The-Dossier/article/Some-Games-of-Note/Computer Games of Note.md

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Computer Games of Note

  • schema: Computer game

This is a list of computer games of note.

"Computer game" is not well-defined here, but excludes video games and text adventures. As a result of this exclusion, it mainly includes puzzles, turn-based strategy, and simulations, but is not limited to those.

This does not include classics; the games listed here are strictly "of note", and are probably too strange or too obscure to be considered classics.

Rock Star Ate My Hamster

screenshot

It's a music industry management simulation game.

Night Flight, an I.F.R. Simulator

screenshot

  • authors: Tim Gerchmez
  • genre: Flight Simulator
  • available for: Commodore 64
  • date released: 1986
  • download @ catseye.tc
  • play online @ archive.org (C64)

In aviation, IFR (Instrument Flight Rules) refers to piloting an aircraft without looking out the window. This is useful in pitch darkness, in thick fog, or when writing a flight simulator where you don't want to mess with complex graphics code for displaying scenery.

So IFR simulators were "a thing" and there are more than one for the Commodore 64, but this one is for the C64 only and is freeware.

(Yes: this game is explicitly freely redistributable, which is somewhat unusual for 1986.)

Here is an article about a different IFR simulator: IFR (Flight Simulator).

1D Tetris

screenshot: title screenshot: gameplay

  • authors: unknown
  • genre: Puzzle
  • available for: ZX Spectrum
  • date released: 1998
  • play online @ archive.org (ZX Spectrum)

It looks like it was an entry to a compo called "CSSCGC 1998".

You could take it as a joke, but you could also take it as a profound statement in Dimensionalism. This is not so strange. People have serious mathematical questions about 1-dimensional Minesweeper, after all.

Hat tip: @ArcOnInternet at twitter.com.

Where in Hell is Carmen Santiago

screenshot

  • authors: St. John M. Morrison
  • genre: Trivia
  • available for: Apple iiGS
  • date released: 1990
  • play online @ archive.org (Apple II)

Use your knowledge of Dante's Inferno to locate Carmen Santiago.

Hat tip: @BadWrongFun at (the now defunct) witches.town.

Escape!

screenshot

  • authors: Silas Warner
  • genre: Puzzle
  • available for: Apple II
  • date released: 1978
  • entry @ mobygames
  • play online @ archive.org

In the lovely lo-res graphics provided by the Apple II, in this game, you have to find the exit to a maze, displayed in first-person perspective. Sometimes you meet other people in the maze. They wear hats. Sometimes they answer questions and sometimes they will show you maps, which display the entire maze top-down (but not necessarily accurately.) You can ask them if they tell the truth and they might say non-plussing things like "I always tell the truth" or "Sometimes I tell the truth".

It was written in Integer BASIC.

Silas Warner also wrote Maze Game which was, obviously, similar in many respects. For the longest time, I could not identify this game as Escape!, and after finding Maze Game, suspected it was some hack (in the sense of third-party modification) applied to Maze Game. But no, just a very similar game written by the same person.

Galactic Empires

  • authors: Thomas Cleaver
  • published by: Ursine Engineering, Powersoft Inc.
  • genre: Strategy
  • available for: Apple II
  • date released: 1979
  • play online @ archive.org (Apple II)

I thought this was called "Galactic Empire" for a long time; but that is a different game. The pluralization makes a difference.

Text-mode game (with occasional flashing text) where you manage an interplanetary empire. Your planets build spaceships and you send them to other planets to attack them and, if you're lucky, conquer them. In which case, you can set up shop there and build more spaceships and the cycle repeats.

The main display is a grid of numbers indicating your planets, other known planets, and the number of ships and production numbers of each. There is also a star map showing the positions of the planets relative to each other. Closer planets take less time for spaceships to arrive at when attacking.

Having seen it again after all this time, it strikes me that Spaceward Ho! is basically a decked-out version of this game.

And Galaxy looks like it was effectively the same game (probably from the same source code base) with a few aesthetic improvements to the text-based display.

Dungeon Keeper II

  • authors: Sean Cooper et al.
  • genre: Real-time strategy
  • date released: 1999
  • wikipedia: Dungeon Keeper 2

It deserves mention if for no other reason than you get to carve your own dungeon out of the rock as part of the game.