We're already off into the weeds with a gaiden article post-reboot!
Surprisingly, we're not done with the 1940s yet. This was the other potential starting point for the video game chronology, as this is the earliest game listed by MobyGames; it doesn't include the Cathode-Ray Tube Amusement Device in its database. The irony in that is that neither of my other databases include Air Defense Simulation, plus I consider it to be far less of a video game than the CRT Amusement Device. I'm not sure I'd even call it a "proto-video game," to be perfectly honest with you. Yes, I'm spoiling it from the beginning here that I don't consider this a video game, hence why I'm considering this a gaiden article (plus the fact that this program can't be played...) I even considered not including it for the above reasons.
That being said, Air Defense Simulation is interesting in the sense that it represents the beginning of an alternative track in the history of video games that will eventually converge with the main track some decades later, meaning that it's worth discussing - even if there's not a whole lot to talk about when it comes to the actual "game" itself.
That alternative track begins with the program's intent. Unlike the CRT Amusement Device, which was intended, according to its patent, for purely entertainment purposes, Air Defense Simulation has a far more practical purpose. I'll briefly note here that there's very limited information available concerning ADS (unsurprising, considering it's a military project), but we at least have an idea of what it was and how it was used. For one, it was developed by the military for military training purposes.
With the accelerated development of computers and computer science through the Second World War came an increased interest post-war in the uses of computers in a wide variety of fields - military operations being one of the most pressing given the hell the world went through over the decade prior to 1948. This necessity required there to be specialist organisations dedicated to computer research for military operations. One of the first of these organisations to arise was the Operations Research Office, a civilian-based military research organisation founded in 1948 by the United States Army. It operated out of the Johns Hopkins University, founded in 1876 in Baltimore, Maryland. JHU itself has a rather interesting history, being a university founded out of a posthumous philanthropic donation to the city of Baltimore by Quaker businessman Johns Hopkins. It runs based on more of a European model of university, known as a "Research University," making it an ideal candidate for the sort of operations research the military was interested in conducting.
That research evidently included exploring the use of computers in strategic operations and training simulations. One of the ORO's first projects appeared to be our titular Air Defense Simulation. According to MobyGames, the purpose of the ADS was to help speed up existing wargame simulations by having all the mathematical calculations run through the computer ADS ran on. So, in that sense, it's really not a video game at all, but just a computational aid for pre-existing wargames. Apparently other elements were implemented in the program, enemy targets and missiles, which were all displayed on a three-dimensional grid. Sounds a little more game-like, but the majority of the simulation appeared to still be done with pen and paper. Unfortunately there are no photos of the program in action, so what this actually looks like in practice is impossible to discern.
What's also somewhat difficult to discern is what computer the bloody thing ran on. The majority of online sources suggest it ran on the UNIVAC - likely the UNIVAC I, if those sources are to be believed. One small problem with that, however: the UNIVAC wasn't developed fully until 1951. We're still in 1948, so that doesn't work (unless they had access to a very early prototype.) Always check your dates, folks. One possibility it that ADS was ported over to the UNIVAC I after it finished development, but that still doesn't solve the conundrum of what hardware ADS started off on.
NASA's REAC 100. It's a big unit.
MobyGames once again provides an answer for us. It suggests that ADS may have run on a Reeves Electronic Analog Computer (REAC) initially. The Reeves Instrument Corporation was a computer and radar manufacturer that worked in tandem with the United States military - especially the US Navy - for much of its existence. In the late 1940s, they developed the REAC, one of the first electronic analog computers for public commercial sale. According to Wikipedia, there was over sixty of these office-sized beasts installed in various institutions across the United States - including NASA. ORO would've had the REAC 100, the very first model of the computer. There wasn't exactly a lot of choice in 1948 when it came to commercially produced whole computers, so I think it's a fairly safe bet to say that the REAC 100 was the computer Air Defense Simulation was designed to run on.
REAC even had a brochure. Buy one today!
And that's where the trail of information runs cold, unfortunately. We know that ADS was actually used by the military, so it's got a one-up on the CRT Amusement Device in that respect. But other than that, how it performed, who was involved in the development, etc... no idea. I wouldn't be surprised if that information existed in some classified or confidential form.
What is somewhat surprising, on the other hand, is that Air Defense Simulation doesn't exist as an island (another one-up on the CRT Amusement Device!) ADS's existence led to the development of the Carmonette series of wargames, beginning in 1953. The Carmonette wargame series continued into the 1970s, with the fourth installment coming in 1970. It could possibly be argued then, that ADS led to the development of the first ever video game series - if you wanted to count Carmonette as such.
Regardless, it gives me a good excuse to pull out one of the new additions to OGC that I've been working on: the video game family tree!
CRT Amusement Device sits atop, all on its lonesome.
This has been an idea floating around in my head since the start of the blog - to create a visual representation of the chronology of video games as a supplement to the blog. Naturally this tree will expand into an utter behemoth once the industry begins proper 1971-onward. Obviously I wouldn't include the entirething when I need to pull it out. Just the relevant snippets.
I suppose we could also consider ADS as somewhat of a nascent starting point for the Wargame genre that finds a real home starting on the first generation of microcomputers. Not a start proper, seeing as I don't consider ADS a video game, but we can see from it that the idea for computer wargames was present from almost the very beginning of game development. I discovered the term "proto-wargame" from The Wargaming Scribe, and I think that's potentially an apt term for ADS, although it may even be too early for that term to apply correctly.
I'll also briefly mention the concept of "serious" games, as I saw that term get bandied about during my research. "Serious" games are basically educational games - video games with the ulterior educational motive, from which we later get the term "edutainment." However, "serious" games delineate somewhat from the conventional educational game in that these are typically games used in commercial and private sectors as a means to teach employees or students, and generally aren't intended for public consumption. Some of these have floated into the public sphere, such as the America's Army series of first-person shooters from the 2000s, and the somewhat infamous Japan-only "McDonald's Training Game", eCrew Development Program (or eSMART) for the Nintendo DS. ADS marks the beginning of the "serious" game, in that it's not a game intended for public entertainment, but as a means of simulating battle scenarios and developing military strategy.
All in all, not a video game, but ADS still manages to be a rather interesting piece of the puzzle in early video game history.
