A Brief History of... Gomoku

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 Go and Gomoku. 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.

#042 - Gomoko: Japanese Connect Four (Five)

[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.

A Brief History of... Hangman

Going to try something new here. Typically, when the first video game comes out based on a real-world game or concept, I would include a short history of that game/concept within the same article. Here, I'd like to try something different and separate the history of the source from the digital interpretation.

With the Game of Hangman article having just released, the traditional pen-and-paper game of Hangman is a perfectly suitable choice to begin this little foray into the broader world of games. I'll keep the format quite simple on these: origins of the game, the earliest video game attempts, and the state of the game in current day.

Here's one I prepared earlier.

The History of Hand-Drawn Executions

While Hangman is a now-ubiquitous little game played by likely every child who ever attended school over the past 100-120 years, there's no concrete answer on where exactly the game came from. Ah, the historian's worst nightmare: obscure and uncertain origins.

There is a mythical origin story of the game floating around the internet, the origins of which I'm uncertain of. No credible sources are around to support this story, which dates back to 17th century Europe and real hangings. A prisoner would be set up on the gallows, over a five-legged stand - the legs representing the number of guesses the prisoner had at guessing a word set by their executioner before their life would be snuffed out. If the prisoner guessed the word correctly, they'd be set free. This real life practice was then somehow, somewhere, immortalised in a pen-and-paper children's game. Great fun for all the family!

More realistically, it seems that Hangman's origins can be somewhat traced back to the Victorian-era Great Britain. Variants of the game would be regularly presented in educational publications in the mid-late 19th century. One of the more commonly known early examples of a Hangman-type game comes from an 1894 book entitled The Traditional Games of England, Scotland and Ireland, compiled by Alice Bertha Gomme. The variant in this book forgoes the gallows, and is instead called Birds, Beasts and Fishes. Functionally it's very similar, but focuses on the titular animals, and makes it a little easier (it's a children's game, after all) by starting the words off with the first and last letters being given. This variant being included in a "Traditional Games" type of book suggests that word-guessing games along these lines had already been around for quite some time - my guess would be multiple generations, at least.

It made its way across the Atlantic by the start of the 20th century, as reported in an... interesting article, shall we say, published by The Philadelphia Inquirer in 1902. Just look up "White Cap Party", and you'll see what I mean. From that point onward, the game of Hangman appears to have stabilised into the form everyone knows it as today. Some have taken it upon themselves to devise less violent / implicitly racist (or so they claim) forms of the game in more recent years, but I'll save that discussion for the current-day state of the game later in this article.

Digital Dule Trees

As we already know from my Game of Hangman article, the origins of video game adaptations of Hangman date back well into the 1970s. Game of Hangman isn't the first one, however. There's at least one known game that pre-dates Ken Aupperle's take on the word-guessing game, dating back to 1970. I actually spent some time fiddling around with a PDP-10 emulator, and was able to get the game running! This version, whose author is unknown, plays like conventional Hangman, however the way it draws the gallows is opposite to convention. The picture of the hanging man begins fully drawn, with each incorrect guess (9 total) erasing a part of the picture, until it disappears entirely. Unusual, but the end result is functionally the same. The ASCII drawing of the hangman is also quite detailed - impressive for the time. Expect a full article dedicated this Hangman game in the future.

Aupperle's game in action.

Ken Aupperle's is likely the second Hangman video game. This, as we've already seen, plays by the conventional rules. Aupperle's drawing of the hangman is far less detailed, but he does come up with some very creative words to guess. I won't go into much more detail on this game, as I've already given it a full article, so check that post out to get all the details.

Skipping a few years forward over other early computer takes, it's the first generation of home computers, and second generation of home consoles where Hangman really gets its time in the video game spotlight. Just about every home computer and console had their own version of Hangman, most fairly early on in the generation's lifespan, too. This was still around the time where the home console developers were trying to pitch their devices as more than just entertainment devices - they could also be used for fun education, so they claimed. Consoles like the Atari 2600 and Fairchild Channel F heavily leaned into educational titles early on, of which Hangman was one, both consoles releasing their takes on the game in 1978. On the computer side of things, innovation took place pretty quickly, as developers on the Apple II came out with a series of multilingual Hangman games, beginning with 1978's The Spanish Hangman. Later, there would be German, French, Russian, and even Latin versions, all giving the twist of making the player translate words and even phrases from one language into another.

How... inquisitive.

