Dumb Terminal games (was Re: Looking for a small fast VAX development machine)

william degnan billdegnan at gmail.com
Tue Feb 23 10:29:10 CST 2016


On Tue, Feb 23, 2016 at 11:23 AM, Ethan Dicks <ethan.dicks at gmail.com> wrote:

> On Tue, Feb 23, 2016 at 12:38 AM, Richard Loken <rlloken at telus.net> wrote:
> > On Mon, 22 Feb 2016, Mouse wrote:
> >
> >>> Computer games require all you can give them [...]
> >>
> >> Only if your idea of "games" is "slick-looking realtime 3D-rendering
> >> games".  There are lots of games that work perfectly well on 3100-class
> >> (and even slower) machines, such as roguelikes (rogue, larn, hack,
> >> etc), text adventures (ADVENT, DUNGEON, etc), phantasia, Seahaven,
> >> Klondike...the list is long.
> >
> > But those are Computer Games!  Not computer games.  It is a long time
> > since I have played rogue.
>
> I've been meaning to ask this question since I started cleaning up
> terminals this year... what are some favorites?  Some of the obvious
> classics are:
>
> Adventure
> Zork (and anything else on a Zmachine)
> Scott Adams Adventures
> Wumpus
> Anything in Dave Ahl's "101 BASIC Computing Games"
> Empire
> Star Trek
> rogue/hack
> Larn/Ularn
>
> But what are some other favorites?  I've been running a monthly
> "retrogaming night" at our Makerspace and so far have brought out a
> C-64, a PPC Mac, and an 8032 PET.  I'm looking to add a PDP-8 (via
> Oscar Vermuelen's PiDP-8, for portability) and (at first) a simh RT-11
> box and/or VAX running VMS, though I have plenty of real DEC gear -
> it's a matter of transport and storage space).  I have a VT220 and an
> IBM 3101 (very VT52-like with a working terminfo entry) already on
> site and can add additional terminals if this becomes popular (I may
> drag in a VT52 just for the excuse to clean one up).
>
> I have the Commodore end pretty well covered.  I'm looking for
> suggestions for 80x24 text games that can be played on an ANSI (VT100)
> terminal and especially non-ANSI (VT52 or that IBM 3101) on
> Unix/Linux, VMS, and RT-11.  So in general, anything that uses curses
> or direct ANSI sequences or just spews text to a glass tty.
>
> -ethan
>


I never checked, I did not know there were VAX games that you could
download/compile and run locally.  One of my VAXen has BASIC installed, but
most are mostly file servers.  I'd like to learn more myself.
-- 
@ BillDeg:
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