Let's Play (010) - The Sumerian Game [Sum9rx]: How to Starve A Kingdom

Release Date: 1965

Platform: IBM 7090

Genre: Resource Management, Educational

Developer(s): Mabel Addis, William McKay

Publisher(s):

I've been looking forward to covering The Sumerian Game. Ever since I discovered the collection on Steam that recovered and restored several versions of the game (alongside some other lost games I'm excited to cover), I've been itching to play it for OGC. It's especially exciting as it appeared after I did my original article on The Sumerian Game. A lost game, no more. And it brought some friends along, too.

HareSoft's The Sumerian Game collection helpfully places all the various versions of the game on a timeline, allowing us to clearly see which versions were first. According to this timeline, there are two 1965 versions, titled Sum9rx and Suilxr. The former is described as the less complete version, so that's what I've chosen to play first.

The basic gameplay outline remains the same across most forms of The Sumerian Game, and the later evolution into Hamurabi, so I'll go over it here once, and for future versions, I'll only be pointing out the differences.

The king has arrived.

All versions of The Sumerian Game place you in the position of king over a kingdom. In the earlier versions, it's the city-state of Lagash, in Ancient Mesopotamia. In Hamurabi versions, you are king of Babylon. Your job, as king, is to ensure the stable running and flourishing of your domain - by making sure everyone's fed properly.

Sum9rx begins your reign as follows:

• Population = 500
• Grain = 5,000
• Total Farm Land = 2,000 (acres)
• Cultivated Land = 500 (acres)

Here begins the gameplay loop of The Sumerian Game. The player must now decide how to use their resources. The sequence Sum9rx follows is "how much grain to store" ==> "how much grain to plant" ==> "how much grain to feed to the people." This version is extremely particular about how you distribute your grain - every last bushel must be allocated; nothing can be left over, otherwise the game will tell you off for "not meeting current economic conditions." That's a fancy way of saying that you didn't so your sums properly - try again, dummy.

This advisor of mine is one grumpy, pedantic bastard.

My familiarity with David Ahl's Hamurabi led me to think that the formula of grain per person would be same, so I played the first round accordingly.

Turns out, this was quite a ways off the mark. I forgot that Hamurabi started you with only a population of 100, not 500. As a result, 166 people died of starvation. This is going well, isn't it?

Still... could be worse.

At least I had a good amount of grain to work with for next turn. Roughly 7,000 bushels, including stored inventory. The remaining people should be better fed this turn.

I put away enough grain to bring my reserves up to 2,000. I also planted the same amount of grain as last turn, 2,000.

That left ~3,000 bushels leftover to feed the people. This is where I discovered the aforementioned annoyance of having to be pedantically specific with grain totals. I spent several minutes playing around with rough estimates until I got what the game was asking. I settled on 2,000 bushels planted, and leftover was 2,826 bushels for the people. No way are they going hungry this time!

In fact, I was apparently too generous with my food distribution. The steward called it "excessive." Well, I wasn't going to let anyone starve again, was I?!?

I mean... less people around means more food for everyone, right?

It was at this point where a problem occurred in the game. Our harvest for that turn completely failed, and there was quite literally zero new grain.

So I had to work with what I had, which was less than 2,000 grain. Foolishly I left the ~1,000 year-old bushels in storage alone. Probably should've planted those, or allocated more to the people.

At this point, the writing was on the wall. The kingdom was doomed. Even what left I had tried to plant produced nothing again. No more food, nothing to plant. It was over. Time to call the teacher to tell me what I did wrong.

You have doomed the kingdom.

I was told to try again. So that's what I did. Unfortunately, it played out in much the same way as the first time. I did learn some valuable information, though.

• The minimum formula for keeping the people fed is five bushels per person.
• This does not permit population growth, however. For that to start happening, you need to allocate at least six bushels per person.
• However (again), the population growth won't outpace the disaster deaths until you allocate at least seven bushels per person.

Whether it's actually a good idea to grow the population or not is debatable, as that means more hungry mouths to feed. I did only stick to 2,000 bushels to be planted for the previous season, so I considered whether more was required.

I did so, but the yields didn't improve at all. I knew the inevitable famine was coming...

All my planning only delayed the inevitable.

That's if, it is indeed a famine, and not a coding error causing the harvests to drop to zero. They did occur at different times in each playthrough, so maybe not. But having multiple periods of the harvest completely dropping off, regardless of how much grain is planted feels a little suspicious to me.

This is where I chose to end my time playing Sum9rx. Considering the fact that I was unable to beat this (and didn't want to play forever just to test the theory), I will be coming back to this for my first "longplay" video. I plan to do this more regularly going forward as a more "complete" and "professional" playthrough, once I know a game better. This game is the perfect tester for this type of video.

For now, we'll look at my tentative scores. These will be subject to change once I figure out if I can beat the game or not.

Scores

Time Played: 20 minutes (approximate - I played Suilxr in the same session.)

Difficulty: 10* (Impossible)
Of the two rounds I played, I lost both after a certain point where harvests stop. Whether this is part of the game, or poor programming from an early draft resulting in an unwinnable scenario has yet to be determined. So, technically impossible to win as far as I'm aware, but with an asterisk as I'll be playing this again more in-depth at a later time to discern the truth.

Gameplay: 5
Sum9rx's gameplay loop is more advanced than the previous games. It is, however, less realised than Tennis for Two. This is an early draft of The Sumerian Game, after all.

