#020 - Space Race: Asteroid Astro Race

Release Date: July 16, 1973 (July-August 1974 in Japan)

Platform: Arcade

Genre: Racing

Developer(s): Atari

Publisher(s): Atari (licensed to Midway; Namco published in Japan)

Well, it's finally time to return to the arcade, and for the first time in my 1973 coverage. This is mostly due to the lack of arcade games on list up to this point with concrete dates. As a rule, any game that has no specific date is pushed to the end of the list for that year.

The state of the arcade in 1973 doesn't make for an awfully interesting picture; 90% of the games are either direct Pong clones, or variations of Pong. Atari, for instance, made Pong Doubles and Quadrapong as sequels. Pong was even cloned for the nascent Japanese market, with the first two video-game-making Japanese companies, SEGA and Taito, both producing several clones. Sorry to burst the bubble of anyone who thought Nintendo was first. Gotta wait till 1977 for them to get in on the Pong-cloning action.

The 10% of games that weren't shamless Pong cash-grabs came from - surprise, surprise - Atari. They produced two wholly unique games in 1973: Gotcha, the source of video gaming's first public controversy, and the earlier of the two - and today's topic, Space Race. Space Race also marks a first, but of a different kind to Gotcha. It's the first racing arcade game. Some make the claim that it's the first ever racing game, but the 101 BASIC Computer Games book features a text-based racing game, Can-Am, that predates Space Race by a year, which is likely the first. 

Can't escape from Pong's shadow.

Space Race is only Atari's second game, officially. Third, if you want to count Computer Space as an Atari product. Most online sources cite Al Alcorn as the sole designer of Space Race, but this is untrue. It appears that the development was handled by both Nolan Bushnell and Al Alcorn at the least, with possible involvement from Ted Dabney. According to Bushnell, work on Space Race began in 1971 before even Computer Space. The working title for the game at that time was Asteroid. Bushnell came up with the initial design, which was later completed by Alcorn after Bushnell had to drop the project in order to deal with the business management side of Atari. Dabney disputed this story, claiming to have finalised the design himself. Sadly, Dabney would leave Atari prior to Space Race's release due to his falling out with Bushnell, effectively ending his time in the video game industry.

After Bushnell incorporated Atari, he was able to score a contract with Bally Manufacturing for an arcade game. According to The Ultimate History of Video Games, Bushnell pitched the idea of a racing game set in outer space. He likely knew he had the Asteroid design in his back pocket. However, once Alcorn finished the design of Pong, Bushnell tried to offer that instead. Bally weren't interested, and would get the racing game they were initially offered in the form of Space Race in 1973. The game would be manufactured by Midway Manufacturing, whom Bally had owned since 1969, and given its original name: Asteroid.

What goes on next I think sums up the Wild West attitude of the burgeoning arcade scene in the 1970s. Atari, for some undisclosed reason, decided to make Space Race for themselves. As you can imagine, Midway were not overly pleased about this, accusing Atari of breaching contract. They were able to reach a compromise of dropping the 3% royalty payment to Atari stated in the contract. 

While there's a concrete date for Space Race's release, July 16, 1973, dating Asteroid is much harder, as there's very little information about when it was officially released. The only evidence I found suggested that the earliest release date possible may be September '73, which was from someone claiming to have an Asteroid service manual dated to September '73. I've also seen December '73, and even January '74 suggested as release dates for Asteroid, but there's nothing concrete. At the very least, everything suggests that Asteroid was out after Space Race.

Atari also had a go at releasing the game in Japan, which was initially to be handled by the ill-fated Atari Japan division. Due to financial issues and lack of interest, Atari Japan never really got going, and was sold to the Nakamura Manufacturing Company - otherwise known as Namco, marking their entrance into the video game industry. We now had a big three of Japanese arcade games: SEGA, Taito, and Namco. Namco would handle the Japanese release of Space Race, as well as become Atari's partner company, handling all of their arcade releases in Japan from then onwards.

But it doesn't end there! The Japanese release of Space Race generated a clone cabinet from one of the other big three - Taito - called Astro Race. Taito had already got their start in the video game industry cloning Pong, which was exclusively done by now-legendary game designer Tomohiro Nishikado - the man who created Space Invaders. SEGA had no interest in Space Race, being content producing Pong clones and variants. 

I love how imaginative 70s video game art is.

The Japanese side of Space Race is also rather complicated in terms of dating. Most of the common sites I see online have both Namco's licensed release and Taito's Astro Race listed as 1973 releases, the most common date for Astro Race being November '73. However, MobyGames and Wikipedia suggest otherwise for Namco's Space Race, having its release date as August 1974 and July '74 respectively. Wikipedia cites a Japanese book listing all arcade releases in Japan from 1971 - 2005. Bandai-Namco's official history supports the idea of a 1974 release, stating that Namco acquired Atari Japan in 1974, meaning that a 1973 release is highly implausible, if not impossible. I went looking for Astro Race in that Japanese book (finally, a use for my Japanese language skills!) and found Astro Race listed as a November '73 release. The only way I can see that making sense is if Taito imported a US Space Race shortly after its release, and made their clone that way. Unfortunately, I have no way of proving this, and there's no evidence I can find to contradict the November '73 release of Astro Race. All I can provide for now is a plausible explanation for the November '73 date.

