Text Based Games
The next widely popular computer game after Spacewar is Hunt the Wumpus aka Wump, developed by Gregory Yob on a Time-Sharing System at the University of Massachusettes in Dartmouth in 1972. A text based game, you move around a system of connected caves, arrmed with only five arrows, searching out the elusive Wumpus creature which is also roaming about. The code is eventually published in the magazine Creative Computing in 1975, after the game becomes a huge hit over the ARPAnet.
Dave Lebling and Marc Blank, students at MIT, Tim Anderson, and Bruce Daniels soon begin work on a
project labeled Zork, a nonsense word they use to describe all coding works-in-progress.
6000 copies of Zork I sell in eight months. In all, one million copies of Zork I sell world-wide
for a wide variety of computer platforms.
Adding Graphics
Straight text doesn't placate computer gamers for long, however. In 1980, On-Line Systems is founded by Ken
and Roberta Williams. Operating out of their house in Los Angeles, their first game is Mystery House for
the Apple II, the first computer game to combine text with graphics. In an Agatha Christie-like mystery,
the player must roam a house finding treasure and avoiding the deadly fates of the other occupants. While
the parser is below the standard set by Infocom's Zork and the graphics are rough outlines, the game is a
sensation. Priced at US$24.95, the Williams sell 11,000 copies inside the first year, grossing nearly $300,000
dollars for the new company.
| Genres | Video Game Percent | Computer Game Percent |
|---|---|---|
| Sports | 17.3 | 3.7 |
| Action | 30.1 | 4.7 |
| Adventure | 0 | 5.8 |
| Role-Playing | 7.8 | 12.4 |
| Shooter | 8.7 | 14.4 |
| Strategy | 0 | 30.8 |
| Family/Children | 9.3 | 19.8 |
| Fighting | 4.7 | 0 |
| Racing | 11.1 | 0 |