I was 13 in 1980. Back then, at home, our family had an Apple II Plus, but not a lot of software – especially we had very few games to play.

But pretty much every computer had BASIC as a default programming language. This allowed you to write your own programs. From a simple “Hello” to anything you could dream up.

And we wanted to play games – wait – we wanted to make games!

In the early days of home computing, if you had a home computer, there’s a good chance you knew about the book BASIC Computer Games by David H. Ahl. It was unlike anything else at the time.

The cover of BASIC Computer Games by David H. Ahl

It wasn’t a book you read and put back on the shelf. The pages were filled with listings for simple but surprisingly engaging games, and the only way to experience them was to sit down at your computer, type in the listing and bring them to life one keystroke at a time. For a lot of people, like me, it was their first real introduction to detailed computer code. If they didn’t realize it at the time it quietly taught you how code worked while you were just trying to get a game to run.

You didn’t just read code. You had to transcribe it slowly, carefully, and almost always, imperfectly. The first time you ran it, it didn’t work – gosh, it never worked the first time!

The “Chomp” page from BASIC Computer Games by David H. Ahl

You’d get a syntax error. The cursor would just come back, like the machine was politely telling you that you missed something obvious. So you went hunting line by line, character by character – was it a missing quote? A mistyped variable? A number out of place?

Somewhere between retyping line 120 for the third time and realizing that “O” and “0” were not the same thing! You stopped just copying code… you started understanding it!

• Why did line 50 send you back to line 10?
• What did GOTO really do?
• Why did changing a single number make the game easier… or impossible?

You began to experiment. Carefully at first. Then with more confidence.
Change the fuel amount from what was listed in the printout.
Increase the speed variable. Rewrite a message to include a friend’s name just to see if you could.
That’s when it stopped being their game and started becoming yours.

The “Super Star Trek” page from BASIC Computer Games by David H. Ahl

I loved the Apple II because it didn’t try to hide anything from you. It didn’t abstract the experience. It handed you the raw material and said, “Figure it out.”

And with of BASIC Computer Games by David H. Ahl you had a map. Not a clear one, but enough to get lost in.
No internet to check answers. No forums. No videos explaining what you did wrong. Just you, the machine, and the quiet realization that if it didn’t work, it was probably your fault. And if you stuck with it long enough, you could fix it.

Maybe that was the real lesson. Not BASIC the language. BASIC the mindset. Patience, precision, and curiosity – and a kind of stubbornness.

The moment one of those programs finally worked: No errors! The game responded! The game played! What a feeling.

It wasn’t flashy. By today’s standards, it was barely anything at all. But I knew every line that made it happen. I had earned it. That mattered to me.

Looking back now, it’s easy to forget how direct that experience was. Today, everything is layered. Tools on top of tools. Frameworks, APIs, abstractions. It’s powerful, no question. But back then, there was nowhere to hide. If something broke, you were close enough to the problem to understand why.

That is why, every once in a while, I go over to my Apple II sitting there, just waiting. And that of BASIC Computer Games book, worn at the edges, pages falling out, full of someone else’s ideas that became my own the moment I typed them in. And I some of them in again.

William W. Winter is the creator of Apple II Adventure Studio, where you can try your hand at making text adventures with a modern web-based design tool. You can try it out and make your own text adventures at: https://textadventurestudio.com
Old School Gamer Magazine readers can sign up for a free account.

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If you’re looking for spooky games that are a bit off the beaten path, retro gaming has you covered with some eerie hidden gems. While these games might not be household names, they each offer a unique spin on horror perfect for dark and stormy nights. Here are five obscure, creepy games from the past to add to your spooky lineup:

1. Ghoul School (NES, 1992)

In Ghoul School, you play as Spike O’Hara, a high school senior who stumbles upon a possessed glowing skull that turns his school’s inhabitants into a nightmare of ghouls, demons, and monsters. Your mission is to rescue the head cheerleader while navigating hallways full of evil, ranging from skeletons to slimy eyeballs to appendage-tossing zombies. The game’s minimalist backgrounds and unusual enemy designs create a haunting atmosphere, with each classroom becoming a mini-labyrinth of scares and surprises. Ghoul School may be rough around the edges (and yes, at times a bit repetitive), but it captures that creepy school-at-night vibe with a mix of kitschy humor and horror.