Overall, Space Race in all its iterations didn't perform terribly well. According to Ralph Baer's hand-written sales spreadsheets, Asteroid sold about 2,000 units, and Space Race 1,500. By contrast, Pong sold 8,000 units in 1973 alone. The only information on the Japanese side of sales figures was with Astro Race, which apparently sold at least 1,000 units, according to the vgsales Fandom. It's not a wholly reliable figure, as their reference for it doesn't actually mention Astro Race at all - it's just an interview with Nishikado. Namco's Japanese release of Space Race has no sales figures I could find.

Carved out of a pillar of alien emerald.

The cabinet designs across all variants of Space Race are quite varied, and Atari's in particular has a very interesting background to it. Initially, they attempted to manufacture a cabinet in fibreglass, like Computer Space, although with a far more complex design. KLOV has a picture of that design, and it's honestly a very cool design - it looks like it was carved out of an alien rock formation, in contrast to the smooth, space-age terminal of Computer Space. Bushnell claims that they made about 50 of these before deciding that the process of manufacturing this design was too slow and costly. The final design is, frankly, quite awful. It's this dreadfully plain, black cabinet with a white panel where the joysticks are mounted. The only additional graphic is a "Space Race" sticker, written in bold, friendly letters, plastered on the top of the monitor.

Brought back down to Earth...

By comparison, Midway's Asteroid cabinet (as seen in an earlier picture) is like the difference between black & white and colour TV. It's predominately blue, with all different sorts of graphics on the front and side. Rockets on the side, stars and asteroids on the front. I think it looks great. The Japanese cabinets are mixed - there's actually two different designs on Taito's Astro Race fliers. One is the "standard" model - reminiscent of Asteroid, minus the colour, and the other is the "deluxe" model - a strangely-shaped terminal that looks like it could've been on the USS Enterprise. Again, I couldn't find any information on Namco's licensed release.

Taito's other cabinet design.

All of that, and I haven't even gotten into the gameplay yet!

Immediately, there's a problem with trying to play an arcade game as old as Space Race. Like Pong and Computer Space before it, Space Race was designed using discrete components, also known as transistor-to-transistor logic (TTL.) This was the time before microprocessors, meaning that Space Race doesn't technically have a ROM. Typically, for the overwhelming majority of games from this pre-microprocessor era, you have to have access to the cabinet or PCB, otherwise you ain't playing it.

However, this is not the case for Space Race. There exists what is known as the "Discrete Integrated Circuit Emulator," or DICE for short. This was a program that was intended to emulate TTL games like Space Race, and it is a game that DICE supports. Sadly, the project has been dead since about 2016, leaving many, many games stuck in limbo. As it stands, it maybe supports about 15-20 games, mostly by Atari or their subsidiary, Kee Games.

DICE is also quite unstable in its current form, technically still a beta program. I've used it for several years, and it has a terrible habit of crashing. On my new laptop, running Windows 11, it crashes on the GUI, not even allowing me to select a game to play. The good news is that there's a couple of workarounds for this, as the issue appears to be with the frontend of the program, and not the games themselves. All I needed to do was run DICE through the command line interface, which is a simple process of:

1. Right click on the folder DICE is located in.
2. Click "Open in Terminal."
3. Type "dice <gamename>"

And the game will run without issue. Alternatively, running DICE in Windows 8 compatibility mode also works. For certain games, like Breakout, the latter solution is preferrable, as the control scheme will need to be adjusted in order to have the best experience. I hate playing paddle games with arrow keys or a d-pad.

The objective of Space Race is fairly simple: two players pilot competing rocket ships with the aim of navigating through the scrolling asteroid field as many times as possible within the time limit. The timer, represented by the white line dividing the screen in half, lasts for a bit over 2 minutes. There's only two directions you can move the rocket ship in: up or down. Anytime you hit an asteroid, the ship's position is reset to its starting point at the bottom of the screen.

While technically a two-player game, Space Race is playable solo without losing out on any of the gameplay. It just becomes a time trial instead of a competitive race, which I don't mind at all.

Personally, I've already had a few years' experience with Space Race. My interest in video game history boomed in 2021 after I purchased Atari Vault on Steam. From there, I kept wanting to look further and further back, and DICE was one of the first places I went to investigate vintage arcade games. I'd still regard Space Race as one of the better games playable through DICE.

The mysterious white line in the middle of the screen is the timer.

At first, you might be thinking "Hmm, this reminds me of Frogger." Well, you're not the only one. Most other sites and reviews I've seen discuss Space Race have said the same thing, that Space Race is like a simpler version of Konami's Frogger, or Activision's Freeway on the Atari 2600. The concept is functionally the same in all these games.

I've always liked the sound design of Space Race in a strange, endearing sort of way. DICE doesn't emulate sound in most games, but Space Race is one of the few that DICE does have sound for. The primitive, 70s space-age analog beeps and boops rise and lower in pitch as the ships move up and down the screen, and there's a separate sound channel for each ship. In a base sort of way, the rising pitch as you get closer and closer to completing a lap conveys a sense of tension and excitement.

Oooh, that's not gonna end well...