Release Date: 25th of January, 1947 (Patent submitted)
Platform: Standalone Device
Genre: Prototype
Developer(s): Thomas T. Goldsmith, Jr., Estle Ray Mann
Publisher(s): Never published; patent granted 14th of December, 1948
Welcome to my "soft reboot" of Obsessive Gaming Chronology. With me pushing my video content into a new direction, I want the blog to reflect that change as well. As you'll see here, it means starting over from the very beginning and going into more detail; more fully telling the story of every game, continually adding more and colours to fill in the canvas of video game history - all in chronological order, as per usual. Some things I just can't change. What I am changing is my numbering/tracking system - no more prehistory/history divide - we're starting at 1 and never stopping. I'm very intent on simplifying what I can to make it easier to follow along and keep track of. Of course, there'll be exceptions along the way - non-games, video game-adjacent titles, and newly recovered/discovered games that I'll have to go back to, so I'll keep the "gaiden game" concept around for that.
First Snow
As I write this, it's snowing in Australia. That's probably shocking for some of you who don't live in this country. You likely think that Australia consists of exclusively beaches and desert. To be fair, most of Australia is that; it's the part of the country I grew up in. But where I now live is more like a forest. Think English countryside - cold, lots of green, and lots of rain. And snow. This was my first time ever seeing snow. It's a day I will mark down, and will never forget.
Life is full of firsts. There's always a first time of doing something, experiencing something, or the first time somebody invented something that is now so commonplace today that we think it has always existed. And that is exactly what today's article is about - the first invention of the video game.
Maybe.
There's plenty of debate and conjecture over what the first video game is. Before the turn of the century, most though it was Pong, or even possibly Spacewar!. I've spent a fair bit of time dissecting this discussion in the past, and if you've read any of my former articles on the topic, you will know where I stand coming into this debate. You could read those former articles if you so choose (they aren't very good), but it may do you well to avoid them and come into this one without any preconceived notion of where I stand. For all you know, I could change my view at the conclusion of this article.
The story of the first video game occurs far before Pong in 1972, far before Spacewar! in 1961. Heck, even before the 1950s games. In fact, this story starts back in the *1930s.*
Thomas the Tinkerer
The video game story begins with a man named Thomas T. Goldsmith, Jr. Most of the following story comes from a four-and-a-half hour interview conducted with him in 1997. Thomas Toliver Goldsmith, Jr., was born in Greenville, South Carolina, 1910. The son of a real estate appraiser, his interest in electronics, especially television, began early in his formative years. At age 10, with the help of his older cousin, he built an electronic hearing amplifier for his grandmother, to replace the ear trumpet she had used for many years. Despite his efforts on this makeshift hearing aid (which, by all accounts, actually worked), his grandmother still preferred her ol' reliable ear trumpet. But that was just the beginning for Goldsmith's technical tinkering.
Thomas T. Goldsmith, Jr. (1910 - 2009)
As a teenager, he began experimenting with mechanical televisions and crystal radios. He mostly did this in his own time, as school didn't really help develop his interest in electronics; he flunked 2nd grade arithmetic, and also junior high Latin (along with his entire class!) He switched to a science track in chemistry - far more in line with his interests, although it didn't provide the same credit as the classical track. Still, it would allow him to get to Furman University, right there in his hometown of Greenville. Once there, he changed track again, opting to pursue a physics major instead of chemistry.
While studying at Furman, he decided that he wanted to keep pursuing this line of physics and engineering. Being inspired by a two-volume set on the life of Thomas Edison - which he won as a prize for a chemistry paper in high school - he worked as a paper boy while studying to save up enough money to attend Cornell University, all the way up in New York. After graduating from Furman in 1931, with a Bachelor of Science, and $250 in his pocket, he made that trek to Cornell, where he would spend five years completing his doctorate. Sometime during his studies, he became part of the faculty, directing the university's Domino Laboratory.
It was during his tenure as director at the Domino Laboratory that Goldsmith really got to experiment with the best electronics that the 1930s had to offer. Oscillographs, microwave tubes, and all sorts of electronic testing equipment. The lab was his playground. He also got to see the beginnings of television at the 1933 Chicago World's Fair - a ten-inch cathode ray tube, created by a Russian engineer. He saw the future in this technology, and so took classes on it and radar at Cornell. This would prove to be a defining investment for him.
After completing his thesis paper, he went on a trip to Montclair, New Jersey, with one of his Cornell professors. While there, he had a chance to visit the DuMont Laboratory, run by Allen B. DuMont. Goldsmith had heard of him, but never met him before, as the Cornell labs had commissioned DuMont to build a custom cathode-ray tube for them; those are what DuMont was known for at that time. Goldsmith first met DuMont there in New Jersey, and they discussed cathode-ray tubes. DuMont was evidently impressed by Goldsmith, and offered him a job at the lab almost on the spot. This was in 1936 - Goldsmith would end up spending 30 years with the DuMont company, where his title would be Chief/Director of Research. His first assignment? To be a technical consultant on a patent litigation case against his former professor at Cornell. Great way to start your new job, eh? According to Goldsmith's testimony, his former colleague was a good sport about it.
Goldsmith's boss, Allen B. DuMont (1901 - 1965) By counter currents.com - http://www.counter-currents.com/2012/05/the-dumont-television-network/, Fair use, https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?curid=51279176
In the following years, Goldsmith and DuMont Labs focused on building cathode-ray tubes, pioneering television sets and TV broadcasting. A whole lot more than this went on - Goldsmith was heavily involved in a lot of the development of early TV broadcasting, the creation of educational TV programming, and the original formation of the NTSC standard we know now, but we don't have time to get into all that here, otherwise this'll balloon out into a 10,000 word dissertation.
The United States' entrance into World War II completely shifted Goldsmith's (and the entire electronics industry's) focus away from television development to full-scale manufacturing of cathode-ray tubes for military usage, and research & development in measures and countermeasures. Goldsmith himself was made chairman of what was known as the "Cathode-Ray Tube Committee" of the Radio Manufacturer's Association at the outbreak of the war. It became his job to teach all the United States government manufacturing contractors to build cathode-ray tubes - all exactly the same, all interchangeable for military usage.
On the radar side of things, Goldsmith worked with MIT (Massachusetts Institute of Technology) for radar measures, Harvard for countermeasures. He worked on creating devices, such as a P^3I, using cathode-ray tubes, that would display precision data about incoming enemy vessels and attacks on a small screen within the cathode-ray tube.
The war ended on the 2nd of September, 1945, ending DuMont and Goldsmith's association with military operations. It was back to what they knew best - television. All that time spent on military R&D could now be spent elsewhere, giving Goldsmith the opportunity to do some experiments in other potential commercial uses for cathode-ray tubes.
The Device
And so, using both his cathode-ray tube knowledge, and radar research & development from the war effort, Thomas Goldsmith created a device that's display could be manipulated by the consumer. He created a game, known to us by its patent name, Cathode-Ray Tube Amusement Device, U.S. patent no. 2,455,992. The patent was filed on the 25th of January, 1947, and accepted on the 14th of December, 1948.