The development of Hangman video games drops off quite significantly after the late 1970s - early 1980s. I would hazard a guess that this drop off is a fairly natural effect of the increasing proficiency and creativity of game developers, making Hangman not a terribly interesting type of game to make. There were still some rather curious takes on the formula, such as 1994's sci-fi Effacer: Hangman from the 25th Century, released for that most dreaded of consoles: the Philips CD-i. There were some later Flash and handheld console takes on Hangman, but interest in making Hangman video games has almost died out in the 21st century.

If this is what Hangman looks like in the 25th century,
I'm glad I won't be around to see it.

Modern Mock Trials

Hangman in all its forms continue to be played with regularity in the 21st century, yet not without controversy and the nature of our times affecting the way the game is perceived. Our sensitive-to-offense, obsessed-with-political-correctness culture in the West had led to many to rethink how to present Hangman without the perceived sinister undertones present in its original form. On one hand, this does make sense, as having a children's game feature an antiquated form of capital punishment is maybe not the best idea in the world. One could argue this mindset has been present since Gomme's Traditional Games book, with that variant entirely removing the gallows. Modern attempts to "clean up" the game feature a different kind of drawing being made, like a snowman, or other various activities not involving death. In the complete opposite direction, our culture also seems to love death and the grotesque, so attempts have been made to make Hangman even more violent, like in the case of the 2007 flash game Hangman Extreme.

Just in case you though regular Hangman was a bit dull,
Hangman Extreme has you covered.

On the other hand, this obsession with "cleaning up" Hangman's image can go to far into the realms of historical anachronism. One blog I read during my research equated the premise of Hangman with a lynching of all things. My professional opinion on this is that I can see how that association could be made by certain quarters of the United States. Although, I think that the historical evidence would prove without a shadow of a doubt that Hangman is a game definitely not about that hideous and awful practice. First, the game originated in Britain, not America, where the practice was totally foreign. Secondly - if the mythical origins of Hangman are to be believed - the game had a purpose completely dissociated from 19th to early 20th century American culture. People can repurpose things for nefarious purposes all the time - but that doesn't mean that the thing itself is inherently immoral. 

My personal opinion is that it's literally a game about guessing words, for crying out loud. Get over yourself. There's no big conspiracy here.

To utilise Ockham's Razor here, the simplest explanation for the origin of Hangman is likely that it comes from a time where public executions by hanging were a normal part of life, and that always weaves itself into the culture of the day. The image of hanging probably got worked into educational exercises as a familiar visual aid for students. It doesn't mean that it was a bad or good thing, that's what the culture was like at the time Hangman likely originated.

Any Last Words?

Just to quickly follow on from the last paragraph, and to provide some perspective. My job, as a historian, is simply to find out the facts and present them within the context of the culture in which they originated, while correcting any misconceptions that inevitably come from our temporal displacement from said culture. The historian isn't here to be a sort of "morality police," or to tell you, "people in the past were savages, weren't they?" Even our culture and generation has its own vices that future generations will call us savages for. We should never think that we're the generation that's "made it." Else we risk the folly of repeating the errors our forefathers made.

On a more personal note - for what it's worth, Hangman is a game I played regularly through school, and I thought nothing of it. It was just a game, and a fun one when you're in primary (elementary) school. Whether I knew what hanging was a concept at the time, I can't remember. But I don't think it matters. It didn't affect my perception of life, that I know for sure.

If you happen to be a teacher or educator reading this, and the very concept of Hangman still bothers you - change it. You are free to switch it out with something else. I've no right to judge. All I want us to know is the proper historical context.

Next up: Cathode Ray Tube Amusement Device.

#041: Game of Hangman - Educational Electronic Executions (and A Short Update)

Release Date: July 1973

Platform: Mainframe (BASIC type-in)

Genre: Puzzle

Developer(s): Kenneth Aupperle, David H. Ahl

Publisher(s): Digital Equipment Corporation

Out of the gate, this is a somewhat interesting title, as I originally had Game of Hangman slated as a 1970 game. I had mistaken it for another Hangman game on account of the online information being somewhat unclear in distinguishing between the two games. So this article's been hanging in limbo for something like a year, although I've chosen to completely re-write it anyway.

History

I don't condone this action, fyi.

Game of Hangman has a fairly straightforward origin, although there is an oddity to address, which I'll mention two paragraphs down. The game was included in David Ahl's 101 BASIC Computer Games as a game he personally modified from a game written by high school sophomore Kenneth Aupperle. Aupperle was attending Half Hollow Hills High School in Dix Hills, New York at the time, and this is his only known game credit.

