[game_preservation] National Game Registry Blog

[Devin Monnens]

Interesting. Thank you for clearing a lot of that up.

Well, the quote from Baer is either from In The Beginning or Ultimate
History of Games. I'm pretty sure it's from Kent's book as I can't find it
in Baer's. The gist of it was that Pong had not been original invention
while Bushnell building Computer Space in his home was some real invention
work. Yeah, it must have been from Kent's book. I'll be able to dig it up
tomorrow.

Regarding the PDP-8's, it's true that it would have been possible for the
students to build the games elsewhere (Dungeons and Dreamers has a few
stories about biking to the college to play with the computer). However,
they're still high school students working on the games. But based on this
article, Lexington HS at least had a PDP-8, which means there had to have
been more. I'm going to assume this article is accurate. This was Fall 1969:

http://technologizer.com/2009/07/19/lunar-lander/

<http://technologizer.com/2009/07/19/lunar-lander/>Interesting enough, there
is one final mystery game, FOCAL8-169, Artillery. This looks like a
precursor to the more famous two-player Artillery. The designer says it is
based on the "GE Basic Artillery Game", which I assume means the original
game was made in BASIC and then ported to FOCAL. I was trying to track down
where it came from. It's possible the other game is in the DEC catalog of
BASIC software, but I don't think so. Publication date is no later than Feb
1971 based on when it appeared in DECUS. This isn't the two-player
Artillery, but a single-player version where the player is trying to hit a
target:

"In most computer games the situation is the player versus the
computer. However, in this game, the computer is just
measuring the skill of the player -- by testing his abi I ity with
an artillery piece in coming within 100 yards of a target,
whose distance was randomly selected."

[12 Bit 1972 DECUS Catalog Update]

100 yards? Those must be pretty high-yield explosives!

BTW, the DEC numbers for the other games I mentioned are FOCAL8-107 (NIM),
FOCAL8-81 (Lunar Lander), FOCAL8-173 (Apollo II).

On Wed, Dec 16, 2009 at 11:09 PM, Martin Goldberg <wgungfu at gmail.com> wrote:


> On Wed, Dec 16, 2009 at 11:12 PM, Devin Monnens <dmonnens at gmail.com>

> wrote:

> >>

> > RE: Dabney - Baer and Steve Kent both seem to talk about Bushnell

> building

> > Computer Space. So Baer was just going off of Bushnell's story in Kent's

> > book?

>

> Also, don't forget that Ted was (and still is) a mystery to many,

> usually just mentioned as an aside to the founding of Atari and even

> then often purposely left out by Nolan.  Another writer, as well as my

> self, were the first ones to actually track him down and interview

> him.  Mine was on and off for a year and a half (he moved during the

> process).  The other author's work (Leonard Herman of Phoenix fame)

> actually appeared in the 200th issue of Edge magazine as a feature

> article.  In my case, it was done for the set of books and

> crossreferenced with other Atari and Ampex people of the time.

>

>

> Marty

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-- 
Devin Monnens
www.deserthat.com

The sleep of Reason produces monsters.
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