Unfortunately, Goldsmith doesn't speak of the CRT Amusement Device during that 1997 interview. So all my information outside of the patent comes from secondary sources.
The patent.
Now, it wasn't just Goldsmith who worked on this project. He had one co-conspirator in the invention of this game - Estle Ray Mann. Unfortunately, there's surprisingly very little information known about him, which is a great shame. He was born in 1904 in West Virginia, and died in 1965 in Oak Ridge, Anderson, Tennessee. He was either an electronics engineer, physicist, or both, who worked at DuMont at the same time as Goldsmith. But when he started, and for how long he was active at DuMont, and what other projects he was involved in, we just don't know.
The concept for the gameplay of the CRT Amusement Device was inspired by the radar displays Goldsmith worked on during the war. In fact, the game overall is very much inspired by war. Ah, video games and war - a perfect match from the very start...
I digress. The patent describes the game as one requiring,
"care and skill in playing it... skill can be increased with practice... care contributes to success."
Sounds an awful lot like the design mentality of an arcade game. Practice and precision are the keys to success. I'm now recalling the many hours I spent a couple of years ago on honing my mediocre skills at Galaxian. That's an excellent game that I can't wait to get to.
The patent, page 2.
The basic design of the game is that "the trace of the ray or electron beam" is presented on the face of a cathode-ray tube. The player then has the ability to manipulate the path of the beam, which moves automatically and resets continuously. Altering the path of the beam, is required to hit targets that can be placed anywhere on the face of the cathode-ray tube - the patent suggests aeroplanes (for getting the feel of shooting some Messerschmitts out of the sky.) Think of it like controlling the path of a missile - you have to guide it into the target, but you also need to make sure that it's blast timer is set so that it explodes when it reaches the target. The patent also explains that "the game can be made more spectacular... by making a visible explosion of the cathode-ray beam when the target is hit." Just to add that little bit of feedback and visual interest.
This CRT Amusement Device doesn't seem so foreign in terms of its game design. What we've got here is essentially an anti-air missile game. It actually reminds me of a bunch of different games. The Artillery genre might be what's first thought of - adjusting trajectories and blast timing to hit a distant target. I'm not the only person to think this, either. But, I'm also reminded of 1970s games like Midway's Guided Missile, which has you control anti-air missiles into moving targets; or Atari's Air-Sea Battle on the 2600 (or its parent arcade game, Anti-Aircraft from 1974), which also allows for some control of missiles for hitting moving targets. It could also be argued that the knob controls prefigure the paddle control schemes we'll see in games like Pong and Breakout. You can see the foundational building blocks of video game design present in Goldsmith and Mann's game, as they show up in games thirty years later!
By all reports, there was only ever one hand built prototype of the device ever made. There are conflicting reports concerning why this was the case. On one hand, DuMont was not in the financial position to develop the device further, and so it remained an in-house experiment. On the other, Goldsmith possibly only ever intended the device to be an experiment in the aforementioned alternative commercial uses for cathode-ray tubes - which itself may have been an initiative spurred on by DuMont's failing financial position. In that sense, a synthesis of the two accounts may be possible, and the CRT Amusement Device may simply have not been considered a financially viable product by Goldsmith and the higher-ups at DuMont.
RDZ's CRT Amusement Device Simulator (or CRADS, for short.)
You might be wondering, then, how could I provide such a gameplay description and reminisce on similarities to other games, if this 1947 game only ever had one prototype built? Well, that's where the Cathode-Ray Tube Amusement Device Simulator comes in! You may remember (if you've been around this blog for ages), for my Pool and Tennis for Two articles, I used simulators for both games, sourced from Retrogame Deconstruction Zone. Well, it turns out he made a simulator for the CRT Amusement Device, too. He explains that this was a tricky one to do, as we have no idea what the display or really any part of the game looked like outside of what the patent shows us. So the simulator is made to be as close as possible to what's shown of the design in the patent.
In all fairness, I think it's a pretty good simulation for getting an idea of how the game would've likely worked. The CRT screen looks like a radar, and the controls - a set of dials next to the screen, emphasises the radar motif even further. The overall design is also not too dissimilar to an old-school TV set, which is hardly coincidental considering the game was made by guys in the TV manufacturing business. The knobs are what's used to manipulate the characteristics of the electron beam that represents your missiles.
That little, moving dot is what the player controls with the dials on the left.
The first pair alter the missile's trajectory, the second the timing of the explosion;, the third change the size of the beam and explosion radius (for a bit of variable difficulty), and the single knob at the bottom adjusts the brightness of the screen. The targets themselves are kind of like stickers that can be moved around the screen, sort of reminiscent of the screen overlays on old black & white arcade games, or used for Magnavox Odyssey games.
Now, I did say at the start that this is maybe the first ever video game. People today like to make a big deal out of it, and various articles online extol Goldsmith as "the grandfather of video games," a title once given to others whom we believed had the first video game, like William Higinbotham (Tennis for Two.) There are a few problems that challenge this perceived reality. For one, the Device was only ever a prototype; a mere experiment that was confined to the walls of the laboratory in which it was conceived and constructed. To put it plainly, it was an island. If there was a "video game family tree," it would be out on its own - not linked to, nor influencing any future games. We only know about its existence from the patent, and that wasn't even rediscovered until it was dragged off its dusty patent library shelf by some enterprising Bally attorneys fighting Magnavox's litigation war with the entire video game industry in the 1970s - a fact itself not even rediscovered until 2002. Let that sink in. We forgot about this game for thirty years, then forgot about it for another thirty years after its brief resurrection by Magnavox.
Note how the missile's trajectory had changed. That ship is cooked.
The other trouble with making much of the CRT Amusement Device, is that some also argue that it's not even a video game at all. Two of my primary databases I use to compile my master list, MobyGames and Arcade-History, don't include the Device. Stuart Brown (Ahoy), who probably has the most popular and well-researched work on "the first video game," relegates this game into the realm of electromechanical games, on the account of its use of additional elements, and the lack of evidence for a physical prototype having actually been built. My other primary database, IGDB, also calls the Device and electromechanical game, on account of no memory or programming being present. Mind you, Ahoy does also say that "if it looks like a video game, and plays like one..." To my senses, the CRT Amusement Device appears to be a video game; it meets the majority of his overall definition, in regards to intent and video interactivity. Although, I can see the other side of the argument. Without the addition of physical targets, stuck to the CRT screen, all you have is a demonstration of real-time interactivity with a cathode-ray tube display - a mere tech demo. At that point, it's not really a game at all. That being said, I did mention earlier that black & white arcade games and the Magnavox Odyssey also used additional elements in the form of physical screen overlays for aiding gameplay. Also, in the Odyssey's case, it comes with many board game elements, and without those, the majority of games are unplayable, and system is almost relegated to a similar state as the CRT Amusement Device, sans targets.