There appears to be some depth in the mechanics, from what I noticed. The volume of grain fed to the population doesn't just determine whether or not the people starve, but also population growth. Yet there's also a balance to be had here. Feed them too little, and there will be no births. Too much food and the game will tell you it was excessive. There's a Goldilocks "just right" sweet spot somewhere in the middle that I didn't find.

What was of more concern was the point in the game where crop harvests completely stopped. This seemed to happen around the same time in both rounds: late year 3 - early year 4. I'm unsure whether this is an intentional decision. I could see it being intentional as a famine scenario, testing your management of stored grain. Two seasons in a row also seems like a death sentence, and could be an forced game ending sequence. At the same time, the game also calls you out for losing. More time playing is required to determine whether this is a design choice, and I'm just missing something, or a programming error. The latter seems most likely to me, based on the early development state of Sum9rx. The former is possible if I'm misunderstanding how to play the game, in particular when the game info speaks of managing "arable" land.

The biggest annoyance I had playing this version was its insistence on every single bushel of grain being allocated somewhere. It forces the player into doing some convoluted sums, which I just used a calculator for since I couldn't be bothered. I know this was meant to be an educational game, but the precision asked for seems excessive. The next version of the game, Suilxr, does fix this, thankfully.

Controls: 5
As a rule for text-based games, I leave the controls at a standard 5, and adjust depending on the intuitiveness and logic of the inputs required. Sum9rx passes the standard test, as all you input is solid integers, but there's nothing else worth noting.

Sound: N/A
The collection has the click-clacking of the typewriter as the text is drawn on screen, but I don't really count that as actual game sound.

Visual: 1
Text-based games all receive a base 1 score. Extra points can be given for exceptional formatting and attempts at ASCII graphics. Sum9rx has neither of these, so a 1 it is.

Story: N/A
One could argue that this game has some form of base, nascent, procedural story driven by the player's actions. It gives you a clear setting and role, and your decisions ultimately affect the outcome of the game. Whether that's sufficient to make a story without a formal plot and characters (yes, there is technically you as the King, and the King's Steward), I'm not so sure.

Functionality: 5*
A tentative score, because I'm yet to find out if the game's bugged or not.

Accessibility: 3
Standard for text-based games. Yes, it's available in an easy-to-get package, but the game itself still requires a lot of reading and arithmetic, which can be bothersome for some.

Fun Factor: 4
It's somewhat more enjoyable than all the E-tier games, but not by much. Also benefits from replayability, as there's always the option to come back, experiment and try to improve your management of Lagash.

Overall: 23/80
A weighted score of 28.75 places Sum9rx at the top of the E tier pile for now. Marginally better than the early proto-games, and I'd sooner return to it (and will) over what's placed under it. This is subject to change, however, based on the results of my Longplay test.

Video:

Up Next: The Sumerian Game, Part 2 [Suilrx]

Let's Play (009) - Spacewar!: One Giant Leap for Video Game Kind

Release Date: 2nd of April, 1962

Platform: PDP-1

Genre: Multidirectional Shooter, Space Combat Simulation

Developer(s): Steve Russell, et al

Publisher(s):

We're now entering the 1960s - and things are starting to get good. The next few games mark some significant leaps both in technology and quality for video games. First up is what's probably the most significant game from this pre-industry era of video games: Spacewar!

As Spacewar! is best experienced with competition, I brought along a friend for this one. It may or may not be the same person I played Tennis for Two with. If it was, I may or may not have been out for revenge. For the sake of convenience, let's call this friend "A" for the time being.

By way of comparison to our last multiplayer game, Tennis for Two, Spacewar! presents quite a significant advance in game design. We're not just hitting a ball back and forth on a two-dimensional plane anymore. No, here we get to freely control spaceships across an entire star field! If you think to yourself "gee, that reminds me a bit of Asteroids," you're not far off.

Now this looks like a video game.

For reference, I'm using Masswerk's browser-based Spacewar! port. This includes several versions of the game, but the primary focus for us in this article is on what's generally considered the "definitive" version of Spacewar!, which is version 3.1 from September, 1962. I'll discuss the other available versions in brief later, as they do have some differences. The foundational game remains the same across all versions, in case you were wondering.

Spacewar! controls in a manner almost identical to the aforementioned Asteroids. The browser port uses the standard WASD/IJKL layout for players 1 and 2 respectively. A/J rotates the ships anti-clockwise, D/L clockwise; S/K engages thrusters, and W/I shoots the missiles/photon torpedoes/whatever you prefer to call them. Additionally, Q/U is used to engage the "hyperspace" feature. This causes the ship to instantly vanish, then reappear at a random place on the field a few seconds later. While great in a pinch, it's highly unstable, leaving the risk of your ship instantly exploding upon exiting hyperspace. Use with caution.

Oh, and the other important thing to mention that sets Spacewar! apart from like games is the small sun set in the middle of the star field. Its strong gravitational pull draws the ships into it from the edges of the screen (and the screen wraps around, too - first time seeing that feature.) One of the most important aspects of mastering Spacewar! is utilising the gravity to slingshot your ship - it's the only real way to build speed or change direction. The Newtonian space physics mean that you can really only suggest to your ship which direction to go in, which usually ends up being towards the sun anyway. Also, if you happen to run into the sun, your ship is not destroyed, but is instead teleported to the edge of the screen. Is this a sun or a wormhole?

I first spent some time with "A" practicing the game, as they hadn't played it before. After about 5-10 minutes, they had a hang on the controls, and we started in earnest. The browser port keeps score at the bottom of the screen, which is great for me - saves time on the video edit.