At first, one might think that the game's "asteroid field" is generated randomly. However, once you've played Space Race enough times like I have, you'll probably begin to notice patterns in the asteroid field. In fact, it's actually a static field - not random at all. There are times where it's possible to get stuck in a kind of loop, where you'll be forced to maneuver through the same pattern of asteroids over and over, which is a bit annoying, as that pattern is usually a slow one. Conversely, it can be seen as a positive design choice, as it allows for learning the playfield, learning the patterns of what asteroids are going to be where and when. I've used this to great effect, allowing me to take informed risks to get ahead. Space Race is most rewarding when you play aggressively.

I had to play around with OBS for a little while to get it to record properly. The visuals were freezing in my recording attempts, but the sound was still playing. During this time, I managed a best score of 17 laps. I can't remember what my best score was the last time I played, but I think it was around 16. I think 18 or maybe 19 is probably the highest possible score, both would require perfect play, not getting hit once, and getting good patterns. Once I got OBS to work, I was still unable to get to 18, coming agonisingly short of the mark in one run.

Time to take a pit stop and do the scores.

Time Played: 30 minutes (for this article)

Difficulty: 3/10 (Easy)

I've never found Space Race to be particularly challenging. It's very simple, and controls well enough to make dodging asteroids easy. There's viable risk-taking options that up the challenge a little.

Gameplay: 11

I honestly think Space Race is a pretty well-designed, simple arcade game. One can go either way on the static asteroid field - it could be viewed a limiting variety and challenge. I see it as a boon, as it provides opportunity to learn the playfield and identify what cycles allow for fast movement, and the ones that force slow movement. That then provides strategic options, in taking risk to get ahead of a bad cycle, or even slowing down slightly to get into a good, fast cycle. Personally, I think the static playfield was an intentional choice, and it seems to me like a decent amount of testing went into the placement of each asteroid.

Controls: 6

Space Race has a very simple control scheme, but one that works very well. The pace at which the rocket ships travel feels just about right; it's not too fast to make the game too easy, and not too slow to make it feel sluggish to control. There's only so much one can do with a control scheme such as this, but what's been done works well.

Sound: 6

I get to talk about sound! As mentioned earlier, I actually quite like the sound design of Space Race. Yes, it's silly beeps and boops, but its the way they're implemented that I like. Having a sound channel for each ship is neat, but the fact that the game has dynamic sound is kind of innovative for its time. Having the pitch of the sounds shift up and down, according to where the ships are on the playing field, and especially having it rise the closer you get to completing a lap I think adds to the overall tension and excitement of the game.

Visual: 2

It's not all positive for Space Race. This game is ugly, and so is its (Atari) cabinet. I've never liked the way the ships were drawn. They look... inappropriate. Having the timer be a white line directly in the centre of the screen, while making sense to divide it into two so that each player has a half, is distracting and breaks what little immersion the game has to offer. It's really just overall not nice to look at. 

Functionality: 5

I've never run across any glitches (aside from OBS not liking DICE), so full marks here.

Accessibility: 4

The only thing I'll knock points off for here is that you're likely not to see a cabinet of this out in the wild, meaning that emulation is the only way to play it for now. What it does get points for is its incredible simplicity, meaning that it's a very easy game to understand and play for almost anyone.

Fun Factor: 10

It's fun. I enjoy it. Space Race is always a good time to come back to, even if I won't necessarily seek it out in favour of more complex experiences. It's simple and short enough that I can come back, play it for 10-15 minutes, try for a high score, and then leave it.

Space Race ends its course with a score of 44 which, after calculations, earns it a podium finish as 3rd overall in the C-tier, after a photo finish. I'm actually a little surprised - it did better than I expected. That's the second C-tier game of 1973.

I'm only likely to cover one more arcade game for 1973, which will be a Gaiden article covering Gotcha. That game's interesting enough to warrant it, unlike all the Pong clones. For the rest of 1973, it's back to text-based games, but we've got some interesting ones coming up very soon.

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#019 - Solitaire Checker Puzzle: Digital Peg Solitaire

Release Date: June 25, 1973

Platform: Mainframe

Genre: Puzzle

Developer(s): David H. Ahl

Publisher(s): Digital Equipment Corporation

Solitaire Checker Puzzle, or One Check as it's called in the 1978 edition of BASIC Computer Games, actually originates from the original edition of that very same book. It was created by the book's author, David Ahl. I'm going to refer to it as One Check through this article simply because it's less characters I have to type.

I'm not sure where Ahl's idea for the game came from, as there's no information online I can find explaining the origin. His writeup for the game in the book doesn't give much info, either. In fact, it's identical across both editions of the book. 

Apparently playing this game turns you into a wizard.

From what I can observe, the game concept itself bears a lot of resemblance to those peg boards that I used to see around my parents' and grandparents' houses. Peg Solitaire is what it's called. It has the exact same concept of leapfrogging pieces to remove them, only in physical form and with different patterns. My suspicion is that's what Ahl may have been referencing with One Check. This Peg Solitaire rabbit hole goes a lot deeper than you might expect, as we'll soon discover...

Presented for comparison.

The key difference with those, compared to One Check, is that you could leapfrog from any cardinal direction. Left, right, up or down. You can't do that in this game - it only allows diagonal moves, as in regular Checkers. That makes things a bit more tricky. There's a total of 48 checkers on the standard-size Checkers board (64 squares), with the claimed maximum possibility of removing 47 of them. According to Ahl, removing over 40 is a challenge. Challenge accepted.