For me, after playing the Device, and reconsidering the arguments, it's lineball. The arguments for both sides are equally valid. However, for the sake of my chronology, and for the sheer fact that many people do consider this "the first video game," I'm including it as the starting point of video game history.
Scores
With the blog reboot comes a score & review reboot, too. The system is still the same, but I'm including everything this time - no games left out! If it's going to the "The World's Biggest Video Game Tier List," I can't leave much out, can I? I will also be redoing the scores for every game I've previously covered. The only real difference you need to worry about is that game design and fun factor are now scored out of 25 instead of 20, as this allows for a full, easy-to-translate 100-point scale. Plus, those are the two most important elements of a video game to me - how smart and creative its design is, and how fun it is to play and replay. Them making up 50% of the overall score makes sense to me.
Time Played: 15 minutes
Difficulty: 3/10 (Easy)
Some skill is required in first learning, and then adjusting the missile trajectory and blast timing in order to hit the targets. The difficulty is also somewhat adjustable, with the ability to move the targets around, and to increase or decrease the blast size. Reminds me a little of how early Atari 2600 games manage difficulty with the console switches.
Gameplay: 4
For a game that could be considered "the first video game," it's got quite a few elements going on. Movable targets, adjustable difficulty and several gameplay mechanics governing how the missiles work; it's surprisingly complex - for 1947. Granted, it's not that complex by today's standards, or by the standards of the early 1970s arcade games which it resembles. Beats the stuffing out of most of the BASIC text-based games I've played, though. The scoring breakdown here basically goes: 2 points for the variable difficulty components; 2 points for the missile control mechanics.
Controls: 4
I do like the concept of making the control setup look like a radar control panel. It does, however, make the controls feel somewhat obtuse and overcomplicated, and I was unable to really come to grips with them in the simulator. I'm giving a little bit of grace in the score, as I do think it would be slightly easier turning dials on the real thing - I have to click on the dials in the simulator, which doesn't give the same feel or feedback as turning a dial.
Sound: N/A
Visual: 6
Conceptually, I really am a fan of the look of the Device. Making it look like a radar unit is a great idea for immersing the player in the concept of controlling missiles to attack enemy warplanes/ships, or whatever targets one would choose to use.
Story: N/A
Functionality: 5
Functionality is hard to determine when access to the original is not possible. Based on what's in the simulator, there seems little opportunity for things to go wrong.
Accessibility: 2
The controls do knock the accessibility score down a few pegs; it's a tricky game to get a handle on at first, both from the aesthetic and design of the control scheme.
Fun Factor: 1
Despite seeing some merits elsewhere with the Device, I don't find it all that enjoyable to play. Sure, it gets a point for some replay value in being able to adjust the difficulty by moving the targets and adjusting the blast radius. The main problem I have, though, is the lack of feedback the game gives to the player. You have to determine yourself whether you've hit the target - the screen is merely a visual guide. There being no sort of visceral impact from hitting a target totally dulls the gameplay experience for me. Combine that with the complication of the controls, and it makes for a game that isn't much fun to play.
Overall: 22
A score of 22 (weighted to 27.5) and a middling E tier placement is not half-bad for the "first video game." Even if it's not entirely a video game - it does a lot better than many actual video games. I personally just can't get past the lack of feedback from the game itself; it's not an overly rewarding experience, if an interesting one. This is going to be my frame of reference score for the future, also. "Soft reboot" means rebooting the scoring system and tier list as well. The list as is will remain, all the old game scores are going to get rebalanced as I revisit them.
Epilogue
So, what did Tom Goldsmith do after the CRT Amusement Device? Well, he remained with DuMont for many years, during the company's slow demise, beginning with the sale of assets to Emerson Radio in 1958, and after its merger with Fairchild Camera and Instrument (later Fairchild Semiconductor - both Emerson and Fairchild are companies with which we will have much to discuss later down the track.) in 1960. Allen B. DuMont died in 1965, and Goldsmith quit the TV industry altogether following year. It all came full circle for him, as in the very same year he took up a teaching position at his old Alma Mater - Furman University. He retired in 1975, and passed away in 2009, at the ripe old age of 99, with a long legacy of pioneering work in television left behind. I'd commend to you, reader, his multi-hour interview with the Television Academy from 1997, from which much of this article is sourced.
Tom Goldsmith in the 1997 Television Academy interview.
My final word on the subject here, in closing, is that Goldsmith and Mann's CRT Amusement Device holds a rather odd place in video game history. It's a sort-of-not-really video game, made by a couple of men who had no association with even the electromechanical arcade/pinball industry, and had zero influence in video game development. Yet, in a strange and roundabout way, the video game industry as a whole is built on the shoulders of Thomas T. Goldsmith Jr.'s life's work, and the work of those around him, like Estle Ray Mann and Allen B. DuMont. CRT TVs and monitors, which these men had a leading hand in pioneering and developing, were used for decades everywhere for gaming - for computer monitors, arcade machines, and the home TV sets you and I grew up playing Super Mario Bros. and The Legend of Zelda on. I still have one back at my parents' house, exclusively for retro gaming, just to get that authentic experience whenever I boot up my Atari 2600 to play Adventure, or the Mega Drive for Sonic the Hedgehog. Whenever I see a CRT TV now, I'm going to be thinking of Thomas Toliver Goldsmith, Jr., grateful for the work he and his colleagues did to pioneer the technology that made all these video games possible.
I've probably mentioned this before, but I've done some basic programming in my time. One course I took had me program a game in C++ called Number Wizard. It's a simple number guessing game - the computer picks a number between 1 and 100, and you guess it, with the computer telling you if your guess is higher or lower than its number. I don't remember how to code it, but I know it was very easy to do.
Today's game, Guess, is one of those Number Wizard types of games. We've seen plenty already, and will see plenty in the future. Guess does have a couple of ways in which it distinguishes itself from the pack, however. One of those is its author, who is unquestionably far more interesting than his game could ever dream of being.
Origins & History
Walter J. Koetke is the author of Guess. I've played one of his other games for the blog already, Bull. Although, that's not technically his game - he just had his students convert the game, originally written by David Sweet, into BASIC. So, I suppose we could say that Guess is Walt Koetke's first actual game that he authored himself. I didn't give him much of a bio in the Bull article, so now's as good a time to do so as any.