2. Uninvited (Apple IIGS, 1986)

Uninvited is a point-and-click adventure game that puts players in a deserted mansion, where they must uncover its sinister secrets. Players explore eerie rooms filled with spectral enemies, haunting puzzles, and cryptic messages that reveal the house’s dark history. The game’s haunting pixel art, limited colors, and atmospheric sound effects heighten the tension as you face perils like cursed dolls and malevolent spirits. While later ports toned down the graphic content, Uninvited retains its unnerving aura, making it a forgotten treasure for fans of atmospheric horror.

3. Frankenstein’s Monster (Atari 2600, 1983)

Frankenstein’s Monster for the Atari 2600 is a hidden gem of classic horror that adds a surprising dose of suspense and strategy to the mix. In this game, you play as a nameless hero whose goal is to prevent the infamous monster from coming to life. Players must collect bricks from the three-leveled dungeon and bring them to the top level of the screen in order to build a wall around the creature’s body. But with every second that passes, Frankenstein’s monster inches closer to waking up, raising the stakes and keeping players on edge.

What sets Frankenstein’s Monster apart is its unique gameplay loop: as you collect bricks, you’ll dodge bats, spiders, and eerie hazards that lurk in the dungeon. It’s an engaging twist for a game of its time, where each layer of brick you place slows the creature’s revival. But beware—if you’re too slow, the monster will come to life, and you’ll be greeted with an unsettling, color-flashing animation of the monster’s escape as he comes for you. With its creepy atmosphere, tense countdown, and strategic approach to platforming, Frankenstein’s Monster offers a classic horror experience that’s surprisingly complex for an Atari game.

4. Clock Tower (Super Famicom, 1995)

Though widely recognized in Japan, Clock Tower remains lesser-known in other regions. This early survival horror game centers on Jennifer Simpson, a young orphan girl who must escape an evil mansion while pursued by the homicidal Scissorman. The game’s point-and-click mechanics, slow-burn suspense, and creepy, minimalist soundtrack make every moment tense. Each room in the mansion holds clues to the backstory or offers hiding spots to evade Scissorman. With multiple endings depending on your actions, Clock Tower is one of the first games to capture the feeling of a horror movie, and is worth tracking down.

5. Monster Party (NES, 1989)

Monster Party starts innocently but quickly becomes one of the NES’s strangest horror games. You play as Mark, a boy with a baseball bat who teams up with a winged alien named Bert to fight monsters in a dreamlike, yet nightmarish world. At first, it looks like a colorful platformer, but then the game veers into freakish horror, with backgrounds that include bloody skeletons, dripping walls, and unsettling monsters. Each boss battle is strange and memorable, from a pumpkin-headed specter to an onion ring-firing tempura dish. Despite its quirky look, Monster Party surprises players with its surreal blend of cute and creepy.

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The show ran from 1986-1990 for a total of 102 wondrous episodes. Lucky for us, the show also spawned several video games (eight total for those of you keeping score at home. The most recent was created in 2000.) The first game was titled ALF: The First Adventure. 

For all intents and purposes the game was Pac Man, with ALF replacing Pac Man and Willie Tanner replacing the ghosts. You piloted ALF around the screen collecting pieces for his ship. You also ate pizzas. The pizzas gave you the ability to collect cats, because as you may recall, ALF likes to eat cats. If Tanner caught you, he took all your items and you are forced to begin from scratch. Oh, there’s also a dog catcher who can capture ALF. If he got his hands on you, he placed you in the pound. Get thrown in the pound three times and the game ended. Get the high score, and you became a member of the Honorary Melmac Skleen Club. If you don’t recall the show, it should be mentioned that the name Skleen comes from the game Skleen Ball, a sport on ALF’s home planet Melmac.

That’s it. That’s all there was to it. Still, it was an ALF video game. That’s reason enough to rejoice.

Until next time, I remain…

Just Another Geek in the Geek Kingdom

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Not to fear. In 1971, three student teachers from Carleton College in Minnesota created a game that would allow us all to experience the struggles and joys of pioneer life. The teachers were Don Rawitsch, Bill Heinemann and Paul Dillenberger. The game they created was Oregon, the forerunner to The Oregon Trail.

