Games
| Game | Year | Authors' names (Phoenix login names in parentheses) |
|---|---|---|
| Acheton | 1978 | Jon Thackray (JGT1), David Seal (DJS6), and Jonathan R. Partington (JRP1) |
| Murdac | 1982 | Jon Thackray and Jonathan R. Partington |
| Avon | 1982 | Jon Thackray and Jonathan R. Partington |
| Brand X | 1979 | Jonathan Mestel (AJM8) and Peter Killworth (PDK1) |
| Hamil | 1980 | Jonathan R. Partington |
| Quondam | 1980 | Rod Underwood (RU10) |
| Hezarin | 1980 | Steve Tinney, Alex Ship, and Jon Thackray |
| Xeno | unknown | Jonathan Mestel |
| Fyleet | 1985 | Jonathan R. Partington |
| Crobe | 1986 | Jonathan R. Partington |
| Sangraal | 1987 | Jonathan R. Partington |
| Nidus | 1987 | Adam Atkinson (AJFA1) |
| Parc | unknown | (JR26) |
| Xerb | unknown | Andrew Lipson (ASL1) |
| Spycatcher | circa 1988 | Jonathan R. Partington |
One recreational activity on Phoenix was the playing of interactive fiction games. Because the games were large and demanded significant machine resources whilst running, they were generally played outside of prime time, when research palled. (The exit message of one game, Fyleet written by Jonathan Partington in 1985, was "Well go and do some work then".) Other games were Advent (a.k.a. Colossal Cave), Zork (a.k.a. Dungeon), and Acheton.
Acheton was created by two Cambridge graduate students, Jon Thackray and David Seal, in 1978–1979, and expanded over the ensuring two years with the aid of Jonathan Partington. It was written with the aid of a game assembler, which, unlike the contemporary ZIL game assembler from Infocom, was freely available for use by all users of Phoenix between 1980 and 1995.
Several large early British games developed on Phoenix were sold commercially for microcomputers by Acornsoft and, later, Topologika. This was comparable to Infocom's contemporaneous commercialisation of the MIT mainframe game Zork. Many of these games were subsequently translated by Graham Nelson to run on the Z-Machine.
The commercial release of Brand X was Philosopher's Quest.
Read more about this topic: Phoenix (computer)
Famous quotes containing the word games:
“In 1600 the specialization of games and pastimes did not extend beyond infancy; after the age of three or four it decreased and disappeared. From then on the child played the same games as the adult, either with other children or with adults. . . . Conversely, adults used to play games which today only children play.”
—Philippe Ariés (20th century)
“The rules of drinking games are taken more serious than the rules of war.”
—Chinese proverb.
“Criticism occupies the lowest place in the literary hierarchy: as regards form, almost always; and as regards moral value, incontestably. It comes after rhyming games and acrostics, which at least require a certain inventiveness.”
—Gustave Flaubert (1821–1880)