The game doesn't even bother asking this time - the instructions are slammed right in front of your face straight up. It tells you that each tile of the board is keyed to a number, starting with 1 in the top left and counting up left-to right, top-to-bottom.

No questions asked.

What's great is that you get to see the full 64x64 board, which is represented in binary. 1s represent counters, and 0s represent empty spaces. The board is re-drawn every time you make a move. It's kind of a pain to have to keep scrolling back up to the reference board each time. No way am I memorising the numbers.

The opening state of play.

I managed a respectable 42 counters on my first attempt, which I was fairly pleased with. The strategy I went with was to take all the counters off the border first. What ended up happening is that I cleared out the top-left and bottom-right corners, with all the counters congregating in the opposite corners. Progressing from this point was actually a rather delicate process, with not many moves being available, but all having a significant impact on how the rest of the game would progress. I realised that this might not have been the best strategy to go with.

Nice diagonal symmetry.

Pressing on, I fumbled around, trying to figure things out as I went along. Turns out the strategy you start with makes a huge impact on the rest of the game. I was, at one stage, left with some scattered clumps of counters in the top-right area that I realised I couldn't completely remove. There goes the 47 counter dream for now.

That top right section gave me fits.

I had to make the most of the situation, which resulted in solitary counters spread across the board at the end of the game.

A somewhat disappointing finish.

42's not a bad score, but I'm not fully satisfied with it. Back to the strategy drawing board for this one. I noticed for One Check, that games take much longer to complete than most of the previous games I've played. Part of that, I think, is down to having to constantly reference the numerical board every time I want to make a move. There's also quite a bit of thinking to do. This first game took me about 20 minutes to complete.

So what's my revised strategy? My first thought was to move all the corner pieces. They have no other place to go, so it seemed they were the logical first moves to make. Having done that, I thought that moving in all border pieces from the corners would help further. Turns out I was mistaken on this second point. I ended up with a nice symmetrical pattern, but nothing I could do with it.

Looks nice, but is completely useless.

I tried a few different ideas after this, but the best count I got was 44. This result came from the idea of aiming to take out one corner of counters at a time. I think it was working reasonably well, up until the end where it fell apart.

Best result so far.

I had to take a little step back to reconsider my strategy; reconsider what I actually needed to do to get those 47 counters. I swiftly realised what I needed to do. What needed to be done at endgame was create a situation where you only need two counters to remove the final trail, but one of those two needs to consume the other. Say what you will about the simplistic look of the game - the strategy appears to run deep; it's something I can stick my teeth into, which is a good thing.

I theorised how I could accomplish this "snaking" strategy, as I'm calling it, and came up with a diagram of a theoretical 47 counter situation:

It looks like a random assortment of colours, so allow me to explain what all this means. The yellow squares are the "active" counters. These are the counters being moved. The red squares are the counters the active counters remove. The orange square is where the changeover happens. The first active counter in the top-left moves until it gets to the orange square, then the second active counter takes over, removing the rest of the red counters until it lands on the embossed red square, as the final remaining counter. The lines are there to show the path of travel of the active counters. This probably represents one of a dozen similar scenarios, it just happens to be the one I came up with. Obviously, this is just the endgame - I still have to try and get the game into this scenario, if possible.

So I tried this, and no result. Frustrated at my lack of progress, I decided to do the one very thing that's an unspoken rule of mine: look up a guide. What I discovered truly shocked me: David Ahl's "substantial feat" is actually impossible. 

I also discovered that there's quite a lot of game theory research that's been done on Peg Solitaire over the years. There's far more to it than I realised, and many varieties of boards and setups that are available. A key piece of theory I learned is that there are essentially two types of Solitaire boards: null-class and non null-class. What's the difference between the two? Null-class boards are solvable, while (in most instances), non null-class boards are not. It turns out that the 8x8 board here is not a null-class board, therefore meaning that having a single counter remaining on the board is impossible to achieve. If you want to read more about this, you can get a fuller explanation here.

Unfortunately, that particular site didn't deal with this specific, diagonal setup. There were a few sites that very briefly discussed the diagonal variant of Peg Solitaire, but not with the particular setup, or the detail, that I looking for. Eventually, I came across a page that gave me the exact answers that I was looking for. It calls this variant "8x8 Diagonal Solitaire." It even directly references Ahl's digital rendition! It declares that Ahl's highest tier of 45 - 47 counters is impossible to achieve. The major problem is that the counters will never leave their colour - red stays red, and black stays black, no crossover, meaning that there would have to be at least two counters left. In practice, it actually turns out that the minimum amount of leftover counters is four, for a maximum removable total of 44. I'm actually quite chuffed about that, seeing as I was able to achieve that total without any external assistance. The Zillions of Games site provides a sample solution, which I'll provide in the game video.

Well, this article went in a very different direction to what I was expecting. I found scoring a little bit of a challenge also. It's always tricky with these digital renditions of real-life board games. Do I rate the game based on its source material, or the implementation of it?

Time Played: 2 hours

Difficulty: 6/10 (Challenging)

It requires a lot of thought and planning to get the 44 counters.