The rules for scoring are as follows. You blow up your opponent, you get a point. If your opponent blows up from using hyperspace, you get a point. If you blow each other up at the same time, it's a draw, and no points are awarded. If you blow up yourself... well, neither of us suffered such a dishonour, but I assume that your opponent would score a point in that instance. Or you'd lose a point.

I'll say upfront that I think I've redeemed myself from Tennis for Two. We called it after 25 minutes of playing, and I won 15-3. I very much learned the power of the gravity slingshot throughout, as my main goal in each round (I was the "Needle" ship starting in the top right) ended up being to aim my ship to get as close as possible to the sun without clipping it. Wasn't always successful, but it worked enough times. I also managed to get a run where I did three full orbits before slingshotting out!

I was having some fun with the gravity here. 1080 round the sun.

"A" didn't quite get the hang of the slingshot, but was a rather good missile shot. Defensively, they were able to stave off many of my missile barrages with sharp shooting, knocking out my missiles with their own. I also had some very close calls from their offensive barrages. My general preference was also to avoid hyperspace and rather shoot down the attacking missiles.

Some of the rounds went quite long, and through that we discovered that the ships do not have unlimited reserves of fuel or missiles. The game is very generous with these resources, but if you waffle around for long enough, you will run out. If this happens, the game calls a draw and resets for the next round to prevent a soft-lock.

Now, for the other versions. First up, there's the earliest public version of Spacewar!, version 2B from April, 1962. This has what's referred to as "Minskytron Hyperspace." Funky name there, but it's just referring to an animation that occurs when hyperspace is used that's not present in version 3.1. "Minskytron" was the nickname of one of the developers, I recall, and it was his animation. Some of the other graphics are less well-developed, and there's also a manual reset button present.

Hyperspace... more like funkyspace...

4.1f from February 1963 is 3.1, but adds a score graphic that appears after every round.

The first ever internal score counter.

4.2a from May 1963 appears to not be much different from 3.2. It doesn't have the score counter.

4.3, also from May 1963 includes the score graphic, and adds the option for "twin star" mode - a bizarre mode with moving stars, a ship stuck in between two stars and an almost fish-eye lens appearance. The needle ship's graphic is in the centre, and doesn't appear with the ship itself, essentially making it invisible. Very confusing game mode.

Then there's... whatever this abomination is.

Then there's 4.8, which represents the "final" version of Spacewar!. It's essentially the plain 4.1f, but with the score graphic, and no twin star mode. There are a few more versions after this, but none more that are strictly original.

As far as I'm concerned, this is the first "proper" video game, since it's, in my mind, the first that resembles a lot of future games. Remember, the first arcade games, Galaxy Game and Computer Space were ports/heavily inspired by Spacewar!, so this game's fundamentally part of the DNA of video games, which I can't strictly say for anything we've previously covered.

On to the scores.

Scores

Time Played: 30 minutes

Difficulty: 4 (Mild)
A game I would argue is easy to learn, but has enough depth in its mechanics to make it more challenging to master than, say, Tennis for Two.

Gameplay: 8
We've got quite a bit to talk about here, which I'm pleased about. Not only do we have our first shooter, but our first multidirectional shooter, and our first space combat simulation, all rolled into one package. The simulator part comes in with Newtonian physics, making the movement of the ships feel very sluggish in the vacuum of space. However, the gravity of the sun compensates, being a vehicle for some funky tricks to help get your ship moving, both speed-wise and laterally.

The physics also affect the ship's missiles in trajectory and velocity, just to add an extra layer of depth to the gameplay. Not only does one have to wisely lead their missiles into the path of the other ship, but the timing varies based on the current trajectory of your own ship. Add on top of that that missiles can destroy other missiles, allowing one to defend themselves, and it can make for some tense moments, both in close range missile-spamming, and more long range sniping helped by the sun's gravitational pull.

It does keep going, though. You've only got a limited supply of missiles and fuel, and - although quite generous - doesn't mean you can just mindlessly spam your weapons and thrusters. You do have to think about it a bit, but you can still be aggressive with your resources. Probably best to not be aggressive with the hyperspace, though, as that has a tendency to be quite unreliable. It's a neat panic button that's another defensive option, but comes with a massive risk of causing you to immediately lose the round.

Genuinely impressive for 1962. Spacewar! really gives off the feel of a proper, well thought out video game. And it's, in my opinion, the first game to truly do so.

Controls: 7
Controls are a funny thing with Spacewar!. On the surface, the layout of the controls are simple, and easy to pick up, but the feel of controlling your ship is quite sluggish and stiff due to the Newtonian physics - but that is kind of the point. You are meant to use the momentum of the sun's gravity to better position your ship, and that works exceptionally well. As far as the intent of the control design is concerned, it works.

Sound: N/A

Visual: 5
Spacewar! is extremely impressive for 1962 on the graphical end. It combines real-time graphics with smooth animation (it occasionally has a frame rate drop), and impressive effects, with the perpetually animated sun, a generated star field background, afterimages of the ships and missiles, and explosion effects. The leap here is significant, and thus Spacewar! certainly deserves a score a couple of points higher than all other games played so far.

Looking back, I realise I was quite generous with the CRT Amusement Device's visual score. As I definitely think Spacewar! is the more graphically impressive game, this is going to be our first score revision in the reboot era. As I reflect on the knowledge gained from past games, I think that CRTAD falls a bit more in line with Tennis for Two or Pool graphically, so I'm dropping its visual score to 3.

Story: N/A

Functionality: 5
I haven't run into any glitches

Accessibility: 4
I don't quite give Spacewar! perfect marks here, since you need a second person to play properly. Otherwise, it's a highly accessible, simple game that anyone can learn to play quickly and enjoy. No reading, no convoluted controls, just fly and shoot.