Walter J. Koetke (1939 - 2013)
Born in Chicago in 1939 (died 2013), Walter J. Koetke was actually quite a significant figure in the realm of computer-based education. He earned a Bachelor of Science from MIT, and did his Masters in Education at Harvard. We know that he worked as a teacher at Lexington High School in Massachusetts during the late 60s and through the 1970s thanks to the games he was involved in producing, such as Guess, but his contributions go much beyond that. We'll get to his work on integrating computers into mathematics education a bit later, so I'll instead turn my attention to his later work.
During the 1980s, he worked on a series of educational programs for the Microzine magazine, run by Scholastic. These magazines often came with a computer program that was basically a "choose your own adventure" styled educational game. Koetke worked on several of these, and also worked on a few other educational programs for Scholastic, such as Math Shop. For all this, he earned a Distinguished Teacher Award, from the Presidential Commission on Academic Scholars. Unfortunately, nobody on the internet bothered to mention when he earned this award. I even tried to do some digging myself, through the US Department of Education's online database, but to no avail. The "Distinguished Teacher Award" records go back to 2003, but they don't even have lists for all the years! All the ones I looked at didn't have Koetke's name in them, so either he's in one of the years that didn't have the list available (2005-08), or his award predates 2003.
The source for Guess.
I digress. Back to the game. What's likely the most interesting thing about Guess is where it's been sourced from in Walter Koetke's body of work. 101 BASIC Computer Games cites the original source of the game being from a book, written by Koetke himself, entitled "Computers in the Classroom." Another of Koetke's important contributions, this book is intended as a resource manual for teachers in using computers to assist students in learning algebra. Keep in mind that this book was originally written in 1968-69. To say that computers weren't commonplace in the classroom at that time would be an understatement. The original form of Guess appears across pages 40 and 41 of that book, from which someone at DEC (possibly David Ahl; 101 BASIC Games doesn't say who) converted the game from FOCAL into BASIC. This all makes Guess another game rooted in Koetke's educational purposes, though not strictly an "edutainment" game itself, unlike his 1980s projects.
Guess the Game
As I noted at the start of the article, Guess is another one of these simple number guessing games that we've already seen several of up to this point in time. Number: A Number Guessing Game, Trap, Stars, and even Letter: A Letter Guessing Game are alternative takes on the format that I've already played. None of these games rate particularly high in my esteem. Guess is no different, hence my saying that the most interesting thing about it is the where and who it originates from. Although, it does distinguishes itself slightly above all of the above in one way none else do.
The numbers - what do they mean??
Guess allows the player to choose the range of numbers the computer can select from. The lowest will always be 1, but the upper limit can be whatever you like. This was not the case in Koetke's original program - that had a set range of 1 - 100. Someone added that in for 101 BASIC Games. Once again, we don't know who that was. The idea in Koetke's mind remains the same across both versions of the program, regardless. The premise of number guessing like this was built on binary search - how computers essentially think in bits that can either be a 0 or 1, each successive bit representing the next number in a sequence of numbers always increasing to the power of 2 (think of the 2048 sequence, to use a game analogy: 1, 2, 4, 8, 16, 32, 64, 128, and so on and so forth.) The logic in number guessing is that you should be able to guess the number in one less digits than required to represent the number in binary notation. So, for example, a number like 73 would require 7 digits to represent in binary (100 1001, read from right-to-left.) Therefore, it should take you no more than 6 guesses to guess the number chosen from within that range. The game will actually tell you this if you take more guesses than expected to correctly guess the number.
If we talk about this in more game-like terms, the basic strategy that gets you to this "binary-1" number of guesses is what I call "splitting the difference." If the number range is from 1 to 100, split the difference and guess 50. If the number is higher, split the difference between 50 and 100 - 75. If lower than 50, split the difference between 1 and 50 - 25, and so on and so forth. Bigger numbers simply require more splits. Thinking about it in binary notation just helps in knowing how many guesses (and splits) you'll probably need. Like, a number between 63 and 32 is going to need about 5 guesses, whereas a number between 512 and 1,023 should expect 9 guesses.
I get a lot of enjoyment out of these cartoons - mostly for the sheer oddness of them.
This is probably far more of a discussion than a game like Guess deserves, yet I'm here doing it anyway. I haven't even talked about my experience playing it yet! And, truthfully, that's because there's very little to report. I've played countless games just like this, so what new can I possibly say?
Pick a number. Any number.
Well, I can at least comment on the one thing Guess does differently. Having a choice of the upper number limit is surprisingly refreshing. There's certainly a temptation to see how high the game will let me go with it, even if, in reality, it just boils down to the same thing, but with more steps, and therefore more mental maths to do.
15 is 1111 in binary.
The one thing that does annoy me, though, is that Guess doesn't let you change the upper limit during gameplay at all. It's a pick-and-stick game, the upper limit you set is the one you're stuck with until you close and reload the game. It's a minor annoyance, but minor annoyances become major annoyances when there's nothing else to talk about.
Something a bit more adventurous. 255 is 1111 1111 in binary. 5 guesses is a good round; 7 guesses is par.
And, seeing that I now truly do have nothing else to talk about, let's do the scores.
Scores
Time Played: 11 minutes
Difficulty: 1 (Brain-dead)
I don't think I need to comment on the "challenge," or lack thereof, in a game like Guess.
Gameplay: 2
I'm giving this a 2 to distinguish it from the other "Number Wizard" games - purely because Guess lets you choose the upper limit of numbers the computer can select from. It's one more gameplay element than Letter has, and that, by default, makes it better and more interesting to play.
Controls: 5
It couldn't be simpler. Remember, I don't give extra points just for doing what should be expected.
Visual: 1
There's nothing noteworthy about the game's formatting to speak of; very standard.
Functionality: 5
Free points if the game works properly.
Accessibility: 4
It's very easy to understand a game like this, and it seems to be written in a way that's designed for younger children to understand and read. It's still text-based, which is a fundamentally inaccessible format for a video game, but Guess is probably as accessible as it gets.
Fun Factor: 1
I can at least replay Guess fairly easily, with the free choice of number limit giving opportunity to try larger and larger upper limits. It's fundamentally the same, but generates a bit more interest in my mind - compared to Letter, at least.
Overall: 18 (weighted to 22.5)
A score of 18 (weighted to 22.5) for Guess is, for what it's worth, not actually that bad. It's a E-tier game, sure, but that's the same score that Galaxy Game and Fur Trader got - which are far more complex (and more deeply flawed) games. That one, simple little act of allowing the player some customisation of the game rules has made a big difference. Relatively speaking, of course. This still ain't a good game, nor is it really worth your time.
I can't believe I've written over 1,500 words on a simple number guessing game. What madness am I succumbing to?