Gameplay: 7

I'm somewhat blending the ideas of scoring based off the source, and the implementation thereof. It's a fun game, to be sure, but the implementation has its problems. Constantly having to scroll up and down the screen to reference the number key is a pain.

Controls: 5

Like usual, it's a standard input system. I imagine it could've been a whole lot worse if Ahl chose to use co-ordinates, for example.

Visual: 5

It does what it should. While the formatting is good and all, I'm not going to give brownie points for doing what's expected. That what the 5/10 score is about - doing what's expected, but not going beyond.

Functionality: 5

No issues.

Accessibility: 3

It can be a somewhat intimidating game to learn, but is rewarding once understood. It also helps that, for a text game, it doesn't require a whole lot of reading.

Fun Factor: 8

I found it enjoyable and mentally engaging. If not for the discovery that more than 44 counters was impossible, I'd still be playing, trying to devise new strategies. It really put a damper on my enthusiasm knowing what I now know.

So, Solitaire Checker Puzzle does better than you might think - a score of 33, and a place in the D-tier, just above the original Lunar Lander as the 9th game overall currently. It's a good time, for what it is.

Back to the arcade next time. Going to be racing through space.

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#018 - esreveR

Release Date: May 1973

Platform: Mainframe

Genre: Puzzle

Developer(s): Peter Sessions, Bob Albrecht

Publisher(s): People's Computer Company

This is likely to be a quick one, in contrast to the last handful of games. I find it interesting now that I'm starting to identify and distinguish between a sort of "old breed" and "new breed" of computer game. Games like Star Trek and Hunt the Wumpus are of the "new breed" of more original and complex games. Today's subject, Reverse, is one of the "old breed."

That being said, the concept of Reverse is, in fact, original. It appears to not have been based on any prior game or mathematical lesson from what I can tell. It simply involves a string of numbers, typically 1 - 9, which must be put in order by reversing a certain amount of the string at a time.

Mind-bending stuff, apparently.

Authorship is slightly unclear, as it's attributed to different people in different publications. Reverse's original appearance was in the May 1973 edition of the People's Computer Company newsletter, where it has no author listed. When it was included in 101 BASIC Computer Games in July the same year, it was attributed to Bob Albrecht, founder of PCC. However, when the microcomputer edition of the book was published in 1978, the author was changed to Peter Sessions, also of PCC.

During my research, I found a document concerning Reverse that might help to clear up the confusion. In 2004, it seems that Albrecht wrote something of a guide for Reverse with a George Firedrake. In this document, the invention of Reverse is credited to Peter Sessions. If it's coming directly from Albrecht, that would seem to settle the case, and therefore Albrecht is incorrectly attributed in the original BASIC Computer Games.

Reverse spread like wildfire, with versions popping up on all sorts of computer and even console systems. I've played the rendition on the RCA Studio II before, so I'm familiar with the game concept. The thing that makes Reverse a little tricky is that you can't just pick whichever numbers you like to reverse - you have to select the amount, starting from the leftmost number always.

The game explains it better than I ever could.

Mind you, it's been a minute since I last played Reverse, so I was quite rusty coming into it. I had to fumble around a bit before my brain kicked into gear and remembered the winning algorithm. Reverse is a game that's basically impossible to lose, it's more of a matter of when than if. It took 17 moves for me to get the sequence in order, which I think is quite a shameful effort. I'm pretty sure I did it in less than 10 on the Studio II. The PCC newsletter says it should always be doable in 15 moves.

Par is 15. Shameful.

The newsletter also explains the two approaches to strategy in Reverse, "algorithmic" and "heuristic." Algorithmic is what I did on my first playthrough, and really boils down to getting the highest number in the leftmost position, then reversing the sequence equal to that number. If I needed to move 5 next, I'd reverse to get 5 in the leftmost position, then my next move would be to reverse 5 numbers, placing 5 exactly where it needs to be.

"Heuristic" is basically taking advantage of the randomised patterns in the sequence, allowing the player to get ahead a move or two. This one is harder to explain, as it's more opportunistic and luck-of-the-draw oriented. My next run was a blend of the two strategies, resulting in a 12-move win. A blended strategy is the most likely way the game will be played, due to the sequence being randomised at the start of the game. There will always be opportunities to skip the queue.

Considering that I don't have anything more to say, I'll now take this opportunity to do the scores.

Time Played: 6 minutes

Difficulty: 2/10 (Very Easy)

Seeing as it's impossible to lose, I can't give this a very high rating. A little bit of thought is required, so it's not completely brain-dead, either.

Gameplay: 5

There's really not a whole lot to talk about with Reverse. For how simple it is, it's executed well. Strategic depth is very limited, and once the basic strategy is understood, there's not much else to it.

Controls: 5

As standard as it gets.

Visual: 4

I will say that I find the presentation very plain. The gameplay itself is a little too cluttered for my liking; I would've liked a bit more space between each move.

Functionality: 5

No issues here.

Accessibility: 4

Reverse gets points for not needing much reading to comprehend. It's also everywhere, so finding it isn't much of a problem, either. Still, it's a text-based game, and these aren't the easiest of games to get into.

Fun Factor: 4

There's slight draw in wanting to lower the turn count, but it gets to a point where it's mostly luck It becomes fairly tedious at that point, thanks also in part to the limited strategic depth.

