Alter Ego [1986]

By 1986, Activision had evolved from making sure Atari console game designers got paid and credited (as we saw with Pitfall [1982]) into probably the leading commercial purveyor of Art Games for computers. It made a lot of sense at the time for them to acquire fellow traveler Infocom, although by the beginning of 1987 …

Ultima 4 [1985]

So there I was, seven or eight layers deep in a dungeon, when I start losing hit points in all my party members every time I take a step. I'm not poisoned, that's easy to tell... turns out I've been down there so long exploring that I'm starving. Oh shit! I check the map to …

The Prisoner [1980]

(Content warning: torture mention.) In the 1300s, there was a game called Obligations. It was played in the early Latin Christian universities by the friars, the bishops, the Franciscans, the students and teachers and such, and its structure informed much of the underlying phrasing and logic of the century's theology and philosophy. Obligations is a …

The Oregon Trail [1971]

(Content Warnings: Cannibalism, Genocide.) In these early days of gaming, it’s hard to walk in a straight line without tripping over “firsts.” Looking for the first this or the first that is a hook, it’s exciting to uncover, you feel like something recognizable of our present-day condition is emerging from the strange, foreign world of …