The idea began as Rawitsch struggled to find engaging ways to teach his students about the westward expansion. His original vision was for a board game, but it quickly transitioned into a video game, which the three created in a janitor’s closet in Bryant Junior High School. They debuted the text-only game to Rawitsch’s class in December of 1971, and shortly after made it available to other Minnesota Public Schools.

America was in the depths of the Cold War, and the United States was regularly giving out grants to help foster innovative teaching techniques. At the same time, Minnesota had turned into a “Midwest Silicon Valley”, with IBM, Honeywell and others working in the state.  One result of this was the Minnesota Educational Computing Consortium, an organization founded in 1973. Rawitsch joined the company and in 1974 they released a reworked version of Oregon. Rawitsch added details gleaned from the journals of actual pioneers, studying things how they died and how they received aid from Natives.

When most people think of the game, they picture the 1985 release. Created for the Apple II, this edition was created by a team consisting of Philip Bouchard as lead designer, John Krenz as lead programmer, Charolyn Kapplinger as lead artist, Shirley Keran assigned to research, and Bob Granvin providing additional programming. This new version of the game had four color graphics, incorporated noted geographic landmarks, route choices, river crossings, family, tombstones (for when you inevitably died), a general store and, perhaps most famously, real diseases. You could now die of dysentery (along with typhoid, cholera, exhaustion, or fever).

Since its humble beginnings in 1971, the game has sold over 65 million copies. Spin-offs and sequels have been created. In 1995, a celebration was thrown at the Mall of America where Rawitsch, Dillenberger, and Heinemann were presented with jean jackets decorated with trail heads (it was the 90s, so jean jackets were de rigueur). A buffalo named Cody also attended the celebration. The title is unquestionably the most popular educational video game of all time, developing into a pop culture icon. T-shirts with “You Have Died of Dysentery” can be purchased and countless memes have been created from the game. It’s probably impossible to quantify how many kids were impacted by the game, being subtly sucked into learning through entertaining and engaging gameplay.

And to think that it began in school janitor’s closet. The story of the game is a journey almost as impressive as the long trek west on The Oregon Trail.

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Oh, wait. That’s exactly what happened in the 1983 title Dino Eggs? Well, there’s only one thing to do. Keep messing with things to fix your previous mistake. To set things right, you’ll have to collect dinosaur eggs and transport them back to the modern day. Along the way, you’ll have to avoid snakes, spiders, and centipedes which can bite you or contaminate the eggs you’ve collected. They aren’t the only risk. The baby dino’s mother isn’t exactly thrilled that you’re trying to steal her children. It’s your mission to defy her helicopter parenting by dodging her stomping foot while continuing to kidnap her children. Occasionally, the eggs you are collecting hatch. Once the babies are born, they’re more vulnerable to injury than the eggs. If they happen to touch you, they die. Also, you make fires as the game progresses. The fires keep you safe from the mother dino’s stomp, but if the baby dinos wander into the fire they will burn to death. As you reach higher levels, they can also be abducted by spiders. One way to protect the hatchlings is to put a cage over them by jumping over their bodies. They can still get crushed by falling boulders, but they’re protected from other hazards.

Once you’ve collected all the dinos you want, you can warp them to the future. After you’ve done this, you’ll be returned to a random portion of the level. This continues until you decide to warp out of the land with no dinos, which will end the level. If you’ve failed to collect all of the eggs or hatchlings, points will be deducted from your overall score. The game progresses through nine levels, each progressively more difficult than the last.

The game is a bit vague about what happens to the dinosaurs once they’ve been transported to the future. What could possibly go wrong?

