games are still quite primitive. I don't expect that to change in the coming years of the early 70s, but there might be a few surprises, who knows?
[Add.] Upon completing the rescore project, Lunar's score has increased by one point, to 32/70 (45.71%).
Speaking of, this game brings us to the end of a decade - the second decade of video games, effectively. The 60s to me are much more of a properly formative period for video games than the 50s were. The 1950s was a time of experimentation in high-level laboratory and university settings, and the games that came out of it are in reality isolated, having no impact on other games. A little bit of the technological foundation was in place with the TX-o computer being the basis for the PDP-1, which Spacewar! was written on, but that's about it.
In comparison, the 1960s brought many differing developments that laid the real foundation for video games to thrive going into the 70s. Most notable of these are DEC's PDP line of computers, which eventually find their way into schools, leading to the first teenage programmers (of which there will be many through the 70s and 80s), and - and this is definitely the most important development - the invention of BASIC, the programming language that will define the microcomputer revolution of the mid-late 70s. Spacewar! also arrived in the 60s, the first game to receive wide distribution, and the earliest game to have perceivable influence on later games (Computer Space and Galaxy Game). DEC end up becoming a rather important company in terms of not just their computers, but also their user's society (DECUS), allowing people to submit their programs to their library so that others could try them. David Ahl also worked for them, and he becomes a very important formative figure in 70s computer gaming.
So now, with that, the 1970s are indeed upon me, and with that brings a massive increase in the number of games - 1970 has 22 at my most recent count, so we'll be there for a little while. 1970 is also the year where the Prehistory era of this blog will come to a conclusion, as I marked 1971 as the beginning of the video game industry proper. Progress is only going to accelerate further from there in terms of game design, genres (I'm particularly looking forward to the first RPGs), technology, and the introduction of the final stream of gaming: console gaming, both home console and handhelds. Exciting times ahead!
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