
                   BOARD GAMES
  Much of our country's computing power is spent playing games. 
Here's why. . . .

                 Shannon's trees
  In 1950, Claude Shannon proposed a way to make the computer win 
at checkers, chess, and other complicated games.
  To understand his method, let's try to make the computer win a 
game of checkers. As in all checker tournaments, one player is 
called BLACK, and the other is called WHITE (even though his 
pieces are actually red). BLACK makes the first move. When a 
player can jump, he must. The game ends when one of the players 
can't move (either because he has no pieces or because his pieces 
are blocked).
  To simplify the game, we'll play on a 4-by-4 board, instead of 
the traditional 8-by-8. Each player has two pieces instead of 
twelve.
  This diagram shows 63 possible positions:
  Position #1 is the initial position, from which black will 
move. The three arrows coming from position #1 represent the 
three legal moves he can choose from. Depending on which move he 
chooses, the board will wind up in position #2 or #3 or #4. Which 
move is best?
If he moves to position #2, white will reply by moving to 
position #5 or #6 or #7.
If he moves to position #3, white will reply by moving to 
position #8 or #9 or #10.
If he moves to position #4, white will reply by moving to 
position #11 or #12 or #13.
  The diagram shows all possible ways the game's first five moves 
could go. Throughout the diagram, w means white man, b means 
black man, w' means white king, and b' means black king. The 
diagram's called a tree. (If you turn it upside down, it looks 
like the kind of tree that grows in the ground.) The arrows are 
called the tree's branches. The tree's depth is 5.