Reverse ends with a score of 27, which gives it the top place in the E-tier, and fourteenth overall. It's not necessarily a bad game, it's just another very simple, small game that doesn't offer a whole lot by today's standards.

Just a short one for today. I think it's always nice to have shorter articles in between the more substantial games to help break up the pacing. Mind you, it's just the way it pans out with the way my master list is. There's likely a few more short ones incoming.

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#017 - Hunt the Wumpus: Who Wants to Go on an Adventure?

Release Date: May 1973

Platform: Mainframe

Genre: Adventure

Developer(s): Gregory Yob

Publisher(s): People's Computer Company

Mugwump. Hurkle. Wumpus. 1973 had a thing for similarly-named mythical creatures, eh? Another thing 1973 had going for it was adventure. Yes, the beginnings of a new genre are taking place here in 1973, and one that would define much of early popular computer gaming, alongside CRPGs. Before being eaten by a Grue, one had to be eaten by a Wumpus.

I'm going to be spending more time on the authorship and history section of this article because there's a ton of information available about Hunt the Wumpus (also simply titled Wumpus) and its creator, Gregory Yob.

Gregory Yob (who also went by the names Hara Ra and Gregory H. Coresun) was a sometimes-contributor to the People's Computer Company newsletter. He provided a substantial write-up for the PILOT programming language in PCC's April '73 publication, and Hunt the Wumpus would later be included in the November edition the same year. I'm not sure where the May '73 date MobyGames has comes from.

PCC's Wumpus article. They let you come up with your own Wumpus design.

What I do know for certain is that Hunt the Wumpus succeeds Mugwump and Hurkle, because Yob himself confirms it. Those two games are effectively the reason why he made Hunt the Wumpus. While the game isn't in Ahl's BASIC Computer Games, it (and its sequel) are featured in that book's sequel, More BASIC Computer Games. On top of that, Yob himself did the write-up for it, explaining why he made the game. He records his reaction to seeing Mugwump and Hurkle for the first time as - and I quote - "EECH!!" 

Suffice it to say, he was not impressed. He hated the grid-based games, and wanted to see a game like them with the grid removed entirely. Later that day, he had an idea. The phrase "Hunt the Wumpus" came to him during meditation, and that's where the game began. The concept revolved around having a playing area made up of interconnected points, which Yob decided would be in the shape of a flattened dodecahedron because "it's my [Yob's] favorite Platonic solid." The shape would have 20 interconnected points, which would become different rooms in a cave system.

He didn't really know what this "Wumpus" creature was to look like, exactly. It's appeared in several forms in later media - including being the mascot of Discord (hint: shameless plug) - but at the time Yob was inviting readers to come up with their own ideas of what the Wumpus looked like. It took a few years for the general design of the Wumpus to be formed, but it was settled by at least the time the TI-99 computer came out in 1979.

The Wumpus as depicted in the TI-99 version of Hunt the Wumpus. Horror game material?

As for the objective of the game, it involved the player exploring the caves in hunt of the Wumpus. When they thought they were in a room near or adjacent to the Wumpus, which you would know from its pungent body odour, they'd shoot it with bow and arrow. Just to make things more interesting, however, Yob added some hazards into this cave system. Two, to be exact: bottomless pits and what he called "Superbats." Bottomless pits are obvious, but "Superbats" would grab the player and take them to a random room elsewhere in the cave system. The starting positions of player, Wumpus and hazards were all randomised at the start of the game.

The Wumpus could also move around the caves. It would move whenever the player shot an arrow or entered its current room in the cave. Yob even thought about some lore for how the Wumpus avoided the hazards - it was to heavy to be lifted by the bats, and had "sucker feet." It also had a thing for human flesh, as if the player ended up in the same room as the Wumpus after it moved, they became lunch. Very few games did this sort of thing at the time, and it creates a tension between hunter and prey, where the hunter could become the hunted. Some have argued that this is the genesis of horror/survival horror games, and I can see their point to some extent. Your character can meet a gruesome end, either from pit or coming face to face with the Wumpus, which can make exploring the caves somewhat unnerving.

The in-game instructions probably explain it better than I do.

What I will say for certain is that Hunt the Wumpus is the first adventure game. It has the working parts of an adventure game, even if not fully fleshed out. The bulk of the game is taken up with exploring this cave system, with the occasional descriptor appearing, sometimes functioning as hints to what's in the connected rooms, other times describing the player's unfortunate demise. We'll see this format expanded on later on in the decade in games like Wander and, eventually, Zork.

The descriptors/hints/warnings/whatever you want to call them. Also sequels!

Later in 1973, Yob presented his complete game to the People's Computer Company, where it was included in the November edition of the newsletter as I mentioned earlier in the article. Yob recalls attending a conference about a month after submitting the game, where almost every terminal was filled with people playing Hunt the Wumpus. It seemed like Yob had a hit on his hands. Creative Computing got their hands on the game in 1975, and Yob capitalised on his unexpected success by creating a number of sequels in an example of an early series/IP (we could say Pong was the first real video game series.) Yob created at least three more Wumpus games. 

Creative Computing's Robo-Wumpus. Definitely horror game material.

