Prehistory XIX: A New Discovery! (Batnum 1967)

 We have to go back...

In case black isn't your colour.

Release Date: February 22, 1967

Platform: PDP-10

Genre: Strategy

Developer(s): John G. Kemeny(?)

Publisher(s): DECUS

Well this is exciting - the first time I have to go backwards, as a new discovery has been made! This comes courtesy of MyAbandonWare.com once again, and from the same user - Benedict - who unearthed The PDP-10 Timesharing World Series that I covered in Prehistory VII. 

Here we have the earliest rendition of Batnum, a portmanteau of the phrase "battle of numbers." So fresh is this discovery that it isn't present on my databases. Despite this, there's a decent amount of information available. We have a precise date for this game's creation - February 22 - which is more than can be said for a lot of the games I've covered. This date comes from a scan of the book in which Benedict discovered the game's source code.

Source code. "Self-explanatory," apparently.

As far as authorship is concerned, Batnum was potentially programmed by the father of BASIC, John G. Kemeny. The source code (above picture) doesn't credit an author, so we only have secondary sources to work with. David Ahl's 1973 version of 101 BASIC Games, in its Batnum entry, credits Kemeny with creating "the original computer version." It would be fair to assume that this 1967 rendition is the original Ahl was referring to.

So what is this battle of numbers? Batnum is basically a Nim variant - where two players take turns removing objects from a pile. Rule variants determine whether the player to take the last object wins or loses. In this game, the rule is that the person to take the last object loses, and you play against the computer. It starts off with a pile totaling 79 - quite a large number, and allows between 1 and 6 objects from the pile to be removed per turn. The player always goes first, which, as I discovered in Prehistory XVI on Gamnim, is the disadvantaged position in Nim and variants. If, as I suspect, the computer plays perfectly, this'll be an unwinnable game.

We've got a unique piece of software for Batnum provided by the MyAbandonWare download: DTSS (acronym of Dartmouth Time Sharing System.) A brief spot of research suggests that this emulator of the original DTSS was developed back in the mid-2000s by John S. McGeachice, Steve Hobbs and Thomas E. Kurtz - the other half of the Kemeny - Kurtz duo that created the original system and BASIC itself!

As a side note, I wonder if the existence of this emulator would open up the possibility of playing more of these old BASIC games that I have listed as missing - now that would be wonderful.

Anyway, back to Batnum. Running it in DTSS is quite simple, simply type in 'OLD', press enter, type 'BATNUM.BAS', press enter, and finally type 'RUN', press enter, and the game will start.

Only after the first move do I get to know what the pile size is.

The first game always begins with the same setup as previously stated, but it doesn't tell you what size the pile is - you only find this out after the first round of moves. Successive games randomise the rules. I've had pile sizes less than 30, and the ability to take up to 14 objects out at once.

All that being said, after playing a few rounds I determined that my initial suspicion was correct. I do believe it's impossible to win on account of having to move first. Either that or I'm just clueless as to how the logic works. Either way it doesn't really seem to matter what I do, as the computer going second has complete control over the numbers, as it reacts and counters my every move perfectly.

[Ed. I came back after learning about how the logic works, and won a few rounds. The first round can always be won once you know the logic.]

A routine occurrence.

I tried again, and again, and again, but the result was the same each time: I lose. That's discouraging, but also put the writing on the wall that there was no point in continuing.

So what did I do from here? I investigated the source code image and realised that the line that displays the pile size had been omitted from the game file provided for some reason. So I went in and fixed that, and it worked all fine. Seems inexplicable that that line was removed, I assume it must have been an oversight. Doesn't change the fact that the game is unwinnable.

Now as it should be.

That's really all there is to say about Batnum. I find the software it runs on far more interesting than the game itself (by a significant margin at that), as it opens up the possibility of discovering more old games previously though missing.

Still, it's a scoreable game, so let's get on with it.

Time Played: 6 minutes is a fair estimation.

Difficulty: 0

I had two options here - either give it a 10 because it's impossible to win, or a 0 as there really is no difficulty if there is no possibility to win. The latter seemed more logical to me.

Gameplay: 0

I think I'm forced into giving this a 0 for gameplay simply because it fails to really be a true game as you have no chance of ever winning. [Ed. Having found a way to win doesn't change this score.]

Controls: 10

All you have to do is type a number in. It could not be easier.

Visual: 1

Excepting the banana background, there is really nothing to say about the presentation apart from that it wasn't considered at all, aside from the three asterisks that appear next to the "I WIN" message.

Functionality: 5

Very, very little can go wrong with such a small game. Heck, the source code fits on a single page. I'm giving the missing line of code a pass, as I put that down to the error of the person who uploaded the game to the internet, not the original author.

Accessibility: 1

It's a hard game to get into, considering what you need to do to obtain and run the game, on top of the fact of being unwinnable being a massive turn off.

Fun Factor: 0

I had more fun fixing the game code than playing it. What's the point if you can't win?

Batnum receives an utterly abysmal score of 17, which earns it 24.28% and a spot in the F-tier. Still scored better than Galaxy Game, which I think is hilarious. Both games are completely pointless (in a single-player context, that is.)

I'm probably going to do some experimenting with DTSS to see if I can get anything else to run on it. How this is going to play out is that I'll keep going forward with the list, coming back occasionally when (and if) I find games that work on DTSS to cover them. I suspect I'd have to manually type in the code, which I'd need to block out time for, as that'll take a while to do, depending on the game.