IBM PC Oddities
Posted by Benj Edwards | Thursday, August 11, 2011
The Very First PC Game
In the beginning of PC gaming, game designers only had text mode or a 4-color CGA graphics mode (2 colors in hi-res) to work with. The PC speaker bleated like a tone-deaf lamb, and a joystick port cost extra.
In that environment, it makes sense that the PC’s first commercial game utilized text and the player’s imagination for its display. Microsoft Adventure, an interactive fiction title based on “Colossal Cave Adventure” for mainframes, was part of the machine’s initial software lineup in 1981.
(Photos: IBM, MobyGames)
August 11th, 2011 at 8:07 pm
What about IBM's word processing software, Display Write 1.0? It's hard to find any good information on this product on the internet. I even remember the name of the executable "dw1" 🙂
August 12th, 2011 at 5:34 pm
What's bizzare and dystopian about teaching people to read? I say it's utopian. Now if they subliminally taught them to only buy IBM or become chimp plant lackeys… that would be dystopian.
October 23rd, 2011 at 9:57 pm
I think the author was just showing how limited his/her vocabulary is. …ah, if only they had access to one of those evil IBM enslavement machines during their youth.