Now, I've played a form of Hunt the Wumpus previously on the Apple I (emulated, of course, because nobody actually owns an Apple I.) I recall that version not working too well - it may have been bugged to the point that the Wumpus didn't actually appear! I remember spending a long time wandering about in those caves with no sign of a Wumpus anywhere!

This time, I'm playing a DOS port from the Internet Archive. It's another one of those "modern or classic mode" versions where I always pick classic because I'm a purist snob like that. I can confirm that the Wumpus does indeed appear in this version. I know because I shot it and the game cackled at me, declaring "THE WUMPUS'LL GETCHA NEXT TIME!!"

Instructions are standard fare in Hunt the Wumpus, telling you all the things you need to know about how the game works, hazards, win and lose conditions, etc. One loss condition is shooting yourself with your own arrow. If you somehow manage to loop the arrow around multiple rooms back into your current room, you can kill yourself accidentally. I did this back on the Apple I version when I had no idea what I was doing. What a noob.

Having practiced archery, I don't know how one can shoot a "crooked" arrow.

Hunt the Wumpus dumps you straight into the caves, and now it's up to you to explore and try not to die. Having thought about it some, I realised that this is one of the only games up to this point in time where exploration is central to gameplay. The only other game I can think of that does this is Mike Mayfield's Star Trek. While it won't be obvious immediately, this emphasis on exploration marks a significant shift in game design. We have a few more early adventure games coming up (the Caves series) but, come 1974, we'll get Wander, another milestone in adventure games, and from there the floodgates open for exploration-based games (exclusively in the computer game sphere; arcades and consoles take a long, long time to catch up.)

I found that it's critical to memorise the locations of hazards within the cave system. I also think I got lucky with my first layout, as the first move I made allowed me to easily deduce the locations of one pit and one super bat.

Avoiding rooms 11 and 18.

Back to room 20 to go the other way. I slowly work my way through the other rooms without incident, until I get to room 12, where I'm able to determine the location of the other pit, in room 3.

A dead end. Literally.

The only real choice to make here is to backtrack and move over into the single-digit rooms. I go back to room 4 and make the discovery I need - the Wumpus is near! All that I need to do is determine which room it's in, which is actually very easy to do. I just came from room 14, and I know that room 3 has a pit, so that leaves only room 5. I load up my bow, and fire into room 5...

Got him!

And it's a win for me. Again, I honestly think the random generation was quite kind to me here, so I wanted to try again with a different setup. Fortunately the game is quite kind and lets you generate a new game without having to close and reopen it. 

My second attempt was a bit trickier, as I encountered the Wumpus first. I quickly figured out that a good strategy to avoid the Wumpus was to move back a room and shoot from a safe distance. I missed the first time (I stuffed up the inputs on my first go) and the Wumpus moved further away. I chased it and tried the same thing again, and this time was successful at snagging him.

You can see my strategy at work here.

I had a few more goes, just to got a more rounded view of possible game scenarios. I had one where I got caught by a bat. When that happens, the game declares "ELSEWHEREVILLE FOR YOU!" There's certainly a peculiar quirkiness that runs through the game. My reading on Gregory Yob suggests that he was quite an odd individual, so it checks that his personality would feed into the game. Fun fact: when Yob died in 2005, he was cryogenically frozen in hopes of being revived far into the future. Presented without comment.

Gather round the campfire now, enjoy some flame-grilled Wumpus steaks (are they edible?) as I go through the scores.

Time Played: 20 minutes (approx.)

Difficulty: 2/10 (Very Easy)

I didn't die once in my entire time playing the game. It gives you a lot of assistance in identifying hazards, so they end up not really being much of a danger, even if you start with a slightly trickier configuration.

Gameplay: 12

Easily one of the better games I've played for the blog thus far. It has a lot going for it in terms of game design. The emphasis on exploration is novel for its time, but it also makes good use of the mechanic by introducing hazards to avoid. Sometimes, depending on the cave configuration, a calculated risk is necessary to proceed. On top of this, there's additional strategy required. Identifying the location of pits is essential, and it's also necessary to build a strategy for taking out the Wumpus once encountered to ensure you don't become it's dinner.

Hunt the Wumpus also succeeds in building a small degree of tension. The stakes are high, it's either the Wumpus or you, and there are several ways you can die, which really isn't something we've seen before. It helps in making the caves exciting, and somewhat nerve-wracking to traverse.

The only significant piece of criticism that I can give is that the game undoes a bit of its strategic and tension-building work with how easy it is. I think it gives a little bit too much assistance to the player, as I could always back up whenever there was a pit or bat in an upcoming room and go around, making them a non-issue most of the time. The Wumpus being a static target most of the time also doesn't help. I think that it may have made the game more tense and exciting if the Wumpus had a chance of moving with each action you made. You may eventually end up in the same room as it, creating a real moment of tension and fear.

Controls: 5

It's pretty much as standard as it gets with regards to controls. Single or double digit inputs all around.

Visual: 6

It gets an extra point not so much for its formatting (which is fine), but more its writing. Since I don't consider story for this game, I add the writing of the game into the visual category so that exceptional writing is rightly rewarded. There's a lot of personality and goofiness in the writing of Hunt the Wumpus, from the grumbling of the game when you get the Wumpus, to its evil cackling when you die, and the weirdness of being caught and moved by a Super Bat to "elsewhereville." It's fun and memorable.