  Which position should black choose: #2, #3, or #4? The wisdom 
of your answer depends on how deep you make the tree. In this 
particular game, a depth of 5 is satisfactory; but in 8-by-8 
checkers or chess you might have to dig deeper. Theoretically, 
you should keep digging until you reach the end of the game; but 
such a tree might be too large to fit in your computer's memory.
  For chess, Shannon estimated that a complete tree requires 
10120 branches. Einstein estimated that the number of electrons 
in the universe is only 10110. If Shannon and Einstein are both 
right, the tree can't fit in the universe!
  Having constructed a tree of depth 5, look at the bottom 
positions (#42 through #63) and evaluate them, to see which 
positions look favorable for black. You should consider many 
factors: which player has control of the center of the board? 
which player can move the most without being jumped? and so on. 
But to keep matters simple, let's consider just one factor: which 
player has the most men? Consider a king to be worth 1 men.
  Subtract the number of white men from the number of black men: 
the result of the evaluation is a number, which is called the 
position's value. If it's negative, black is losing; if it's 
positive, black is winning; if it's zero, the game is heading for 
a draw.
  For example, consider position #42. Since black has one man and 
white has two, the value is 1 minus 2, which is -1. That's why 
I've written ``v=-1'' underneath that position. The value of each 
position at depth=5 is computed by that method.
  For the positions at depth=4, use a different method. For 
example, here's how to find the value of position #29. That 
position has two possible outcomes: #46 and #47. Which outcome is 
more likely? Since the move will be made by black, and black's 
goal is to make the value large, he'll prefer to move to #46 
instead of #47. Since the most likely outcome is #46, whose value 
is , assign position #29 a value of  also.
  Here's the rule: to compute the value of a position at depth=4, 
find the maximum value of the positions it points to. (The value 
of position #29 is the maximum value of positions #46 and #47, 
which is .)
  To compute the value of a position at depth=3, find the minimum 
value of the positions it points to (since it's white's turn to 
move, and white wants to minimize). For example, the value of 
position #18 is the minimum value of positions #31 and #32, which 
is 1.
  Compute the values for depth 2 by maximizing, and the values 
for depth 1 by minimizing. Finally, you get these results:
The value of position #2 is -1.
The value of position #3 is  0.
The value of position #4 is -1.
Since black wants to maximize values, black should move to 
position #3. If white is also a good player, the game will 
probably gravitate toward position #53, a draw. If white is a 
poorer player, black will win.
  That method of choosing the best move was proposed by Shannon. 
Since it makes heavy use of minimums and maximums, it's called 
the minimax method.
                                                 Samuel's checkers
                                         After Shannon, the next 
person to become famous was Arthur Samuel. He spent a long time 
(twenty years, from 1947 to 1967) trying to make the computer win 
checkers. He used Shannon's minimax idea, but made many 
improvements.
                                         His first spectacular 
success came in 1962, when his program won a game against Robert 
Nealey, a former Connecticut checkers champion. After the game, 
Nealey said ``The computer had to make several star moves in 
order to get the win. . . . In the matter of the end game, I have 
not had such competition from any human being since 1954, when I 
lost my last game.''
                                         Later, the computer 
played six more games against Nealey. Nealey won one of them; the 
other five were draws.
                                         In 1965 the computer 
played four games against W.F. Hellman, the World Champion. The 
games were played by mail. Under those conditions, Hellman won 
all four. But in a hastily played game where Hellman sat across 
the board from the computer, the result was a draw.
                                         In 1967 the computer was 
beaten by the Pacific Coast Champion, K.D. Hanson, twice.
                                         In short, the computer 
wins against most humans and draws against most experts, though 
it loses to the top champions. To bring the computer to that 
level of intelligence, Samuel improved Shannon's method in three 
ways. . . . 
                                         1. When choosing among 
several moves, the computer analyzes the most promising ones more 
deeply.
                                         2. After computing the 
value of a position (by examining the positions under it), the 
computer writes the value on a piece of tape. If the position 
recurs in another game, the computer looks at the tape instead of 
repeating the analysis.
                                         3. To compute the value 
of a position, the computer examines many factors in addition to 
the number of pieces each player has. The computer combines the 
factors, to form combination-factors, and then combines the 
combination-factors to form a single value. The relative 
importance given to each factor is determined by ``experience''. 
Samuel experimented with two forms of experience: he had the 
computer play against itself, and also had it analyze 250,000 
moves that occurred in checker championships.
                Chess
  While Samuel was programming checkers, other programmers tried 
to write a similar program for chess. They had a hard time. In 
1960 the best chess program that had been written was beaten by a 
ten-year-old kid who was a novice.
  Greenblatt The first decent chess program was written in 1967 
by Richard Greenblatt and his friends at MIT. It actually won a 