Fun Factor: 7
Despite me talking up the gameplay, I do think that the overall speed of the game hinders the enjoyment somewhat. I know that it can be modified, but I base my scores off the developers' default settings. It does come across as a bit sluggish, especially after several rounds of the gameplay loop. Waiting for the ships to get close enough to the sun to start making moves gets a little dull and repetitive after a while. Still, once you get past that bit, things can get more interesting.

Overall: 36/80 (45 | D Tier)
Starting to get some relatively good scores showing up now. Granted, a weighted score of 45 is still a D tier placement, but it's a high D tier at least. And, as I often say, anything E tier or above is at least worth trying. Despite the low placement of Spacewar! in the overall scheme of the tier list, I'd say that this is a game every gamer should play at least one - and do it properly with a mate for the true experience. And expect this to be the highest rated game on the list for a while. I don't think anything'll get near it until we get back around to Mike Mayfield's Star Trek. This, for me, is where video gaming starts in earnest.

Video:

Up Next: The Sumerian Game

Tennis for Two: For Two | Part 2 + Scores

Release Date: 18th of October, 1958

Platform: Donner Model 30

Genre: Sports

Developer(s): William A. Higinbotham

Publisher(s):

I did not expect Tennis for Two to be my first multi-part game. "Surely," I thought, "my first multi-parter will be something like PLATO's The Dungeon/Pedit5." CRPGs will most certainly be that, but those are still a long ways away. This multi-part series is more down to timing and circumstance, rather than the nature of Tennis for Two as a game.

We're here because I was able to bring a friend alongside to play Tennis for Two in its intended form. For the sake of privacy, we'll call this friend "M" for the remainder of this article (and any others they may appear in.) M is an interesting case, as their gaming experience is severely limited, but I think this provides a crucial perspective that I'm not able to provide as a gamer of 25 years. We can see how these games fare when played with someone who is relatively inexperienced with video games, and I think that's valuable in determining how easy it is for new gamers to pick up and understand especially games designed for multiplayer.

As a tangent, I was first made aware of the importance of this new-player perspective when I had a non-gamer friend try out Super Mario Odyssey a couple of years back, and saw them struggle at what I considered a game friendly to new players. I quickly realised through that experience that my knowledge as a lifelong gamer made me a poor judge of what games are good introductory games for someone who's never played a video game before.

So, with that being said, how did M fare with Tennis for Two? You might be surprised to find out that they picked up the game incredibly quickly. I spent the first couple of minutes of our 20-minute session teaching the controls, and it didn't take long for M to get the hang of it and start developing a working strategy.

M also exposed a bit of a flaw in Tennis for Two's game design that I completely missed during my solo session. They discovered that a working strategy was to take a conservative/defensive approach, leaving the dial roughly centred and basically setting and forgetting. M focused instead on making returns, and waited for me to take risks by being the aggressor. At this point, I haven't edited the footage and added a score counter, but I'd hazard a guess that M may very well have beaten me by sticking to this strategy. My own strategy became hitting lobs closer and closer to the baseline, then coming forward to the net to finish the point off with smashes, but M was up to the task of defending against my strategy. It kind of speaks to the accessibility of this game that someone who is not a gamer can so quickly grasp Tennis for Two and start winning through their own skill. I was very impressed with both M and the game itself.

I'd say that we thoroughly enjoyed the session, and I can certainly see why Tennis for Two was so popular when it was displayed - but of course, that story is for another time. 

For now, scores.

Time Played: 30 minutes
This is my overall play-time across both parts. The session with M was ~20 minutes.

Difficulty: 2 (Very Easy)
Judging difficulty looks quite different with competitive multiplayer games. It's more about judging the difficulty of learning and mastering the game, rather than the designed challenge presented in single-player/cooperative multiplayer games. Tennis for Two is a game that sits on the very easy spectrum of challenge - very easy to learn, and also quite easy to quickly get good at, as discovered during my time playing with M.

Gameplay: 6
It's like Pong, but with a few differences that change the strategic makeup of the game. It's far more about positioning and angles, like real Tennis - just on a 2D plane. Even still, it's far more complex mechanically than any other game we've encountered post-reboot. Yet it accomplishes such complexity through a very simple control scheme. You've got to consider not just the angle of your shots, and where you return from, but you also have to make sure your shots stay in, and you've got to consider where your opponent's returns are coming from, and judge whether they're in or out. I'm actually quite impressed, considering this is a 1958 game.

That being said, M did discover some flaws during our playthrough. M realised early on that one could mostly ignore adjusting the angle of their shots, keep the dial roughly centred, and just focus on getting returns in, forcing one's opponent to take risks while remaining quite safe. This is where the lack of a speed-up / shot power mechanic negatively affects the gameplay, as this kind of conservative loop can go on mindlessly forever if you allow it to. Definitely the biggest flaw in Tennis for Two's design, and it really makes me see the necessity of Pong's speed-up mechanic to keep the game moving.

Controls: 7
For an early video game, the controls are excellent. Very reminiscent of simple, early paddle arcade games like Pong and Breakout. M was able to pick the controls up rather quickly.

Sound: N/A
Apparently there was meant to be sound, according to RDZ's blog, but it does not appear during gameplay.

Visual: 2
Almost analogous to Bouncing Ball in visuals, so the same score is appropriate here.

Story: N/A

Functionality: 5
Could potentially be a 4, as there were a couple of moments where it appeared that the ball should've gone out, but we hit it at what must have been the last possible frame, which caused the ball to briefly disappear and reappear. It doesn't materially affect the gameplay, though, so I'm content to leave it at a full 5/5.

