Until the late 1970s, electronic gaming consisted of playing one of the hundreds of ping-pong console variants on your home television, an LED-based electronic handheld game, or possibly playing a text-based computer game … if you were lucky enough to have had access to a mainframe and/or minicomputer at work or school.

The nascent microcomputer industry began to slowly take off in the late 1970s with the availability of the first appliance computers for the mass market, notably with the release of the “1977 Trinty”, which included the Commodore PET, the Apple II, and the Tandy/Radio Shack TRS-80. Prior to the release of these “take them out of the box and plug them in” appliance computers, most microcomputers were sold in kit form and had to be hand assembled, which usually required an electronics background and mad soldering skills.

Even with the release of these early appliance computers, quality commer- cially-released software was still hard to come by. Many new computing hobbyists learned to program by typing in text-based game programs from BASIC source code listings printed in various computer magazines and books. Mike Mayfield’s 1971 Star Trek space conquest game and Gregory Yob’s 1973 map exploration game Hunt the Wumpus, first published in the People’s Computer Company newsletter, were two popular games that found their way from the mainframe and minicomput- er world of businesses and uni- versities to the memory-con- strained microcomputer world.

Star Raiders, the iconic computer adventure game, was created for the Atari 400/800 home computer line, in fact, it was created at the same time as the development of the computers. It was programmed by Atari hardware designer Doug Neubauer. Neubauer was also on the design team of Atari’s famous POKEY (POtentiometer and KEYboard) chip that controlled the Atari 8-bit computer’s paddle controller potentiometers, the keyboard, and most notable, the audio special effects and music generation. The POKEY chip was also used in the audio circuitry of the Atari 5200 game console and some of Atari’s classic arcade video game cabinets such as Missile Command, Centipede, Star Wars and others. While the Atari 7800 gaming console didn’t have a POKEY chip onboard, it did support game cartridges which could include a POKEY chip along with the game ROM. Only two officially released games, Ballblazer and Commando, supported this feature. Later hacks and homebrew games would also take advantage of this feature as well.

Star Raiders was based, in part, on earlier text-based, turned-based Star Trek computer games. In an October 1986 interview with Lee Pappas in ANALOG Computing magazine,

Neubauer said that “Star Raiders was to be a 3D version of the Star Trek game played on the mainframe computers of that time. The Star Trek game was all text and not played in real time, but it had the idea of ship damage and sector scanners and charts”. And in the 1997 book, Halcyon Days: Interviews with Classic Computer and Video Game Programmers, by James Hague, Neubauer stated “The movie Star Wars had come out right around that time. So I wanted to combine Star Wars with the text-based ‘Star Trek’ game”.

Jamie Lendino, the Editor-in-Chief of ExtremeTech, recently released (June, 2018) a new book on the Atari 2600 titled Adventure: The Atari 2600 At The Dawn Of Console Gaming. It is his second Atari-related book and is the follow up to his earlier (March, 2017) Atari 8-bit computer book,

Breakout: How Atari 8-bit Computers Defined A Generation.

Adventure: The Atari 2600 At The Dawn Of Console Gaming covers the history of games available for the iconic Atari 2600 console. The book also briefly frames the history leading up to the launch of the Atari 2600. With the stage set, the book then walks the reader through the continuing history of the platform, through the chronological releases of important, influential and

technology-advanc- ing games. Lendino doesn’t attempt to cover all the games produced for the platform, which, with the newly released homebrews and recent hacks, now numbers in excess of 500 software titles. It leaves out the vast majority of clones and poorer quality games, unless they are so industry-changingly bad, they can’t be left out. We all know which titles are being refer- enced here.

The book navigates through the Atari 2600’s launch titles, the arcade ports, and the best- selling original titles.

It wades into the threat from third-party game developers such as Activision and Imagic. It mentions competing consoles from manufacturers such as Magnavox, Mattel, Coleco, and even Atari- itself, and the impact of the growing home computer market with its much more capable hardware. It also dives into the role of the Video Game Crash of 1983 (also known as Atari Shock in Japan).

Make no mistake about it, other books and articles cover the history of Atari and the Video Game Crash of 1983 in much more excruciating detail. What this book does well is explain how the Atari 2600 contributed to it, was affected by it, as well as how the 2600 influenced console gaming history in its own right.

Stuart Smith is the legendary game designer and programmer of a number of influential, early to mid 1980s, computer role playing games, including: FRACAS, Ali Baba and the Forty Thieves, The Return Of Heracles, Adventure Construction Set and Rivers of Light (included as a sample game in ACS). His games were known for their classical mythology, descriptive manuals, multiplayer turn-based game play as well as the plethora of descriptive words during combat to describe hits, not unlike the “KAPOW!”s and “ZZZZZWAP!”s of the 1960s Batman TV show.

FRACAS – QUALITY SOFTWARE, 1980

Stuart Smith’s first foray into game programming was FRACAS, an adventure game for the Apple II. It was first released by Smith’s own company then later re-released by Quality Software in 1980. It is stated on the FRACAS manual cover that the game supported “any number of players”, when in actuality, the game supported up to eight players or in-game characters.

FRACAS is a Dungeons and Dragons-type game using a multi- player turn-based game mechanic. The video display used simple but crude colored-pixel graphics and text. There isn’t any real goal to the game other than to explore the unknown, fight enemies, collect wealth, increase your character’s abilities and survive…not unlike real life!

Today, FRACAS can be played using an in-browser Apple II emulator at archive.org (just search for FRACAS and find the Apple II version). The detailed game manual is also worth a read.

ALI BABA AND THE FORTY THIEVES – QUALITY SOFTWARE, 1981

Stuart Smith’s second game, Ali Baba and the Forty Thieves, was a 2D computer role playing game also released by by Quality Software in 1981. It was initially released for the Apple II and Atari 8-bit computers. Smith’s wife suggested the classic Arabian- themed story of Ali Baba.