Prehistory XXI: War

Release Date: 22 September, 1970

Platform: Unspecified Mainframe

Genre: Card Game

Developer(s): Unknown

Publisher(s): DECUS

This wasn't meant to be the next game on the list. I was working on Hangman, until I realised that the game listed in my 1970 group was not actually the game in BASIC Computer Games - that would be the 1973 MobyGames listing Game of Hangman, which simply goes by Hangman in the book, hence the confusion. The 1970 Hangman description didn't match what I was playing, either, so that's another indicator that the game I was playing wasn't the correct one.

Therefore, I've had to shelve the Hangman post that I was previously working on, and start on this one, as it's actually the next game on the list that's in BASIC Computer Games (and is the same between both versions of the book.) Hence the unintended delay between posts. My desire to get these posts out more regularly is being regularly impeded either by life or lack of information on the games on my list.

On first glance, you might think that War actually has something to do with war - perhaps this is a port of Civil War, or a variant of it (this isn't helped by the book's illustration on War's page in the original version.) But no, War is a card game. A very, very basic one, at that.

The author of War is, unfortunately, unknown. All that BASIC Games tells us in its entry on the game is that it simply appeared on on a DECsystem-10 one day, and no one knows where it came from, or who put it in the system. As a historian and someone who loves information, I always find it a real shame when we don't (and most likely can't) know who put these programs together. At least we can be thankful that the game itself has been preserved, as that can't be said for most games developed prior to at least 1970, potentially later.

Circling back around to War, it is a card game of the most basic proportions. The premise is as follows:

• The deck is shuffled, and one card is dealt to each player.
• Whoever has the highest card wins.
• Repeat dealing cards until all 52 cards in the deck are used.

That's it. Highest card wins. It could basically be the card game equivalent of rock-paper-scissors.

I have nothing witty to say for this game's captions.

My playthrough only took a minute to complete. Literally one minute, I'm not exaggerating. There is only one decision (technically two, but the answer to both is 'yes' or 'no,' so it's really only one decision) that you need to make in the game (this is barely a game), which is whether you want to keep playing. The game automatically deals the cards and declares the winner (or a tie). The game is over when all the cards have been dealt.

The end. It wasn't fun.

And that's it. No, seriously. That's the game. It's so simple and brief that there's almost nothing else to say. I just spammed 'yes' to get through the deck to see what would happen once all the cards were dealt. Logically the scores should be close to even by the end as it's effectively the equivalent of making 26 coin flips in a row. In this instance, one of the coin flips resulted in the coin landing on its side, with the other 25 landing properly.

I can at least say that I appreciate the formatting and writing to a small degree. Three exclamation marks for declaring the computer winning seems a bit excessive, though. The way the cards are listed as "suit-number" makes a lot of sense, so there's no confusion there. I'm grasping at straws for what to say here, honestly. I want to give an in-depth review and assessment, but there is genuinely nothing to review here. Let's stop wasting words and get onto scores, then.

Time Played: One minute.

My recording of a complete playthrough is 70 seconds long, to be precise. This has the potential to be the shortest complete game I'll ever play for the blog.

Difficulty: 0

No challenge as it's a completely luck-dependent game, nor is there any problem in typing 'yes' or 'no'

Gameplay: 0

The only gameplay decision you get to make is whether you want to keep playing or not.

Controls: 10

As long as you can type 'yes' or 'no' (caps lock on), you're good.

Visual: 2

I can detect a small amount of effort put into making the text formatting look presentable.

Functionality: 5

Hardly anything that can go wrong with a game like this.

Accessibility: 3

One positive I can think of is that this would be a good introduction to text-based games for either children or someone completely unfamiliar with the format due to the simplicity of the game and the need to only input 'yes' or 'no.' It's still a text game, so it's much harder to get into than graphical games, and thus I won't be giving it extra points.

Fun Factor: 0

Zero is the only score that can be given here.

War earns a score of 20, which ties it with Digits  in the E-tier on percentage (28.57%). My tie-breaker rules mean that War ends up below Digits, as I gave the latter a Fun Factor score of 1.

[Add.] Upon completing the rescore project, this trash lost 2 points down to 18/70 (25.71%). Still not in the F-tier, even though I think it deserves it.

Well, at least this was a quick one to smash out. I only have 7 games left for 1970, meaning we're very close to wrapping up the Prehistory series. Exciting times ahead!