what were computer games like, if they were very much around at all, for computers from before the days of personal and home computers? I know about spacewar on the PDP-1, and I have heard about a golfing simulator written in the early 70s for a computer, and also there is colossal cave adventure, which I have read of and heard about from guys that were in college at the time, but I don't know much about these games, how they got around from place to place, or how many different games existed for these machines. Moreover, I don't know if any of them are still able to be played. I imagine at least some famous ones have a means of simulating or emulating their original hardware, but I know little about them. Could some knowledgeable anons share their info with me? I want to know more but I don't know what to look up specifically, ie what hardware names to search, what game names to look up, etc. beyond what I've shared above.
PLATO system for mainframe computers had a lot games written for it. University students (and employees) were running multiplayer role playing dungeons in the 1970s on those machines.
Plato was pretty much it
Bsd-games for the college machines https://wiki.linuxquestions.org/wiki/BSD_games
Incredible.
How many people in total around the world do you think were playing these games?
computer access was limited but colleges frequently had non-students showing up to comp labs by the early 80s. That's back when hacker culture was built around people being open and sharing knowledge/access, on account of how hard it was to come by and how much they just wanted to have more computer mates). Maybe it's slightly more than you'd think. I would think it was hard to gain access though. IIRC you had to reserve time slots on the machine, so you'd basically be putting in a reservation for a hour or two and that would be your time to get in, play, and get out.
Thousands? Tens of thousands?
Also had some of the earliest 3D games ever made in Spasim and Airfight (the latter of which is arguably the precursor to all flight sims)
Spasim: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yjOvL_QsTzA
Airfight: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jDkQFYWcSIg
a lot are surprisingly playable
mainframe games i have played
Wander (1974) - first text adventure ever, Windows port of 80s C port from mainframe
PDP-1 - Spacewar!
PDP-7 - Space Travel (compiled modern C port)
PDP-10 TOPS-20 (Panda) - Haunt, 1979 text adventure
PDP-10 ITS - Colossal Cave Adventure, Zork, Maze War, SHRDLU (not a game but awesome)
PDP-11 (GT40) - Moonlander
PDP-11 RSX-11M+ - Zork I
Elektronika 60 (PDP-11 clone) - Tetris
PLATO (Cyber1) - pedit5, orthanc, dnd v5, dnd v8, DND-1, moria, oubliette, avatar, empire, conquest [empire v1], bugs n drugs, spasim, futurewar
TX-0 - tic tac toe, mouse in the maze
Xerox Alto [not mainframe] - mazewar
VAX - DND
try random games from book 101 BASIC Computer Games, they were popular on mainframes
I give you PONG! 1958
https://www.aps.org/publications/apsnews/200810/physicshistory.cfm
Look up The Sumerian Game for the IBM 7090 from 1964.
And The Oregon Trail was originally written in BASIC for the HP 2100 series minicomputer in 1971.
And speaking of Colossal Cave Adventure, there was another text adventure game called Wander from 1974, two years before Colossal Cave, but it never reached the same fame as Colossal Cave.
colossal cave adventure got ported to the trs-80 not long after, and that comp was actually a location for a number of the earliest text adventures. trash 80 had these in spite of its limitations and cheap hardware.
Don't take it for granted that people always had screens to play games on. Games like Colossal Cave and Dungeon were played via TEXT PRINTOUT. As in, you had to wait for an actual sheet of paper to come out of the machine to see what was happening.
Here's pretty much the definitive vIdEo eSsAy on the subject.
No screen = not a video game.
still computer games tho
Yes.
Also qualifies as electronic game.
No reading comprehension = not old enough for the 4chin
Watched the whole thing.
Only thing I could add is that there is a discussion to be had about whether or not a video game must include a win/lose condition that is decided within the game's logic and is displayed in some manner via the video display.
This might not change the outcome of the question, but seems an important distinction to me nonetheless.
Extra note: I think this is important because otherwise you could consider "games" that people could play with a video display that include no electronic logic.
For instance two children could play a guessing game as to what show will be playing on the next channel they switch the television to.
Need to know if that draughts game had any rules and automation to it, or if it was just drawing a checkboard on the screen for two players to take turns.
If it wasn't running any game logic it would be akin to me opening up MS Paint and drawing checkerboard and checkers, and then alternating turns with someone playing the game moving the pieces around by redrawing the positions each turn.
why did you type video essay like a freaktard?
Pretty good, considering the system limitations, and there were many. In the 70s it was very common to have to write your own programs, and a lot of people would write games as well. Most are lost, but quite a few of the more popular ones survived. There are emulators for many old systems. I have emulators for a few models of PDPs, PLATO and a few other things.
There is also the distinction that video signal transmission can be used for communication.
Two people could play all manner of visual games with each other over a video link. Or engage in games like chess by pointing the camera at the board. These are *not* video games, but I think that's why you need to make that rule.
For Adventure, you can try playing it directly in the browser here:
https://rickadams.org/adventure/advent/
I think this is the most common Crowther/Woods version.
There's also other versions here:
https://rickadams.org/adventure/e_downloads.html
and here:
https://ifdb.org/viewgame?id=fft6pu91j85y4acv
If you're running linux you can install the bsdgames package which has both the unix port of adventure and some other classic text-based unix games.