First Graphics Game Written On/For a 16-Bit Home PC

The GPI writes with a story about Scott's Space Wars, a piece of gaming history: "This game was written by the famous game author Scott Adams, who founded Adventure International, the first multimillion dollar PC game company. It was founded over 30 years ago and developed for early 8-bit home PCs, i.e. TRS-80, Apple II, Atari. Scott's Space Wars is the first graphics game that was ever written at home, for a 16-bit home computer. The original source code is available as photos of the original 1975 hand-written manuscript. The last purchaser of the manuscript paid $197,500 in 2005. A brief video shows how the game was played."

Re:Nice

[hedwards]

That is patently untrue. I know that people like to say that sort of thing, but whether you care to admit it or not, regulated industry is a lot easier to get into than a system where the big guys call all of the shots.

Additionally it depends what sort of business you're talking about, a great deal of businesses are not like you're describing.

But then again, why question what the elites of industry want, I mean it's not like they're acting solely for themselves.

you call those graphics?

[ZosX]

I mean at least space wars at least had real graphics and not a bunch of ASCII characters. I guess this qualifies for some minor footnote in history, somewhere, somehow, but I'm really at a loss as to where. While we are at it do we know who A) wrote the first 8-bit PC game? B) Wrote the first 32-bit PC game? and C) Wrote the first 64-bit PC game? Ok...now how about the first C64 game? What about the first PC game? What about the first Apple II game? I could probably think of a million "firsts."

Any takers? :P

old != classic

[Junior J. Junior III]

Just because a game is old, doesn't mean it's a classic. A classic is a game which stands as a pinnacle representative of its type, an archetypal game that defined or created a genre, or a game so supremely crafted and so well-loved, that its appeal transcends its era.

Graphics are over rated.

[B1oodAnge1]

xyzzy!!!

Re:Nice

[DreamsAreOkToo]

Additionally it depends what sort of business you're talking about, a great deal of businesses are not like you're describing.

Basically, anything where you're in competition with a corporation. Sure, starting up a restaurant or hair salon isn't any different than it was 60 years ago. But try starting up a software firm? A movie studio? How about you try starting up a broadband internet business?

Anywhere there's any amount of money, expect to be blown out of the water. A frivolous lawsuit or a herd of lobbyists doesn't cost a corporation anything, but it costs YOU your business, and your car, and your home...

And this is meaningful, why?

[Count_Froggy]

So what if this was written on a 16-bit hardware computer. I know of graphic games written in the Apple ][ Sweet-16 interpreter (a 16-bit machine in software installed on all Apple ][ machines) long before this. And, this machine was a one-of-a-kind creation that had no meaningful volume, even by the standards of the time. Lastly, it isn't graphical if it used TEXT CHARACTERS to represent the game elements. There were other games written on PDP-11 and LSI-11 machines (also true 16-bit hardware) that predate this.

Re:Nice

[phantomfive]

. But try starting up a software firm?

Wait, why do you think this is so hard? I've worked at two different software companies that started within the last seven years. One has been reasonably successful, and the other is struggling along. Many many software companies start every year. A lot of them fail for various reasons, many are successful. Some phenomenally so. Google was nothing more than a startup, literally in a garage, in 1998. Now, of course, it is a multi-billion dollar company. It happens over and over again, and there is nothing to stop you from doing it as well.

A frivolous lawsuit or a herd of lobbyists doesn't cost a corporation anything, but it costs YOU your business, and your car, and your home...

A corporation is easy to establish. Set it up and you too can have your car and your home protected from lawsuits that don't cost anything. There is nothing to keep you from starting your own business but your own fear and a good idea.

Should add "on record" to that claim

[SilverJets]

Its the first graphics game written on/for a 16-bit home pc on record. There's always the possibility that someone wrote one before Scott Adams and didn't "publish" their work.

Re:Nice

[YenTheFirst]

I have no clue what a rearden-fill beanbag chair is; mainly what rearden might be.

'rearden', I suspect, would be a reference [wikipedia.org] to a character in the 1957 novel 'Atlas Shrugged'

The novel is known for it's viewpoint on capitalism, and unregulated markets, as the ideal. I expect the reference works into that.

Personally, it's one of the few books I've started reading but didn't finish. The side characters/'bad guys' at the beginning of the book were just way too fake. If I'm going to read a novel that thick, and give its philosophy and arguments real weight, I don't want to wade through strawmen to do it.

Re:What I learned from my TRS-80 MC-10

[thatskinnyguy]

gigs of ram and raid 0. I still need a better computer.

The mnemonic I learned was : RAID 0 - The 0 stands for the amount of bits of data that are safe in the event of a single hard drive failure.

RAID 5 may serve you better my friend.

Re:So

[Jane Q. Public]

And if it were really a graphics game, it would have made absolutely no difference: he could have made it look any way he wanted.

This is the third time in this topic I am trying to make this point: THIS IS NOT A "GRAPHICS" GAME! It is a text-mode game, set in the 16x32 low-resolution text mode. There is really a huge difference between text and graphics modes!

I am all for giving credit where it is due, but this game gets no credit for being "graphics". It was not. The methodology was completely different, and actual graphics games were much more difficult to do.