The First Sequel and User-Moddable Computer Game?
I don't know if we can find a definitive answer to questions about what was the first computer game sequel or user-moddable game. We can't even agree on what was the first video game (Spacewar is traditionally considered the first, but it was predated by Tennis for Two and a couple of other possibilities...)

Each revision of Spacewar could be counted as a sequel, I guess, and every programmer involved in its development was a user making their own mod, so in theory, that might count.

But the game I had in mind came out around 1972. The original game was called Hunt the Wumpus or just Wumpus, by Gregory Yob. He wrote that he had gotten annoyed by all the games that used a cartesian coordinate system (an X / Y grid), and wanted a game with a more interesting map. And so he created Hunt the Wumpus, which used a shape he called a "squashed dodecahedron", though without any specific spacial relationships between the rooms, the Wumpus caves could be in a dodecahedron of the non-squashed variety.

Anyway, the game rules were simple. You started in a room in the cave complex of twenty rooms, each room connected to three others. In two rooms, there were bottomless pits. If you moved into those rooms, you lost the game. In two rooms, there were "Superbats" that would pick you up and drop you in a random room if you moved into them. And then there was the Wumpus.

You were armed with a few arrows that could shoot through five rooms (changing course as they flew). If they went through your own room (since they could circle around, in theory), you shot yourself and the game was over. If they went into the Wumpus's room, they killed the wumpus and you won. Otherwise - if you missed the Wumpus OR walked into the Wumpus's room, he'd get up and move (or stay in the same room). If he ended up in the same room as you, he'd eat you and you lost the game. You could also lose the game if you ran out of arrows.

You could hear the bats if you were next to a superbat room. You could feel a draft if you were next to a bottomless pit room. And you could spell the Wumpus if you were in a room next to him. So the game was basically a randomly changing logic puzzle where you'd try and triangulate the positions of your goal and the threats.

Oh, yeah. And it had no graphics at all. You had to draw yourself trying to figure out the topography of the map.

A few months later, after a lot of people had played a lot of Wumpus (I never could stomach more than a few games, myself), Yob decided to create a new version. Called, astonishingly, "Hunt the Wumpus 2," it was exactly like the original game except for the maps. You could choose one of several maps, or create your own map.

The ability to input your own custom map made it the first user-moddable game, to my knowledge. At least the one to see "publication" - for whatever that was worth in 1976 (long after the game was written, but when the magazine saw print).

There is also mention of "Wumpus 3" in the issue of Creative Computing issue where the program saw print publication. The third game was written by a third party, but supported by Yob, which included random events that included earthquakes, bat migrations, and a "turnareo." So... Wumpus may also have been the the first trilogy. Again, those times were on the frontier of computer gaming, so even this "first" is debatable, but sticks (for me) because said event was published in a public record.

Now how's THAT for going back on the wayback machine?

Hmmm.... I wonder of Lady Ada Lovelace ever wrote a game for Babbage's Difference Engine? That could be "the first computer game canceled because the hardware never launched."

Labels: retro

- posted by The Rampant Coyote @ 12:48 AM (Permalink)