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It is the early 1990s and I am with my family on vacation. We are at my Uncle Alan’s house. The adults are playing a board game called “Dweebs, Geeks, and Weirdos: The Game of Zany Stunts.” My cousins Tony and Jared are playing a video game. Both boys are older than me. They’re both talented artists and love comic books. They are cool, so I am hanging out with them. The game they are playing is “Where In The World is Carmen Sandiego?” (or was it “Where In Time Is Carmen Sandiego?” It might also have been the “Where In the World is Carmen Sandiego Deluxe Edition.” Memory is a tricky thing, and I can’t recall which is correct. For narrative purposes we’re going to go with “Where In the World…”)

Originally released in 1985, the game was the brainchild of Dane Bigham, a programmer at Broderbund. He’d been inspired to create the game by the old text based game “Colossal Cave Adventure.” He mixed that idea with memories of playing “Cops and Robbers” as a kid. Broderbund co-founder Gary Carlston suggested making the game geography based, building the narrative around the World Almanac. Carlston even considered mailing a copy of the World Almanac with the game. The game’s titular character got her name from a mix of singer Carmen Miranda. It was also the name of a dog that David Siefkin (who was hired to write the script) used to own.

The game required you to track criminals all over the world. Each worked for the nefarious Carmen Sandiego, who was your final quarry. Players traveled to the scene of a crime and then collected clues about where the thief was headed next. There were multiple countries to choose based on the information gathered. Pick the wrong country and you’d have to backtrack. Choose wisely, and you’d receive a set of clues directing you to the next location. Eventually, you caught up with the criminal. As the game progressed, you would also get descriptions of the thief, helping you eliminate suspects and eventually get a warrant. If you failed to get a warrant, the criminal would escape. If you succeeded in the capture, you could gain a promotion by answering a geography question. You then received your next case. This continued until you eventually captured Carmen Sandiego herself.

As I recall, we played the game for hours while leaving the adults to their own devices. It was brilliant. Later, I watched the game show (which ran from 1991-1996) and even the cartoon (which ran from 1994-1999) but none quite compared to my earliest memory of the franchise: huddled around the computer in the back room at my cousins’ house, working together frantically to solve crimes.

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Now that we’ve got that settled, let’s double check the essentials. Do you have a towel with you? A towel is the most massively useful item an interstellar hitchhiker can carry. Next, find your copy of “The Best Vogon Poems of 1984.” Once you’ve got that, burn it and scatter the ashes where they’ll never be found. We can’t take any chances. If you’re panicking or don’t happen to have a towel on hand, I will wait while you settle down and pay a visit to your linen closet.

Now that that’s all taken care of, you’re finally ready to play The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy, the 1984 text-based adventure based on Douglas Adams’s six part trilogy. The game features you as Arthur Dent (though you occasionally perform actions as Ford Prefect, Zaphod Beeblebrox and Trillian), and vaguely follows the plot of the first book in the series, or at least meanders along side the original plot for a bit before venturing off on its own. As Dent, you narrowly escape the destruction of Earth, hitch a ride on a Vogon ship, endure terrible poetry, search for a legendary planet, and make a rather important cup of tea. You direct Arthur through these tasks by simple typed commands. Certain tasks and puzzles must be completed within a set number of turns or else the game will end. Over. Kaput. So long, and thanks for all the fish. Along the way, you discover the actual Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy, a book with a good deal of information that can help you solve some of the games’ puzzles.

One of the puzzles, the Babel Fish Puzzle, has become one of the most notorious gaming challenges of all time. The point of the puzzle was to catch the babel fish, which could translate any language once inserted into your ear. You captured the fish by arranging objects as the fish bounced about the room. Problematically, each solution introduced a whole slew of new difficulties.

As would be expected from a Douglas Adams story, the game had a few unique quirks. It would occasionally lie to you. One of your inventory items was “no tea”. Later, you could acquire tea. This would place you in the curious position of having tea and no tea at the same time. In order to resolve this existential conundrum, you drop your common sense. Another curious inventory item was a “thing your aunt gave you which you don’t know what it is.”

There were no graphics in the original release of the game (though some were added for the 20th and 30th anniversary re-releases). It debuted on a number of systems, including the Apple II, the Atari 8-bit, Amiga, Atari ST, and the Commodore 64. Developed and released by Infocom, it came with a number of “feelies,” unique promotional items that aimed to help the player dive fully into the world created in the game. The feelies included in the Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy were: a “Don’t Panic” button, a packet of pocket fluff, an order for the destruction of Arthur Dent’s house, a Vogon order for the destruction of Earth, Peril Sensitive Sunglasses, an official microscopic space fleet, and a brochure titled, “How Many Times Has This Happened To You?”