Functionality: 5

No issues, unlike the Apple I version.

Accessibility: 4

I do think Hunt the Wumpus manages to be a bit more accessible than other text-based games. It doesn't require as much reading as other games, only more imagination, which I think is a benefit. 

On the practical level, the game was so popular that it's practically ubiquitous, so there shouldn't be any issues finding a version to play.

Fun Factor: 12

I'd easily want to play this ahead of anything else I've played so far, except for Star Trek. It's memorable and easy to replay thanks to every round being slightly different. Again, the only knock against it is that it's too easy, which dampens my enthusiasm to return to it.

I don't know about the Wumpus steaks, but the game is pretty good. It earns a score of 44, which makes it only the second game to land a C-tier placement thus far, and is also earns second overall on the list, behind only the mighty Star Trek.

One can definitely see why Hunt the Wumpus was such a hit back in the day. It was something very different to the norm, and having a titular fantasy creature as the main focus, alongside its emphasis on exploration, predicts much of the future of video game design. I'd definitely consider it a "milestone" game.

The next few games go back to the standard fare of the time, but there's another series of early adventure games coming up soon, courtesy of a man they call "Dave of the Caves." Stay tuned for those.

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#016x (Gaiden 01) - Animal: "Machine Learning" Taken Literally

Release Date: April 6, 1973

Platform: Mainframe

Genre: Non-game

Developer(s): Arthur Luehrmann, Nathan Teichholtz, Steve North

Publisher(s): Digital Equipment Corporation

And now for something... really different. I'm not even sure this qualifies as a game, to be completely honest. It's more like... artificial intelligence training. 

I'll explain what I mean. Animal is a guessing game, except the one doing the guessing is not the player, but rather the computer. Your role, as a "game master" of sorts, is to teach the computer new animals. You start by thinking of an animal, and then the computer will asks questions to try and guess the animal. It only knows two to start with - fish and bird - and only three questions, but you can teach it new animals, and to ask questions to distinguish between animals. 

The concept for Animal was developed at the home of BASIC, Dartmouth College, by Arthur Luehrmann. I found a substantial interview he did with Kevin Bunch at Atari Archive back in September, 2022 that gives plenty of background on Luehrmann's life and career. I rather enjoy a lot of Bunch's work, and it's a great interview. Luehrmann was a physics professor at Dartmouth from 1965 - 77, and was an early champion of BASIC, writing a few games other than Animal, including one called Potshot. Animal is briefly mentioned in the interview, but is not the main focus of the interview. Most the discussion they have on that game is on the need for a "filth filter" to parse out all the possible vulgarities college students might invent when given free reign to type whatever they like into a game. Animal just seemed to be another of the many experiments conducted with BASIC during its formative years.

I hope that's not how the computer pictures said animals...

Digital Equipment Corporation later got their hands on Animal, where it was modified by Nathan Teichholtz and included in 101 BASIC Computer Games. Steve North of Creative Computing (David Ahl's post-DEC organisation) would further modify the game when the microcomputer edition of the book released in 1978. One of the distinguishing features of the original game was its being one of - if not the very first game - to have a save feature. All of the information you taught the computer could be saved to be used next time the program was run. Theoretically, you could spend a couple of hours teaching the computer several animals, and then invite a friend to test what the computer had learned.

However, the save feature is not in the 1978 modification of the game, which also happens to be the version I have access to. The write-up claims that you could theoretically modify the game to allow for a form of saving, but that could only be done if your system allowed for it. Admittedly, I think this kind of defeats the purpose of Animal. You need to spend a decent amount of time teaching the computer various animals, and having nowhere to save that data spoils the fun.

The '78 edition page on Animal. Now with less scary monsters.

I know I've referred to Animal as a game throughout the article, but, after researching and playing it, it's not really a game at all, if I'm being blunt. My thoughts circulated into one summary point to describe Animal - and it's a weird one, so bear with me - which is that the program is essentially a flowchart creator. The computer asks you a question, like "does the animal swim?" and, based on your answer, it will ask another question (once you build up its database.) It's literally:

• Ask question
• If yes, then A
• If no, then B
• Repeat until animal is guessed

And you can expand the flowchart as much as you want. It's a novel idea, and, as the '78 edition of BASIC Computer Games suggests, it has potential use in an educational environment.

What? I like otters. They're cute.

All this is to say, that I'm making this my first Gaiden article. To recap, in case you haven't read the "My Process" page linked in the sidebar (which is probably due for a revision,) I have two main categories of articles: regular articles and "gaiden" articles (Japanese for "side story" - I shamelessly ripped this idea from Fire Emblem.) Regular articles are the main article, denoted by a number, and are simply all the games that my rules permit me to apply a score to. Gaiden articles are marked with an "x" after the number of the previous article, and are for games (or software, in this case) that I cannot in good conscience provide a score for. Usually this would be for multiplayer-only games, but also the odd non-game like Animal. They're also not counted in the game statistics in the sidebar.

So, I won't be scoring Animal. It's not a game - at least, it doesn't fit within my definition of a game. It's more of a historical curiosity; a glimpse into the infancy of artificial intelligence, and also a novel flowchart creator.

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