Anyway, this will be the last "new" game from the list for a while. I'm quite intent on finishing the Cathode-Ray Tube Amusement Device project, and getting started with what I'm calling a "soft reboot" of the blog. I will be revisiting all former years, covering all of what I missed, and redoing the "Prehistory" series in more detail with better research and writing. As for the video side of things, I think it's inevitable that it will become asynchronous with the blog; the videos do take a lot more work now, and are predicated on my having finished the game's blog article so that I can write the script. So if you're a follower of both, take note of that moving forward.
Got a more positive update, for once. I've figured out what to do with my Patreon, and have now got some exclusive content for members up there. With my main videos going in a more produced direction, I've found that there's room to also record my first impressions in a live, unedited format.
And I thought, why don't I give those first impressions as extra-special content as a thank you to folks who choose to support the channel by becoming a Patreon member?
So, that's what I've done. My live impressions of the next game on my list, Guess, are now uploaded to Patreon - complete with a live reading of its 101 BASIC Computer Games pages.
If you'd like to support the work that I do, please consider becoming a member. The link to my Patreon is in the sidebar. Thank you.
For the next A Brief History Of article, we're actually taking our first real adventure over to Japan. Bet you didn't think the first Japanese game I'd be covering was a board game, eh? It's funny how things play out when tackling gaming chronologically.
Of course, Japan is going to be a massive player - nay, the defining player in the video game industry come the late 1970s-onward, thanks largely in part to Taito, Namco, and Nintendo. But, as of writing this, we're in 1973. Taito and Sega are busy copying Pong, Namco is merely a distributor of Atari games in Japan, and Nintendo is barely on the map. Really, all the action is taking place in the United States.
But, as we can see from this article, and my most recent Gomoko article, that didn't stop Japan from being an influence prior to their earliest arcade hits. Developers just had to look to different source material, and they found it in the form of board games. As we saw in the Gomoko article, the earliest of the Far-Eastern board games to get the computer game treatment that we know of was Go. That was in 1968, written by Albert Lindsey Zobrist. Zobrist is an important figure in computer science, as he invented a hashing system, suitably named after him (Zobrist hashing), that is used in computerised board games like Go and Chess. We're not going to go too in depth on information relating to Go in this article, however - I'll save that for a separate Go article.
That being said, it's extremely difficult to separate the history of Go from the history of Gomoku, as the games are inextricably linked. For Gomoku is simply a variant of Go that gained a whole life unto itself after arriving in Japan. Go was created in ancient China, with sources dating it being between 2,500 and 4,000 years old! It's still being played today, which makes it one of the oldest - if not the oldest - extant board game still actively played today.
Go-Go-Gomoku
It's entirely unclear how and when Gomoku developed out of Go as a separate variant. Nobody really seems to know, from what I can tell. The best sources I could find merely suggest that the two developed alongside each other, with Gomoku - or Wuziqi, as it's known in Chinese - being a simpler game using the same board and pieces that was designed to be more easily played by children. Other sources imply that it might've actually been invented in Japan... What is clear to me is that the history of Gomoku is a complete mess.
Fortunately, the core difference in rules between Go and Gomoku is abundantly clear. Go is about territory control and capturing enemy pieces, whereas Gomoku is an alignment game - basically a larger scale version of Tic-Tac-Toe or Connect Four (and, consequently, far more interesting.) Instead of three or four in a row, Gomoku goes for five in a row. *Connect Five, if you will. The name "Gomoku" itself refers to the game's five-in-a-row alignment rule. The full name of the game is Gomoku-Narabe (五目並べ) - Go（五）meaning "five," Moku (目) meaning "item", and Narabe (並べ) meaning "line up;" literally translated "five items line up."
Back to the mess that is Gomoku's history, we now turn to how the game arrived in Japan. This isn't much clearer than the development of Gomoku out of Go. In fact, there are two dates floating around for the arrival of Go and Gomoku in Japan. Great. Reminds me of the dating for the Biblical Exodus, as we have an "early" date and a "late" date to consider. For reference, when I say Gomoku, I'm referring to both GoandGomoku. The two don't really become separate entities in Japan until much later on. Plus, it saves me the hassle of constantly writing "Go and Gomoku" all the time.
We'll start with the early date. These sources state that Gomoku arrived in Japan via Chinese emigrants in ~270 BC. That's a damn long time ago, especially compared to the late date. In this chronology, Gomoku arrived under a different name, Kakugo (覚悟), a word that translates to "readiness." However, there's no actual evidence I could find to support this early date. One source cites a book from ~100 AD that references the game, but there's no evidence I could find of a text like that actually existing.
The far more likely-to-be-true date for the arrival of Gomoku in Japan is the late date of 754 AD. The story goes that it was brought back to Japan from China by a Japanese ambassador named Kibi no Makibi, otherwise known as Kibi Daijin (Minister Kibi). Born into a noble family, he was sent as part of an envoy to Japan in 717, staying there for 18 years, absorbing all the he could from the China of the Tang Dynasty. After returning, he was heavily involved in the governance of Japan under several emperors, before being sent back to China in 752. It was from this second trip, concluding in 754, that Kibi brought Gomoku over to Japan. It's actually from Japan where we get the name Go from, despite the game's Chinese origin. It's derived from the word igo (囲碁). The second of those Kanji is quite literally the Kanji for Go. It became such a popular game in Japan that it got its own Kanji all for itself. The Chinese name for Go is Weiqi (literally "surrounding game"), and Gomoku's Chinese name is Wuziqi ("five piece game").
Artist's rendition of Kibi no Makibi.
Before I continue on with Japan's history with Gomoku, I do want to briefly mention that it also spread to Korea, likely a century or two, at least, before it got to Japan. Go in Korea is known as Baduk, with the Gomoku variant being known as Omok ("five stones"). It was present in Korea in the 7th century AD at least, and one story purports it to have been brought to Korea by a Chinese sage contemporaneous with Confucius (5th-6th century AD). Again, there's blurring of lines here, as whether it was just Go that was brought over, or if Gomoku was included, or if Gomoku was brought to Korea from Japan at a later date... thinking about it that way turns it all into a circular mess that makes my head hurt. Moving on.
Back to Japan, we are going to be jumping ahead a bit in time to pick up the story of Gomoku.
How much is "a bit?" Oh... about a thousand years.
This is unfortunately where we really run hard into the problem I mentioned earlier about the inextricable link between Go and Gomoku. For Japan, for the next 1,000 years, Gomoku's history is Go's history. All the attention is on Go, and the first story to even mention Gomoku as its own separate entity takes place in the 18th century. That's right - no writings, no mentions, not one peep about Gomoku for a thousand years.