Designed by Douglas Adam and Steve Meretzky, the game remains a classic of the text based adventure genre, guaranteed to keep you entertained as you drift through the universe searching for the meaning of life, the universe, and everything.

https://youtu.be/6-KsB5r46uA

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The plot of the game, simply titled Bruce Lee,  was somewhat similar to the unfinished 1972 film Game of Death, where Lee played Hai Tien. In the film, Lee’s character must fight his way through a five story pagoda to steal to a treasure as ransom for his kidnapped brother and sister. Part way through the filming of Game of Death, Lee received the offer that turned into Enter the Dragon. The unfinished film also became the inspiration for the 1984 Data East arcade game Kung Fu Master.

Developed for the Atari 8-bit family and released in 1984, Bruce Lee was a game that combined both platformer and beat ‘em up elements into one addictive game. It was created by Ron J. Fortier and released by Datasoft. Players controlled Lee as he worked his way through various chambers on his way to defeat an evil sorcerer. Along the way he had avoid various hazards (electrical shocks, explosions, and more), fight off the Black Ninja and his bokken stick, and defeat Yamo, an unarmed, sumo-like warrior who was surprisingly light on his feet. Both Yamo and the ninja appeared repeatedly, attempting to chip away at Lee’s five lives (with each life lasting three hits, but only one explosion or shock). Players also had to collect lanterns throughout the chambers to gain access to different areas. A two player mode allowed players to alternate controlling Lee, or face off head-to-head as Yamo and Lee. Defeat the sorcerer at the end, and you gain infinite wealth and immortality.

The game was popular enough that it eventually made its way to a number of other systems, including the Commodore 64, ZX Spectrum, Apple II, and the Amstrad CPC.

Almost forty five years to the day since he died, Bruce Lee still remains the gold standard by which all other martial artists and martial arts movie stars are judged. At their best, actors like Jackie Chan, Jet Li, or Tommy Jaa still stand in the shadow of The Dragon. For gamers, the video game Bruce Lee is a small way to share in that legacy.

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I’ve wasted countless hours playing the 1986 Bally/Midway classic arcade game Rampage, where players controlled George (the giant ape), Lizzie (a Godzilla knock off), or Ralph (the werewolf) and used them to destroy cities. The game was a popular success, spawning a series of sequels, and eventually a feature film which was (very loosely) based on the arcade, but it wasn’t the only monster mayhem game of its era. A full blown monster invasion was sweeping across the gaming world.

In 1981, Epyx released Crush, Crumble, and Chomp! for the TRS-80, Apple II, and Atari 8-bit (releasing ports for the C64 and VIC-20 later). The game allowed players to choose between a variety of monsters with names like Goshzilla, the Kraken, the Glob, and Mantra. Players could also grow a monster, but the end goal was to destroy cities around the globe. Before you attacked the cities, you selected one of five game objectives: Balanced (gaining points for everything), Killer Monster (gaining higher points for killing humans), Combat Machine (which gave points for killing combatants, but not civilians), Destruction (which focused on destroying structures), and Survival.

A year before Rampage, Electronic Arts released Mail Order Monsters for the Commodore 64. The game allowed players to create custom monsters and then battle each other or, in single player mode, the computer. Battles took place across the globe and terrain affected your fighting.

The following year, Epyx released The Movie Monster Game for the Commodore 64 and Apple II computers. It was sort of an unofficial of sequel to Crush, Crumble, and Chomp! The game fully embraced the camp of the old creature features. It contained movie style advertisements for treats like “Gummi Glogs” and trailers for other Epyx titles. Players could choose one of six monsters: Godzilla, Spectra, The Glog, Tarantus, Mr. Meringue, and Mechatron. Like Crush, Crumble, and Chomp!, players could choose between game modes: Berserk (based on destruction), Escape (getting your monster safely out of the city), Search (where your monster must find its missing children), Destroy Landmark (self explanatory, but you had to destroy world famous landmarks), and Lunch (where the goal was to eat as many humans and vehicles as possible).

The games weren’t masterpieces of video game craft, and they didn’t revolutionize the industry. They were just fun. They were funny and exciting, and a good way to waste an afternoon or Saturday morning. What more can you ask for in a game?

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