game in a chess tournament.
  But in most tournaments, it lost. In 1970 and 1971, it lost 
every game in every tournament it entered.
  Slate & Atkins In 1968, Atkins & Gorklen, undergraduates at 
Northwestern University, wrote a chess program. Inspired by their 
program, David Slate, a graduate student in physics there, wrote 
a chess program also. In 1969, Slate & Atkins combined the two 
programs, to form a better program, Chess 2.0.
  During the next several years, they continually improved the 
program. Their most famous version was called Chess 4.7.
  Their program is playing chess against human experts ___ and 
winning! Their computer has scored several triumphs in 
tournaments designed for humans.
  In 1976, their computer won the class B section of the Paul 
Masson American Chess Championships. Against the humans in that 
tournament, it scored 5 wins, no losses. By winning that 
tournament, it achieved a U.S. Chess Federation score of 2210 and 
became a chess Master.
  Then it entered the Minnesota State Championship, to try to 
become the Minnesota State Champion, but lost (it scored 1 win, 3 
losses, 1 tie).
  In August 1968, an International Chess Master, David Levy, bet 
about $5,000 against several computerists. He bet that no 
computer would win a chess match against him in the next ten 
years. He won the bet: in August 1978, Chess 4.7 tried one last 
time to win a match against him, but lost (it scored 1 win, 3 
losses, 1 tie).
  Slate & Atkins improved Chess 4.7, to form Chess 4.9, which is 
the world champion of computer chess.
  But though it's the world champion of computer chess, it's not 
necessarily the ``best'' program. It wins because it runs on a 
super-fast maxicomputer (manufactured by Control Data 
Corporation). Other chess programs, written for slower computers, 
are at a disadvantage.
  Minicomputer chess Almost as fast as Chess 4.9 is a program 
called Belle, written at Bell Telephone Laboratories. Belle runs 
on an unusual minicomputer that's specially wired to create trees 
quickly.
                                         Microcomputer chess Each 
of those programs ___ Chess 4.9 and Belle ___ requires an 
expensive CPU and lots of RAM. Is it possible to write a decent 
chess program using only a cheap CPU and very little RAM? Yes! In 
1976, a Canadian named Peter Jennings wrote a program called 
Microchess 1.0; it ran on a $250 microcomputer (the Kim 1), which 
contained a 6502 CPU, no ROM, and only 1K of RAM! The program 
played decently, though not spectacularly.
                                         Later, he improved the 
program, and called the improvement Microchess 1.5. It plays on 
the Radio Shack model 1 and the Apple. The version on the model 1 
consumes 4K of RAM: 2K is for the logic, and the other 2K are 
just to make the picture of the chess board look pretty! You can 
get Microchess 1.5 for just $20 from your local Radio Shack store 
or Apple dealer.
                                         In 1978, an amazing 
chess program was written by a husband-and-wife team: Dan and 
Kathe Sprachlin. They named the program Sargon, to honor an 
ancient king. It ran on the Jupiter microcomputer, which 
contained an 8080 CPU and 16K RAM. It played much better than 
Microchess. When the Jupiter computer became obsolete, the 
Sprachlins rewrote the program, to make it run on the Radio Shack 
model 1 and the Apple. Then they developed an improved version 
called Sargon 2, and a further improvement called Sargon 3, which 
runs on all the popular computers. Sargon 3 is published by the 
Hayden division of Spinnaker.
                                         For many years, Sargon 3 
was considered the best microcomputer chess program. But in 1986, 
Sargon 3 was beaten by a new program called Chessmaster 2000. 
Like Sargon 3, Chessmaster 2000 contains many features that make 
it fun for both experts and novices. It's published by Software 
Toolworks, distributed by Electronic Arts, costs about $35, and 
comes in versions for the Apple 2e & 2c, Commodore 64 & Amiga, 
Atari 800 XL & ST, and IBM PC.
                                         Recently, Sargon 3 has 
been replaced by Sargon 4, and Chessmaster 2000 has been replaced 
by Chessmaster 2100 and Chessmaster 3000.
                                         When you play against 
the computer by using Sargon 4, Chessmaster 2100, or Chessmaster 
3000, you can ask the computer for help, by pressing a special 
key. Then the computer will tell you how it would move, if it 
were in your position. You can follow the computer's suggestion 
or ignore it. (Since your goal is to outsmart the computer, you 
should listen to the computer's advice; but instead of following 
the advice, you should try to devise a move that's even more 
clever.)
                                         Many companies 
manufacture hand-held electronic chess games. Some of the games 
even contain a tiny voice synthesizer, which lets the computer 
tell you its moves verbally. Some of the games even contain a 
mechanical arm, so that the computer will pick up the pieces and 
move them. Some of the games have touch-sensitive boards, so that 
you can indicate your move by just pushing the square you want to 
move from and the square you want to move to. For humor, some of 
the chess games have the computer make wisecracks about your 
style of playing.
          Choosing a level
  When you begin playing a top-notch computer game (such as 
Chessmaster 3000), you must choose the ``level'' at which you 
want the computer to play. If you choose a low level, the 
computer will move quickly, without much forethought. If you 
choose a high level, the computer will play more carefully (and 
make better moves); to do that, the computer ``looks ahead'', by 
building a very large tree, which requires lots of time; and so 
you must wait a long time until the computer moves. If you choose 
a level that's very high, the computer will need several hours to 
compute its move.