Breaking Free
As I don't want to dive deep into Go's history here, I'll provide a brief overview, as the context is needed to know how Gomoku got to the point of unhooking itself from Go.
For about 500 years, Go found a comfortable little niche of prestige in the halls of royalty and nobility in Japan. It became a highly regarded pastime that also became quite competitive. One story, recounted by Edward Lasker in his 1960 book Go and Go-Moku: The Oriental Board Games, tells of a Japanese prince visiting China, about 100 years after the game's introduction to Japan, for the sole purpose of challenging China's best Go players.
Eventually, around the 13th-14th century, Go managed to escape the halls of nobility, and found popularity first amongst the military classes, and then the general public. Again, nothing is said about Gomoku. Go's popularity continued to boom, though. So much so, that once the Edo period commenced under the Tokugawa Shogunate, Go academies were being created for the purpose of training players in the now-ancient and revered art of Go.
Our first story of Gomoku comes now in the 18th century, as previously mentioned. The story goes that the spread of Gomoku as a separate game from Go can be attributed to a merchant named Kuwanaya Takeemon, who was famous for his skill at the game. He was a 10th generation oil merchant who regularly visited the noble Nijo family, and it's reported that he spread the knowledge of Gomoku through his business travels.
By the end of the 19th century, Gomoku had finally attained its own identity separate from its parent game. It had a book dedicated to it, the Gomoku Jōseki Collection, dated to 1856. It also began to go global, attracting the attention of the British Empire, with the Brits writing of the game later into the century. However, they didn't call it Gomoku - they instead called it Go-Bang or Goban. Eventually it would be distributed across the West in the 20th century under the names Spoil Five and Five in a Row.
However, we've yet to address the most significant event in Gomoku's history - Renju.
Renju
As Gomoku increased in popularity over the 19th century, many efforts were undertaken to try and "balance" the game. It had been discovered that, in what is called "freestyle Gomoku" - starting with a blank board - the player going first (black) is significantly advantaged. It's at the point of being a "solved game," if you knew how to play perfectly, you would never lose. So, various starting setups and rules were experimented with to try and find a nice balance where both black and white had about an equal chance of winning.
The problem was, that this version of Gomoku didn't have a name. There were a whole bunch of names being used, and it got to the point where nobody really seemed to like any of them very much.
Enter Ruikou Kuroiwa, a journalist and founder of the Japanese newspaper, Yorozu Chouhou. He decided to take it upon himself to find a new, respectable name for Gomoku that would remove the stigma attached to the old names. What he came up with was Renju, which literally means "connected pearls." The name was announced in Yorozu Chouhou on December 6, 1899, and has stuck ever since as the name for the globally recognised, professional variant of Gomoku.
Renju began to be played competitively further across the world as the 20th century progressed. Eventually, in 1988, the Renju International Federation (RIF) was founded, for the purpose of holding world championships. The inaugural championship was held in 1989, appropriately, in Kyoto. Since 2009, the championships have been run on a biannual basis. While there are other noteworthy variants of Gomoku played all around the world, none took off quite like Renju.
Video Game Gomoku
Looking into the digital world of Gomoku, it makes for reading quite similar to Hangman, in all honesty. A good amount of action in the 70s and 80s, and dropping off in interest afterwards, with few games being produced.
The first computer Gomoku appeared in 1972 as a BASIC, text-based game, written by Greg Thagard. This rendition of Gomoku plays a 9x9 board. In 1981, it was ported to the Sol-20 microcomputer, and is still playable today. The computer is slow, taking up to a minute to decide its moves, but is competent at the game...
Thagard's Gomoku, Sol-20 port.
...unlike 1973's Gomoko, by Peter Sessions. I've already waxed lyrical at the massive failure that that game's computer opponent is, so I'll spare you the details on that here. What this game introduces as an improvement on Thagard's game is a choice of board size, from the smallest 7x7 board, up to the Go-standard 19x19 board.
Quick reminder of how incompetent Gomoko is.
1976 saw three new Gomoku programs appear. However, only one of them was actually a game. That one ran on the Intel 8080 microprocessor, and was published by RBB Software Products. No credited author is known of. As for the other two... well, those were Gomoku-playing programs that participated in computer Gomoku competitions. Yes, just like how there were computer Chess competitions, where the brainiest boffins and computer scientists tried to develop the smartest, bestest Chess-playing program they could, there were likewise those who did the same with Gomoku. One of these, developed by D. Walden, managed third place in the 1976 championship.
1979 was the year where Gomoku saw the most attention from game developers, with a whopping five games releasing that year for all the brand-spanking new microcomputers that arrived only a year or two prior. The Apple II, Atari 8-bit line, TRS-80, Altair 8800 and Commodore PET all received versions of the game.
The 1980s saw the first Renju computer game appear - this one from a Japanese developer, released for the Apple II. 1980-83 saw several more Gomoku and Renju games appear - this time not limited to home computers, but there was also an arcade game, Gomoku Narabe, released in 1982, and Gomoku Narabe Renju by Nintendo for the Famicom/NES in 1983.
Of course, Nintendo had to make an appearance.
After that, the interest in video game Gomoku fell off hard. Only one game in 1988, and a mere handful across the 1990s and 2000s. And that brings us to the state of Gomoku video games today. Mind you, it's not much of a state at all. More of a ghost town, really. The most recent Gomoku game, Let's Go Gobang was, according to MobyGames, released in 2021 as a digital download on Windows and Nintendo Switch. Nothing else in five years (at the time of writing this article.) But, there are at least a handful of browser-based versions available to freely play that a quick Google search will bring up.
Endgame
Here ends the lesson on the history of Gomoku. As you've seen, it was so deeply intertwined with Go for much of its existence that, despite the evident antiquity of Gomoku, it has little historical evidence to show for it prior to the 18th century.
But, it finally managed to break free from the shadow of Go and become a internationally-regarded, competitive board game in its own right. Especially after the invention of Renju. The most recent world championship from 2025 was fully live-streamed on YouTube, for those curious on what the state of Gomoku as a sport looks like today. They stream six games simultaneously, so it can be a little tricky to keep track of everything, but it's all there.
The troubles with the historical evidence, and working across sources in two languages made this a more difficult assignment than this series' debut article on Hangman. On the flipside, I got to learn about a whole new competitive sport that I never knew existed before. That's the beauty of doing these broader, historical articles - I always learn something new. That makes the work tremendously rewarding to do.
What's next for this series depends on whatever project I complete next. Could be Tic-Tac-Toe, could be Hexapawn, or it could be something completely different. My workflow is still in a state of flux at the moment, with all the changes going on around here. So it could be a while.
