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

[Ethan Dicks]

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