           Why a computer?
  Playing against the computer is more interesting than playing 
against a human.
  When you play against a human friend, you must wait a long time 
for your friend to move. When you play against Chessmaster 3000 
at a low level, the computer moves almost immediately. So you can 
play several games against the computer (and learn a lot from 
them) in the same amount of time you'd need to play just one game 
against a human. So by playing against the computer, you gain 
experience faster than by playing against a human. Bobby Fisher, 
the world chess champion, now plays only against computers; he 
refuses to play against humans.
  The computer is kinder than a human. If you make a bad move, 
the computer lets you ``take it back'' and try again. If you seem 
to be losing, the computer lets you restart the whole game. The 
computer ___ unlike a human ___ has infinite patience and no ego. 
Playing against the computer is less threatening than playing 
against a human.
  If you have a computer, you don't have to worry about finding 
an opponent who's ``at your level''; when you play against the 
computer, just tell the computer at what level you want it to 
play. The computer will act about as smart as you wish.

               Othello
  Chess and checkers are both played on a checkerboard. Another 
game that's played on a checkerboard is Othello. It uses 
checkers, but each checker has two sides: one side is white; the 
flip side is black.
  When the game begins, only four checkers are on the board: two 
of them have their white side showing, and the other two checkers 
show black.
  The game is for two players. One is called the white player, 
and the other is called the black player.
  For example, suppose you're the white player. On your turn, you 
put an extra checker onto the board, so that the checker shows 
white. You must position the checker so that it and a previously 
placed white checker surround some black checkers. Then you flip 
all the surrounded black checkers, so that they become white.
  Similarly, on his turn, the black player puts a black checker 
onto the board, so that some of your white checkers are 
surrounded by black, and he flips all those white checkers, so 
that they become black.
  The game ends when the board is entirely filled with checkers. 
If most of the checkers are white, the white player wins; 
otherwise, black wins.
                                         The game is tricky, 
because the definition of ``surrounded checkers'' is strange, and 
because you can't easily figure out who's winning. At first 
glance, you'd think that if most of the checkers on the 
checkerboard are white, white is ahead; but at the end of the 
game, the situation can change drastically. For example, the 
black player might place a black checker in such a way that most 
of the white checkers become black. So you must guard against 
dangerous positions. During the early parts of the game, the 
white checkers' positions are more important than their quantity.
                                         The game began centuries 
ago in England, where it was called Reversi. It resembled the 
Japanese game called Go. About 1975, it was marketed in the 
United States as a board game, under the name Othello (which is 
trademarked by Gabriel Industries). Programmers tried to make the 
computer imitate the game and win.
                                         After writing Sargon 2 
(the award-winning chess program), Dan and Kathe Sprachlin turned 
their attention to Othello, and wrote an award-winning Othello 
program called Reversal. It plays Othello better than any other 
program ever invented. Like Sargon 2, it's been published by 
Hayden, runs on the Apple, allows several levels of play, costs 
$35 on disk, and lets you press a ``tutoring'' button whenever 
you want the computer to give you advice on how to reply. For 
added humor, each checker shows a frown or smile. For example, if 
the white checkers outnumbered the black, the white checkers wear 
smiles, and the black checkers wear frowns; the smiles and frowns 
grow bigger, as white's lead over black increases. And whenever a 
checker is added to the board or flipped, the computer plays a 
musical fanfare.
                                         Unfortunately, Hayden 
has become part of Spinnaker, which has stopped publishing the 
program, because most people have forgotten how to play Othello 
and no longer want to play. Too bad! It was a fun game.

                                                    Backgammon
                                         Backgammon is a game 
played with dice. It requires both luck and skill. For many 
years, the world champion backgammon player was a human. But 
recently, he was beaten by a computer, in a thorough match.
                                         The human was a poor 
loser: he blamed it on ``bad luck''. He refuses to admit that the 
computer has more skill than he. Nevertheless, the computer is 
now the world champion.

            ACTION GAMES
  Hey! Let's have some action!

            Arcade games
  The first popular arcade game was Pong, which made the computer 
crudely imitate a game of ping-pong. Then came Space Invaders, in 
which you had to shoot aliens who were dropping bombs on you.
  Those games restricted you to moving in just one direction. The 
first popular arcade game that let you move two-dimensionally was 
Asteroids. It let you move through the sky while dodging 
asteroids and enemy space ships.
  Those outer-space and sports games appealed mainly to boys. The 
first arcade game appealing mainly to girls was Pac Man, a 
non-violent fantasy in which you ran through a maze full of food 
and tried to gobble as much as possible, before ghosts gobbled 
you. It appealed especially to dieting girls who dreamed of 
pigging out without getting caught.
  In all those games, the graphics were crude. The first arcade 
game that used professional graphics was Dragon's Lair, which 
contained a videodisk full of animated cartoons drawn by artists 
who had worked at Walt Disney Studios. To dodge obstacles that 
appear in the cartoons, you move your joystick, which changes the 
action that the cartoons display.
  Each year's arcade games reflect the latest fads. For example, 
you can play arcade games about break-dancing and kung-fu.