Accessibility: 4
M picked up the game extremely quickly, suggesting that this is a very accessible game for anyone to pick up, play, and get good at quickly. A point off for antiquity.

Fun Factor: 6
Tentatively awarding a parallel score to gameplay. I had a lot of fun playing this both solo and with M, and is significantly ahead of every other game on the rebooted tier list. I suspect this may be highly likely to change as the tier list grows, and scoring becomes more defined. But I'll update scores as relevant.

Overall: 30 (weighted to 37.5)
It should come as no surprise - Tennis for Two is the best game I've played so far. A weighted score of 37.5 awards it our first D-tier placement in the reboot era of OGC. It's only a low placement, but remains sufficient to display the chasm between this and previous games.

That being said, I expect the chasm to grow wider with the next game up.

Here's the video playthrough:

Up next: Spacewar!

Let's Play (008) - Tennis for Two: For One | Part 1

Release Date: 18th of October, 1958

Platform: Donner Model 30

Genre: Sports

Developer(s): William A. Higinbotham

Publisher(s):

Ahh... multiplayer games. The bane of my pre-reboot existence. At the first, I did not know how to deal with this class of game. I had no friends to play them with, and therefore couldn't experience them properly. That, and I was hesitant to try, on account of my poor history of multiplayer experiences. My inner control freak didn't get along well with others.

Fortunately, I've matured since then. The observant reader will also note that the former paragraph was written in past tense. This has significance, along with the "Part 1" in the title, which I'll delve into at the end of this particular article.

For now, let's discuss Tennis for Two for a brief moment.

This was thought of as the first video game for a long time, being first rediscovered in the 1970s and 80s during Magnavox's lawsuits against the entire industry. Poor old William Higinbotham was even dragged into court to testify during one case - but that story is for a later time. Of course, we know now that this wasn't the first video game (otherwise I would've started the reboot series with it!), but it retained this crown until the internet age, when we began to discover the video game experiments that preceded it.

Speaking of the internet, the other boon it provides us with, along with the preservation of history, is the ability to recreate these early video games. That's where we are once again, today. We are with our reliable friend, Retrogame Deconstruction Zone, once more - and sadly, for the last time. His Tennis for Two simulator (TeTS) is the last of his works we'll be using on OGC.

Farewell, old friend.

RDZ's simulator is, while not the only version of Tennis for Two floating around the internet, is distinct in that RDZ built in a solo-play mode against a computer opponent. This was not present in the original Tennis for Two, which, while not authentic, is of great service to me for this project.

Tennis for Two is highly reminiscent of Atari's Pong with regards to gameplay. Although, Tennis for Two plays the game of Tennis from a side-on angle, rather than Pong's more top-down, Table Tennis-like appearance. Note here also, that Tennis for Two had zero influence on Pong. Tennis for Two was completely unknown in that day, despite having the appearance of an early 1970s arcade game. As far as I'm concerned, with this and the next game up, Spacewar!, we're entering into "real" video game territory. These games would comfortably fit in with the league of 1970s arcade hits.

Think of it as side-scroller Pong.

We'll continue on with the Pong comparison, as I suppose that's the best way to describe Tennis for Two's gameplay. As, while similar, they have subtle differences that drastically affect how the games play. Tennis for Two has no paddle - instead, it uses a button, allowing you to time your returns, either aggressively up at the net, or more conservatively at the service line. 

As for the angle of your returns, that's managed by a dial - rotate clockwise for lower angle smashes, counter-clockwise for lobs and service line returns. Complicating things further than Pong is the net in the middle of the field - something that Atari's later Volley would utilise. You must make sure your shots pass the net, or you lose the point. The ball can also go out, if it does not bounce within the baseline. 

Attacking from the net.

Another extra layer of strategy above Pong - you can risk leaving the ball if it looks like it will go out. One thing Pong has over Tennis for Two is that the ball does not gradually increase in speed in the latter. Lower angle returns do go back faster, and lobs slower in Tennis for Two, but the absence of speed-up permits some absurdly long rallies, if both players are on top of their games.

But what about the computer? Is it at the top of its game? The short answer is... no. It's a perfectly serviceable AI opponent, but its no Roger Federer. For a bit of fun, I kept score in my playthrough this time. I would've played for about 7 minutes, and the scoreline ended at 3-1 (40-40) my way in a first set. We had several lengthy deuce rallies - the computer has its moments of greatness, just like any pro tennis player. However, it also had some moments I'm sure it'd rather forget, were it a real person. Multiple serves straight into the net, and just flat out choosing to not return some safely in balls. To be fair, I did the same a couple of times. There were also many missed opportunities on my end to get points from balls that would've gone out that I instead returned.

The computer is not the best server.

Even from this brief run against the computer, I can safely say that this is the most fun I've had with a game post-reboot. It's genuinely competitive, even with just the computer. It's great design-wise, in the sense that there are most of the standard positioning strategies in real Tennis are somewhat replicable here. Tennis for Two really feels like a huge leap forward in game design. Given this comes ~4 years after our previous game, Pool, it does make sense.

Now, back to what I hinted at at the beginning of the article. I said that I previously could not play multiplayer games, and therefore wouldn't be adding them to the tier list. This has now changed. I will be giving multiplayer-only games scores now, and adding them to the tier list. However, the one stipulation I have - in my desire to be as authentic as possible - is that I require myself to play these games with another person. Solo, or versus a computer opponent, is not sufficient to provide the full experience. Recently, I have developed new friendships, and these friends are willing to participate in this mad experiment.

