atrium

Was there such a thing? I've been downloading lots of old school MS-DOS games, but obviously they don't go any older than 1981 since that's the year the operating system debuted.

Ok, I know they existed to an extent and sporadically, I guess my question more is can I still run them on modern computers? And is there anything worth checking out that old?

TheKing

Most of the early games are what you'd expect: Chess and ports of arcade games.

There are some early games out there, Spacewar! from 1962 for instance:

Spacewar!

But what you have to remember is that before DOS, there really wasn't a commercial software industry. It was programmers writing their own stuff, sharing code, and you had to have some kind of extensive knowledge to actually own and use a computer.

This all limited the popularity of games of that era, or lead to everything being ported. Almost all the cult classics from that time were ported to arcade and DOS, except text based ones. Text based ones were ported to DOS as well. Then you have the Apple II, which, along with DOS brought along the commercial computer game era.

If you're looking for actual old code, you might find it if you look really hard, but most likely you'd be looking for DOS ports of these games, which would all have 81 or later copyrights.

atrium

Ok, that actually makes a lot of sense. I imagine most if not all games that predate it either have tons of ports due to their popularity, or are so simplistic that they aren't worth seeking out. The oldest I've found worth playing is the first couple of Ultima games, and I'm mainly only playing the oldest ones to get a perspective of how the series progressed.

Jay G.

The Apple II predates the IBM PC and MS-DOS by a few years, first released in 1977. Included with it was a cassette containing a version of Breakout written in BASIC by Steve Wozniak:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Breakou...game)#Apple_II

1980 was a big year for games on the Apple II, with both Zork and one of the first adventure games with graphics (if not the first adventure game with graphics) Mystery House by Sierra Online:
http://apple2history.org/appendix/ahb/ahb2/
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mystery_House

Prior to DOS, Microsoft ported Adventure to the TRS-80 in 1979. Here's a great article going into detail on it:
http://www.filfre.net/2011/07/microsoft-adventure/


However, TheKing is right that prior to 1980, the commercial game industry basically didn't exist. MobyGames doesn't list any game prior to 1980:
http://www.mobygames.com/browse/games

RichC2

They go back to 72 -- http://www.mobygames.com/browse/games/full,3/

Jay G.

doh! "view complete list", of course. Thanks for the correction.

It looks like the earliest Apple II games date back to 1978, while 1977 is the earliest year listed for the Commodore PET, another early PC. From what I can tell, the earlier games listed were for consoles or arcade machines.

atrium

Ok it's starting to become clearer now, I can see that most of the '1981' games I've played were ones that came out on the Apple II first, and were later ported to the DOS. It seems the DOS was very much in it's infancy stage that year, with only 4 games released, while the Apple II was going strong.

For some reason I thought computer gaming dated a lot further back than 1977. Guess not.

Jay G.

It depends on what you consider a "computer game." As TheKing noted, there were a few games written on mainframes. The earliest "computer game" of this type dates back to 1951:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/History...#Early_history

However, mainframe games were few and far between, due to the limited access. It wasn't until the invention of the microprocessor lead to microcomputers in the mid 70s that hobbyists had access to their own "personal" computers.

From:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/PC_game#History
I found this scan of The Best of Creative Computing Volume 1, published in 1976, which lists a number of computer games, mostly in BASIC:
http://www.atariarchives.org/bcc1/

The magazine itself dates back to 1974, and at least one of the BASIC games, in the article "A Universal Word Game in BASIC," has a date of 1974 attached to it:
http://www.atariarchives.org/bcc1/showpage.php?page=240

Jay G.

Talking about mainframe games reminded me of a story I read a while back about a programmer who used the quirks of the machines he was using to streamline his programming. Without remembering the specifics, I managed to find it again:
http://catb.org/jargon/html/story-of-mel.html

Note that the machine the Blackjack game was rewritten on, the RPC 4000, was released around 1960, according to this ad:
http://www.ebay.com.au/itm/1960-RPC-...-/310401013963

The machine the game was original programmed on, the LGP-30, was first released in 1956, so the game was likely first written between 1956 and 1960.


Also, I discovered that The Oregon Trail dates back to 1971, although it started as a text-only game written in BASIC. This article has links to 1975 and 1978 versions of the game (the 1972 version is most likely lost):
http://www.filfre.net/2011/04/on-the...-trail-part-4/

Also, Hunt the Wumpus was originally written in 1972.

K&AJones

I can only go back as far as the Commodore 64 & 128 followed by the Commodore Amiga series

atrium

Pretty fascinating stuff. I've come to the conclusion that most games prior to 1981 aren't really worth revisiting the more research I do, as most of them were arcade games focused on high scores and stuff, rather than story, and didn't have a lot in relation to newer game iterations.

1981 with Castle Wolfenstein and Ultima is about as far back as I think I'll go