             Game watch
  A game watch is a digital wrist watch that plays a video game. 
If you're stuck in the middle of a boring business meeting, look 
at your game watch.
  When your colleagues see you looking at your watch, they'll 
think you're an impatient executive tracking the time. Meanwhile, 
you're just having fun!
                                                     Olympics
                                         In 1980, Tim Smith quit 
his job at Burroughs and spent the next 9 months programming 
Olympic Decathlon, which made the Radio Shack Model 1 computer 
imitate all ten of the decathlon's events.
                                         In his game, one of your 
fingers represents your left leg, and another finger represents 
your right leg. To ``run'', you tap those fingers (left, right, 
left, right) as quickly as possible on the keyboard. By using 
those fingers and others, you compete in all ten events: the 
100-meter dash, long jump, shot-put, high jump, 400-meter dash, 
110-meter hurdles, discus throw, pole vault, javelin throw, and 
1500-meter run. You can play solo or against your friends. At 
parties, you can form teams and cheer each other on.
                                         Later, he wrote versions 
for the Apple 2 and the IBM PC. They're published by Microsoft.
                                         A competing company, 
Epyx, has invented a variation that displays better graphics. It 
comes on a pair of disks, called Summer Games and Summer Games 2. 
It plays the national anthems of all major countries and includes 
sixteen games: pole vault, diving, 4x400-meter relay, 100-meter 
dash, gymnastics, freestyle relay, 100-meter freestyle, skeet 
shooting, triple jump, rowing, javelin, equestrian, high jump, 
fencing, cycling, and kayaking. It runs on all popular computers: 
IBM, Mac, Apple 2, C64, Amiga, and ST.

                                                   Sports heroes
                                         A game called One-on-One 
accurately imitates a basketball shooting match between two 
stars: Larry Bird and Julius (``Doctor J'') Erving. The program 
imitates each player's personal strengths and weaknesses. You can 
take the role of either player and try to avoid getting creamed 
by the other. Programmed by Eric Hammond with help from Larry and 
Doctor J, it's published by Electronic Arts.

           ADVENTURE GAMES
  Adventure is a game where you hunt for some sort of 
``treasure''.