Naturally, this comes with its own set of logistical troubles. Some friends are quite a distance away, and others quite busy, so organising times may be sparse. This simply means that games with multiplayer components may not get their scores immediately, and will have to be added at a later date, after I've been able to organise a session with friends to play them. This will be the case for Tennis for Two, as there will be no scores at the end here. I'll wait until I've played it with a friend.

As always, here's my video playthrough:

Scores to come at a later date.

Up next: Tennis for Two - Part 2 (Multiplayer)

Let's Play (007) - Pool: Real-Time Sporting Action!

Release Date: 1954

Platform: MIDSAC

Genre: Sports

Developer(s): William Brown, Ted Lewis

Publisher(s):

Time to enter the sporting realm - for the very first time in video game history! Maybe not with the first game one might expect, either. Pool marks a pretty big shift for early video game development, as this is also the first real-time video game.

Once again, this game is playable thanks to the work of Retrogame Deconstruction Zone. We're still not done with his work yet!

Ol' reliable.

We're not done with the firsts yet! On first look, you might notice that this game uses a joystick! Real-time action, joysticks... we're well and truly in video game territory now.

Pool takes a very barebones approach to the sport - you'll notice that the balls are neither numbered, nor coloured - the game is fully monochrome, but at least the cue ball is white to distinguish it. The standard 15 balls are all present and accounted for as well. My other immediate remark on the visuals is that the cue stick itself looks more like a Q-tip than a cue-stick...

Cue stick or Q-tip??

Rules are of no concern to this game, either. Want to shoot before all the balls have stopped moving? Go nuts. Maybe you want to course-correct the cue ball? Well, you can do that, too. It gives the feel of having a casual round on your backyard Pool table, without a care in the world for rules and regulations. Just go and have fun!

In that spirit, the game also only has one power option for your shots: MAXIMUM POWER. Truly, this is backyard Pool - no care for rules, and the only objective is to hit the cue ball hard enough in the general vicinity of the other balls, and eventually they'll go in. Which honestly isn't that bad here, as accuracy is not the game's strength. I would complain that the joystick's sensitivity is too high to precisely line up your shots... but the position of the cue doesn't even matter! Only the angle matters, which is controlled by a dial. So the joystick's purpose is ultimately moot. That's a shame.

All. The. Damn. Time.

And, true to the real sport, it's a pain in the arse to line up anything precisely. The number of times I'll think I've lined up a shot correctly, only for the ball to bounce around the edges of the hole and depart for the other side of the table is like the sand on the sea shore. Maybe I'm just terrible at judging angles, as I've always had this problem, both with this game and in real life. The last couple of balls also take forever to sink, giving me flashbacks to trying to break the last few bricks in Breakout. It's a bloody nightmare. Most of my playthrough time was spent dealing with the last couple of balls.

Well, that's embarrassing.

Thankfully the game does speed up the further you get in. Because the technology Pool ran on was so antiquated, achieving a stable framerate was a mere pipe dream. According to RDZ's article, the framerate fluctuates between 40 and 8 FPS. On the initial break shot, once all the balls are in motion it feels like you've been hit with a slow spell, as all space and time around you appears to slow down along with the game.

Entering the Matrix.

There's no scoring system present in the game, so you can either keep track of it yourself, or not bother with it. I, however, do have a scoring system, and I will be bothered with it.

Time Played: 15 minutes

Difficulty: 1 (Brain-dead)
There really isn't any challenge, since there is no fail condition.

Gameplay: 2
While I'd say the real-time gameplay here is more compelling than, say, a fixed logic game like OXO, there's not enough for me to increase the score above a 2. This comes from the fact that this game merely simulates Pool - but it doesn't really do anything with it. It's more like a tech demo than a full game. In that spirit, there is also a complete disregard for the rules of the game - you can freely cheat, as you don't have to wait for the cue ball to come to a stop before shooting again.

Controls: 4
While the controls are starting to more resemble something that looks like a video game with the first joystick, it's a bit fiddly. The sensitivity of the joystick in the simulator is quite high (not like it really matters.) Precision is not this game's specialty.

Sound: N/A

Visual: 3
It's more-or-less the best looking game since CRTAD by default, thanks in part to its displaying a dozen objects at once in real time. Even if the frame rate drops to 8 FPS when they're all moving. The afterimages on the balls as they move is probably the nicest touch. The pool cue looks like a Q-tip, which I find amusing.

Story: N/A

Functionality: 5
Unless you want to count the frame rate plummeting when all balls are moving on screen as a functionality issue, there aren't any technical issues here. That's more a limitation of the technology, making it more a feature than a bug.

Accessibility: 4
With a control scheme that looks more video game-y, and from being a easily identifiable sport, I'd say that Pool is a fairly easy game to pick-up-and-play, for 1950s standards.

Fun Factor: 3
Even if the gameplay isn't much to write home about, it's still Pool, and a little, mindless fun can be had with it. Often I find that trying to be precise in such a game is pointless, and going fast and frantic is a much more enjoyable route to take. It's like playing an IRL round of Pool by yourself and just goofing off, especially considering the lack of care for rules.

Overall: 21/80 (26.25 | E Tier)
21 is the same score Bouncing Ball got. Funny that the first two real-time video games end up that way. I think the "tech demo" feel of the game is probably the biggest downside, when it comes to actual game design. Of course, the guys who made this didn't know what game design was at the time, so some grace can be extended there. We're still in the territory of technical experiments and testing of technological limits in the 1950s - games aren't being made purely for entertainment yet.

