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Wander (1974) – a lost mainframe game is found

55 points| wodow | 11 years ago |ahopeful.wordpress.com | reply

11 comments

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[+] diiq|11 years ago|reply
This game is not only an early text adventure -- it is early interactive fan fiction. See Keith Laumer's Jame Retief stories: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jame_Retief

The CDT, Mr. Magnan -- the whole scenario is straight from Laumer's work. Fan fiction inspires all great things :)

[+] DougMerritt|11 years ago|reply
I have a copy of this (Peter Langston's Wander C source code) from a 1980 distribution.

I don't think it was ever "lost", it just became gradually more obscure over time, as most things do.

Edit: Looking closer, I see that Langston's 1980 distribution also included Empire (PDP11 object files, not source! -- infamously), "Fast Food" (with C source), and "Star_Drek" -- object files again)

[+] wodow|11 years ago|reply
http://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Text_adventure implies Adventure was first in "around" 1975, but this blog post says WANDER was 1974.
[+] moron4hire|11 years ago|reply
Oregon Trail was first a sort of text adventure when it was put together in 1971. You didn't navigate rooms, though, so it wasn't exactly the same thing.
[+] yarrel|11 years ago|reply
It's a game authoring environment. The example game is from 1977, so earlier games may or may not have been in Adventure style.
[+] joncameron|11 years ago|reply
Wikipedia is notorious in the video game history community for its lack of accuracy and vague primary sources.
[+] themartorana|11 years ago|reply
> Sure enough, after a little tweaking

Just a reminder, the ESA would like to make this a crime.

Edit: the source was retrieved from the original author. I stand down.

[+] mratzloff|11 years ago|reply
This is great! I look forward to seeing the original (and modified) source code released. I love old text adventure games.

If you want to try your hand at another obscure, early text adventure, there's a version of Warp (early 1980s) hosted here:

http://empire.openmpe.com/empire/other_games.html

(You have to access it through telnet.)

It's a huge game with a very advanced parser, but it only runs on the HP e3000 and the source code has never been released. This is another one I'd like to eventually see the source code to, but I tried contacting one of the authors and got no reply.