[Ed. I've spent an awful lot of effort in changing up the style of my videos into something with a bit more production value. Well, as much "production value" as my self-taught video editing skills can provide. This video is more of a "mini-documentary," and mixes produced content with live gameplay. Hence why it's taken so long to complete. Let me know what you think!]
Release Date: July 1973
Platform: Mainframe (BASIC type-in)
Genre: Board Game
Developer(s): Peter Sessions
Publisher(s): Digital Equipment Corporation
Here's a curious game - one from the People's Computer Company, yet is exclusive to DEC and David Ahl's 101 BASIC Computer Games. I scoured the first several years of PCC magazines, and no mention of this game was to be found anywhere.
History
There were very few early video games based on distinctly Eastern board games around up to 1973. The only ones I can see on my list are "missing" games. One is a version of Go from 1968, and another is an earlier version of this game - Gomoku (Sessions misspelled the title), from 1972. I'm unsure whether these are recoverable in their earliest format (the '72 Gomoku was ported to the Sol-20 in 1981, so we'll get to see it then, at least.) We also have Awari, which I've already covered, but that game's origins are centred more around the Near East and Africa, not the Orient. This, for now, makes Gomoko the earliest extant video game based on a game from the Far East.
By quick way of reminder, Peter Sessions is a game author we've seen a couple of times before in my 1973 coverage. He also wrote Reverse and The Game of Chomp for PCC, before leaving the publication the same year (perhaps why Gomoko never featured in the magazines...) Gomoko here is his final credited work, according to MobyGames. As far as specific information is concerned about Gomoko, there unfortunately isn't anything beyond what we're given in 101 BASIC Games.
These cartoons really are something, aren't they?
As for Peter Sessions, after he completed his final game, he remained in the computing industry for many years. He also delved into his other chief interest: music, writing a book on music theory, entitled The Functions of Chords: For Pop, Jazz, and Modern Styles. Very nice.
The Game
Sessions' final game comes with a welcome message, "Welcome to the Oriental game of Gomoko. What is Gomoko, or, correctly spelled, Gomoku? And why is it Oriental? Well, I won't go into too much detail here - I'll save that for my Brief History of Gomoku - but what I will tell you is that it's a Japanese board game that dates back several centuries, and also spread to neighbouring China and Korea. The objective is simple - line up five stones of your colour (black or white) in a row (horizontally, vertically or diagonally) on the board to win. Why it's not four-in-a-row like, say, Connect Four relates directly to the Japanese superstition surrounding the number four. In the language, one word for the number four is the same word for death. So instead we have what could be basically considered Connect Five.
The rules.
Typically, Gomoku is either played on a 15x15 or a 19x19 board, with the black and white stone pieces of Go, a related Oriental board game. Sessions' game allows you to choose a board size between 7x7 and 19x19. According to 101 BASIC Games' notes, 7x7 is the smallest size "that can be used for a meaningful game." It would be rather difficult to make five in a row on a 4x4 board, wouldn't it? It also warns that the computer isn't very good, nor does it keep track of who has won. My playing experience can confirm that the computer is quite terrible.
All seems fairly regular here...
I played my first round with a standard 15x15 board, and the computer's moves were... well, they were certainly moves, I can say that. The game notes do say that the computer's moves may surprise, though I'm not sure if randomly placing pieces on the outskirts of the board is the surprise Peter Sessions had in mind.
...until the computer pulls out this.
Interestingly, when I played a second game on the smallest board (7x7), I played almost the same strategy, and the computer responded in almost identical manner. It seems to not know what to do if you start your pieces in the centre of the board. For a third round, I tried developing my pieces in a different direction, and the computer responded in a slightly more rational manner - although it was still highly incompetent and didn't understand the concept of blocking your opponent's progress. I find this rather disappointing, as there have been some computer opponents that have been relatively decent in recent times, and ones that even learn from their human opponents.
Scores
You'll likely be expecting a low score for Gomoko, and you'd be correct in that expectation.
Time Played: 5 minutes
Difficulty: 1/10 (Brain-dead)
You don't have to think a whole lot when the computer makes nonsensical moves that allow for you to easily win every time.
Gameplay: 1
I can only give it a 1 for gameplay because it's rather broken in its execution. Yes, there is a range of board sizes to choose from, but with an AI so incompetent it hardly matters what you do.
Controls: 5
It's very standard for the type of game. The co-ordinate system is simple and as expected.
Visual: 1
There's nothing necessarily wrong with it visually - it does what you'd expect it to for the type of game it is. I do find the larger board size a little overwhelming and harsh on the eyes with how many zeroes are present on screen at once.
Functionality: 5
I think the AI is broken, but that's a design choice, not an error in the code (or just poor programming.) The game itself runs well, and I didn't run into any problems other than it not being fun.
Accessibility: 3
This rendition of Gomoku is relatively easy to understand for a text-based adaptation.
Fun Factor: 1
The times when the computer isn't being completely broken provide the faintest glimmers of rewarding gameplay, but those are very few and very far between. It isn't fun to always win.
Overall: 16
Gomoko earns a pitiful score of 16. This puts it in league with some less-than-stellar company in the F tier, alongside the likes of Button, Button, Who's Got the Button? and Stars. It's not a game I'd recommend playing, not even out of historical interest. Some bad games are entertaining on account of the hilarity of their terribleness, while others are just bad and hold no value at all. Gomoko is one of the latter.
You may notice of you check the Master List, that I've updated the Tier List. I've changed the score lines and tier thresholds to make it work with a 100-point scale. Very few actual position changes, but the F-tier is a whole lot smaller now. Gomoko still manages to find itself there, even after the changes.
Up Next: A Brief History of Gomoku.
A Personal Note
I know I said that the article on the Cathode-Ray Tube Amusement Device was coming up next. It's since been delayed by a couple of weeks. I want to quickly apologise for that, and simply admit that I heavily underestimated the amount of work that project required. Even a couple of years into this blog, and I'm still learning things - particularly about work flow and ensuring a consistent stream of content. This article is quite heavy on research, and the accompanying video is quite ambitious for me, and in a very different style to what I've been doing. A lot of growing pains.
On a personal level, things have not been well either, and that has impacted my motivation to work on blogs and videos. It becomes increasingly hard to not feel depressed and guilty about performance or not doing the right things when one is surrounded by people that disapprove of everything you do and constantly question your character and faith. I don't typically like to share a whole lot about my personal life, but I'll admit that this year has been one of the most difficult of my entire life. But, be reassured that I am making changes, and to surround myself with people who will have a positive impact on me going forward.