Here's the video playthrough, for those interested. I added some background music this time, which I thinks makes things more engaging. Let me know what you think!

The next game up, however, was made for entertainment purposes.

Up next: Tennis for Two

Let's Play (006) - OXO: The Impossible Game

Release Date: 1952

Platform: EDSAC

Genre: Board Game, Strategy

Developer(s): A. S. "Sandy" Douglas

Publisher(s):

Special milestone today - this is my 100th post! Took a bit longer to raise the bat than I thought - been at this almost three-and-a-half years. But it's pretty special to hit my first century.

And now, back to your regularly scheduled article.

OXO holds a series of unusual firsts in video games. One, it's the first "repeat" game. A Tic-Tac-Toe game has been done before in Bertie the Brain, marking OXO as the first time a game concept has been revisited. Of course, Josef Kates and A. S. Douglas likely knew nothing of each other (that's what I'm assuming, having done no research for this game yet), so this is only mere coincidence.

Before I forget - here's a link to the EDSAC simulator, where you can play OXO.

However, OXO also holds a first that I'd consider somewhat undesirable - it's the first impossible game. You can't beat the computer here - it's programmed to play a perfect game of Tic-Tac-Toe. Best you can manage is a draw, unfortunately. In some way, it's actually a bit disappointing that this is the first unwinnable game. No extravagant programming blunder or monstrously poor piece of game design rendering the game broken and unbeatable. Nope, it's just... you can't win, and that's the way it was always meant to be. How boring. I've got nothing to riff on with that.

I guess you could call this the "title screen."

I guess we'll just have to talk about managing a draw, then. But first, let's talk controls, because OXO is also quite unique here. You control the game via a rotary phone dial. Some of you younger readers might have no idea what a rotary phone is, so I'll provide a picture for reference.

This was state-of-the-art tech in the 1950s.

OXO is well thought out in that you're provided with a visual key of which number represents each position on the game board. The good thing about playing this on a simulator is that you don't have to actually rotate the dial to input a move - a simple click of the mouse will do. Yet another first you will discover while playing OXO is that it has sound! I'm assuming that the sound played when you make a move replicates the sound of rotating the phone dial. That would not make the sound particular to OXO, so on a technical level, it's not built-in sound generated by the game - we'll have to wait a few more years for that yet.

Now, back to the drawing board. It's significantly easier to achieve this going first. Tic-Tac-Toe is technically a game of strategy, so at least a few brain cells are required to know what spots to put your crosses in. 

This was peak strategy gaming in the 1950s...

The first bit of good strategy is going first - if you know how to play, you cannot lose. Starting with the corners is typically the way to go. When I've done so, the computer most often responds by placing its first nought in the centre square. It's a forgone conclusion at that point, with the round devolving into defensive moves until the board is filled.

Even from a sub-optimal position, a draw is possible.

Going second, it's a little trickier to draw, as the computer is now in the advantaged position. Again, sticking to the corners is advisable - but copying the computer and going for a centre move first is probably best practice. A sure fire way to lose is going for any of the cardinal direction squares early. I did try that for the sake of experimentation, but it resulted in a swift defeat- recorded to satisfy your schadenfreude, of course.

This was not peak strategic gameplay.

This was a quick one - we're on to the scores already!

Scores

Time Played: 5 mins

Difficulty: 10* (Impossible)
Only gets a 10 by technicality. Technically, the game is impossible to beat, but it was also designed that way. So it's not a true 10 in my mind, and won't be considered if I do any "hardest game" lists in the future.

Gameplay: 1
Tic-Tac-Toe is as rudimentary a form of gameplay as you can get. Less technical than even something like Nim, and I gave that a 2. Therefore, the only appropriate score here is a 1.

Controls: 6
By way of comparison to previous games, OXO is incredibly easy to control. Sure, the rotary phone dial is strange by today's standards, but it's actually quite intuitive for a game like Tic-Tac-Toe, when used in combination with the reference key provided by the game.

Sound: 3
Gadzooks! There's sound! First time for everything, I suppose. Again, I'm not sure if the simulator is replicating the sound of the rotary phone controls, or if that's the actual noise the computer makes, but I do at least appreciate it as a form of auditory feedback from the game. Not the most pleasant noise, but it's better than not having sound at all, in my opinion.

Visual: 2
Graphically, it's quite similar to Draughts - only a lot more zoomed in. That's not enough to give it an extra point in my mind, seeing as the actual game graphics themselves are nigh-on identical to Draughts.

Story: N/A

Functionality: 5
Nothing's ever gone wrong over the multiple sessions I've played this game, so free points here. Additionally, it's very snappy and responsive, again in comparison with Draughts.

Accessibility: 4
Can't really go wrong with such a simple game. Taking off one point for the antiquity of the technology being a slight barrier.

Fun Factor: 1
About as much fun as an unwinnable game of Tic-Tac-Toe could possibly be. I can't give it a zero because it's actually a functional, playable game. And you can at least try to beat the computer, futile as it may be.

Overall: 22/90 (24.44% | E-tier)
A weighted score of 24.44 puts OXO just below Bouncing Ball on the tier list. Bouncing Ball is certainly the superior game in terms of pure gameplay and replay value - but only marginally. The shallowness and simplicity of these games are going to keep them in the lower tiers for some time to come. Anything E-tier or above is at least worth trying once in my scoring system, so it's worth your while if you want to experience the earliest stages of video game history. Though I'm sure there's one strange soul out there whose all-time favourite video game is, in fact, OXO. If that's you, please leave a comment.