Now, here's where I'd normally say that I found no more information on the author. Not today! I was actually able to find a significant amount of information on Kenneth Aupperle - very interesting information, I might add. Kenneth Robert Aupperle (born August 1957) ended up founding a company in 1982, alongside Kenneth Plotkin, called Hauppauge Computer Works. This name immediately rang familiar to me - I recalled many of the YouTubers I watched in my youth referencing their use of Hauppauge TV recording devices to record their game footage. Hauppauge was also heavily involved in computer hardware, satellite products and a software known as WinTV, which allowed for tuning and viewing television on a PC. The company is actually still around today, still selling TV recording devices and TV tuner cards. However, Kenneth Aupperle is not. He died in January 2001, at only 43 years of age.

The future's really upping the efficiency of execution, eh?

The aforementioned oddity of this game comes in when inspecting the game code included in 101 BASIC Games. The book was published originally in 1973, however in the game's crediting of Auppele, it lists him as being part of the "class of '75." Now, I don't know if this is some kind of American school convention that I'm unaware of as an Australian, but on the surface, it strikes as a strange inconsistency. With Aupperle being born in 1957, 1975 would've been his graduation year, so it makes sense to me that the "class of '75" is referring not to the grade he was in at the time of writing Game of Hangman, but rather his future graduation year. American readers may be able to correct my understanding if I'm wrong about that.

The Game

Getting straight into it.

Game of Hangman is very much your typical Hangman game. The game will give you a word, with quite a wide range of length - between 3 and 19 letters long - and you get 10 guesses before you're hanged. This digital version also draws out a stick figure getting hanged on the gallows as you make more and more wrong guesses - another early example of ASCII graphics.

The only "lug" here was me.

David Ahl also encourages adding your own words to the game in his book writeup. You'd add extra words at the bottom of the code where all the other words are stored, but you also would have to adjust the random word selector code at the start of the program. I didn't try this, and was content to stick with the base selection of words.

Almost lost the poor guy, there.

The few rounds I played favoured shorter words, which I often find more challenging to guess than longer words. Less letters in a word means more probability of guessing wrong. Some of the shorter words are more uncommonly used ones, too, like "lug," which I failed to guess. I only ever hear that word used as an insult in films, or directed towards large pets. I did almost fail to guess "kangaroo," much to my shame as an Aussie. We typically call them "roos" out here, because - fun fact - we Aussies love shortening words wherever possible.

I don't think there's much need to say anything more. You know Hangman, but you don't know the scores. Yet.

Scores

Time Played: 25 minutes

Difficulty: 3/10 (Easy)
Hangman is always kind of a funny one for me, as often the shorter words end up being the most difficult to figure out. Less total letters means more probability of guessing wrong. There's some luck to it all, but there's also strategy in knowing what the most common letters in the English alphabet are, and various spelling conventions.

Gameplay: 2/20
The selection of words has a good amount of variety to it, in terms of the types of words and the lengths of the words, which range from between 3 - 19 letters long. But... it's also Hangman, already one of the simplest games out there, and this version of it does only the basics.

Controls: 5/10
It's what you'd expect for a Hangman game - type letters and words, no frills.

Visual: 2/10
It gets a point for the hangman drawing - it's quite well done.

Functionality: 5/5
I didn't run into any issues, so free points here.

Accessibility: 4/5
Hangman is one of those games that's friendly to almost all ages. This done does get pretty college-brained with some of the word choices, but it's still very accessible for a text-based game - graphical bits always help.

Fun Factor: 2/20
Some of the words are silly, which is good for a chuckle. But, again, it's Hangman. I enjoy it on some primitive level, but it's not exactly giving me a deep and intricate gameplay experience.

Overall: 20/70 | 28.57% | E-tier

Game of Hangman earns a score of 20, which, despite being an E-tier score, makes it one of the better games I've played in recent times. How sad. On the bright side, there are some more interesting games coming up, among some certain F-tier placers.

A Short Update

In case you didn't see my update on the direction of the blog, with my return is coming some changes in content, and an increase in frequency of posting. Every time a game like this - based on a real-world game - crops up, I'll be following the game article with a brief history of the real game. These "Brief History" articles will always release on the following Tuesday.

I will also be, for the foreseeable future, alternating between a new game and a revisit. I've been wanting to revisit my early articles for a while, as there's quite a lot I missed in my early days. My breakthrough with PDP-10 emulation means I can play most of the BASIC games I originally skipped over, too, so those will also come up in the revisits of past years.

With that, next week we'll begin the revisits, by starting at the very beginning of video game history, and a game I never actually bothered to cover way back when: the Cathode-Ray Tube Amusement Device. Try saying that 5 times fast.

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