As always, here's the video playthrough.

Up next: MIDSAC Pool

Let's Play (005) - Bouncing Ball: The First Puzzle Game!

Release Date: 1952

Platform: Whirlwind 1

Genre: Puzzle, Simulation

Developer(s): Charles Adams, Oliver Aberth

Publisher(s):

PSA: The structure of the blog has changed. Please read the most recent update for details.

I first became aware of the Bouncing Ball simulation when I first watched Stuart Brown's "The First Video Game." However, what he covered wasn't a game - it was just a physics simulation. What I didn't know until recently was that that simulation was converted into a game. That revelation came courtesy of Ethan Johnson's response blog to Stuart's video, which goes into great detail regarding the existence of the Bouncing Ball game variant.

That being said, the Bouncing Ball game was kind of staring me in the face this whole time. Because, there's a playable version out there that comes from a familiar place.

RetroGame Deconstruction Zone, which has the Cathode-Ray Tube Amusement Device simulator, also has a Bouncing Ball simulator. I knew it was there, but brushed it off under the assumption that it wasn't a game. Naturally, Ethan's blog caused me to revise my assumption, and it turns out that RDZ's Bouncing Ball is, in fact, the game version of the program!

Here we are again, old friend.

Bouncing Ball has probably the most simple premise of any game I've played across this reboot series: get the ball in the hole. You do this by adjusting the speed, bounce and gravity parameters, until the desired result is achieved. Basically, this is a physics puzzle - and the first of its kind at that. Physics-based puzzlers are a dime-a-dozen now, the most famous of all likely being Portal. Yet, here we are in 1952, seeing the very first one!

I'm so very glad that I don't have to write a doctoral dissertation to describe how to play Bouncing Ball as I did with Draughts. Adjusting the physics parameters couldn't be simpler - each of the three parameters can be adjusted with a dial. On the simulator, you click the right of the dial (clockwise) to increase the strength of the parameters, and left (anti-clockwise) to do the opposite. Clicking allows for a good level of precision for a game based on trial-and-error like this. There is also a little silver button that toggles a visual indicator for where the hole is.

Going for a hole in one.

As I say in my video, the gameplay here very much reminds me of Jim Storer's Lunar Lander. You want to make small adjustments to one parameter at a time, judging if the ball over or undershoots the hole. Keep making small adjustments until you get the ball in the hole. Very much trial and error, like making miniscule adjustments to fuel consumption each second in Lunar Lander. Of course, I think Lunar Lander is a more technical game, in the sense that there are more points of error, and more precision required in figuring out fuel consumption.

For Bouncing Ball, it didn't take me very long to get success. From eyeballing the time on my video, it took me about 2-and-a-half minutes to get the ball in the hole. That was easy. Too easy. The solution was incredibly simple, which took me by surprise. From what I read, several college students were failed in the course this game was used in back in 1951/2. Maybe we're just smarter than they were back then? Ha.

Well, that was easy.

I wasn't overly satisfied with beating the game so quickly. It seemed likely that there could be multiple solutions, so I had another go to see if I could find another solution. Along the way, I had some funny interactions with the simulator. I had one successful solution, only for it to not work on the next cycle. 

How does this not count?

The ball went in - I didn't touch anything - and then the next time around, it didn't go in. How terribly rude of the game. Now, I don't know if this was a quirk of the simulator, or if this sort of thing could happen in the original game. I haven't got my Tardis working yet, so I can't test that, unfortunately.

Needless to say, I was able to quickly rectify that situation after recovering from the shock of the game changing its mind. All of this madness took place over the course of a mere seven minutes, from when I began first playing. 

A second victory.

It's like scoring a first date, thinking "gee, that went well," organising the second one, only to be stood up last minute courtesy of a text saying "I've decided I'm not ready for a relationship yet." Only for her to change her mind, and you end up scoring the second date the day after. Did I just compare video games to women? Yes. Yes I did.

Anyway, here's the scores. Best get on with it before I say something offensive.

Scores

Time Played: 7 minutes

Difficulty: 2 (Very Easy)
A rather simple game of trial and error. Success is inevitable with these sorts of games - it just depends on how long. I was successful in about 5 minutes.

Gameplay: 2
Bouncing Ball is pure trial-and-error gameplay. While that does it make it more interesting than, say, a game of Tic-Tac-Toe, it's not by much. Bouncing Ball probably gets a little bit of a boost in that there's multiple ways to win, which can allow for creative solutions.

Controls: 6
What I played on the simulator was quite easy and intuitive to control, and it made sense for the type of game this is. The adjustable dials compliment the real-time gameplay, not disturbing the flow of the game.

Sound: N/A

Visual: 2
While it's only a black-and-white game with extremely minimal graphics, they are real-time graphics, which is a significant jump from the static graphics of Draughts, and thus boosts the score up from a 1 to a 2.

Story: N/A

Functionality: 5
I mean, I question the hitbox of the hole... but that could be a simulator thing. In terms of the game actually working properly, I have no complaints.

Accessibility: 4
This is a simple game to comprehend and pick up and play.=

Fun Factor: 2
I did have more fun with this than with Draughts. Again, the fact that there are multiple solutions available gives Bouncing Ball an edge in replayability for me. Also a bonus that it doesn't take several years to complete a game.

Overall: 21/80 (Weighted 26.25)
A much better game than Draughts, that's for sure. That's not to say it's a good game, but it's at least recommendable to sample, which I cannot say about the former game. It's the first puzzle game, and a quick little one at that.

As always, here's the video if you'd like to see the game in action:

Next up: OXO