         Original Adventure
  The original version of Adventure was written by Will Crowther 
& Don Woods, on a PDP-10 maxicomputer at Stanford University's 
Artificial Intelligence Lab.
  When you run the program, the computer says you're near a shack 
at the end of a road. The computer offers to act as your body and 
understand any two-word command. Then it waits for your command. 
You can tell it to GO NORTH or GO FORWARD or ___ if you're going 
along a stream ___ you can say FOLLOW STREAM or GO DOWNSTREAM.
  The first time you play this game, you feel lost ___ the game's 
an adventure. As you wander in whatever direction you please, the 
computer says you're going through forests, across streams, over 
hills, etc.
  After much aimless wandering, you'll eventually see a stream. 
If you follow the stream, you'll come to a mysterious iron grate. 
If you try to BREAK GRATE, the computer says you're not strong 
enough. If you try to OPEN GRATE, the computer says you have no 
keys. You'll get more and more frustrated, until the computer 
offers to give you a hint ___ but the hint will cost you several 
points. If you acquiesce, the computer will give you this hint: 
find the keys!
  To find the keys, the typical stupid player tries wandering 
through the forests and valleys again. But if you're smart, 
you'll remember that at the beginning of the adventure you were 
next to a shack. So you go back to the shack, walk inside, and 
find keys! So you trek back to iron grate, and use the keys to 
get in. You think ___ aha! ___ you've succeeded!
  But actually, you've just begun! The grate leads you into a 
cave that contains 130 rooms, which form a big three-dimensional 
maze. Lying in the maze are 15 buried treasures; but as you walk 
through the maze, you can easily forget where you are and where 
you've come from; you can waste lots of time just walking in 
circles, without realizing it!
  To add to the challenge, the cave contains many dangers, such 
as trap doors (if you fall in, you break every bone in your 
body!) and trolls & snakes, which you must ward off by using 
various devices that you must find in the cave's rooms or even 
back at the shack. Yes, you might have to trek all the way back 
to the shack again!
  Finally, after dodging all the evil things in the cave, you 
reach the treasures. You grab them up and start walking away with 
them. But then you hear footsteps behind you, and pirates steal 
your treasures! Then you must chase the pirates.
  If you manage to keep your treasures and your life and get out 
of the cave, you haven't necessarily won. The nasty computer 
keeps score of how well you retrieve the treasures. The maximum 
possible score is 350. After you've played this game many times 
and learned how to duck all your adversaries quickly, you'll find 
you scored just 349 points, and you'll wonder what you did wrong 
that cost you 1 point. The answer is: during the adventure, you 
must borrow magazines from a room in the cave; to get the extra 
point, you must return them!
  The game's a true adventure, because as you wander through 
forests and the rooms in the cave, the computer tells what you 
see, but you don't know whether what you see is important. For 
example, when you walk into a room, the computer might say the 
room contains a small cage. That's all
it says. You must guess whether the cage has any significance and 
what to do to the cage, if anything. Should you pick it up? Try 
to break it? Kiss it? Carry it? Try anything you like ___ give 
any command to your computer-body that you wish ___ and see what 
happens.
                                         Here's a list of the 
most useful commands. . . . 
                                         To reach a different 
room in the cave, say GO NORTH (or SOUTH, EAST, WEST, UP, or 
DOWN). You can abbreviate: instead of typing ``GO NORTH'', just 
type ``N''.
                                         Whenever you see a new 
object, TAKE it. Then you can carry it from room to room and use 
it later whenever you need it. If you see a new object and want 
to TAKE it, but your hands are already full, DROP one of the 
other objects you're carrying.
                                         To see a list of what 
you're carrying, tell the computer to take INVENTORY. To make the 
computer describe your surroundings again, say LOOK.
                                         To see your score so 
far, say SCORE.
                                         If you say SAVE, the 
computer will copy your current position onto the disk, so you 
can return to that position later. If you ever want to give up, 
just say QUIT.
                                         Throughout the game, you 
get beautifully lyrical writing. For example, the computer 
describes one of the rooms as follows: ``You are in a splendid 
chamber thirty feet high. The walls are frozen rivers of orange 
stone.''
                                         The game's an adventure 
about a person exploring a cave. Since you're the person in the 
adventure and can type whichever actions you wish, you affect how 
the adventure progresses and ends. Since it's high-quality 
story-telling whose outcome is affected by your input, it's 
called interactive fiction.

                                              Microcomputer versions
                                         Although Adventure was 
originally written for a PDP-10 maxicomputer, you can get an 
exact imitation for microcomputers.
                                         The first imitations 
(published by Microsoft for the Apple 2 and by Creative Computing 
for CP/M computers) are no longer marketed. Today, the best 
imitation for microcomputers comes on a disk called the Golden 
Oldies, published by Software Country and distributed by 
Electronic Arts. The disk includes four programs: Adventure, 
Eliza, Pong, and Life. It's been available for the IBM PC, Mac, 
Apple 2e & 2c, Commodore 64, Commodore Amiga, and Atari 800 XL. 
But getting your hands on it is difficult, since it's no longer 
being actively distributed.

                                                      Infocom
                                         After Adventure became 
popular, several programmers invented a variation called Zork, 
which lets you input long sentences instead of restricting you to 
two-word phrases. Like Adventure, Zork consists of hunting for 
treasures in a cave. In Zork, you reach the cave by entering a 
house's basement.
                                         Like Adventure, Zork 
originally ran on a PDP-10 computer. Infocom has published 
versions of Zork for microcomputers. Versions for the IBM PC, 
Mac, Apple 2e & 2c, Apple Macintosh, Commodore Amiga, Atari ST, 
and Radio Shack Models 3 & 4 cost $39.95. Versions for the 
Commodore 64, Atari 800 XL, and Radio Shack Color Computer 2 cost 
just $34.95.
  Zork sold so well that Infocom published sequels, called Zork 2 
and Zork 3. Then Infocom published other variations, where the 
cave's been replaced by experiences in outer space or by 
thrillers involving spies, murders, mysteries, and haunted 
castles. Infocom's latest big hits are The Hitchhiker's Guide to 
the Galaxy (based on the award-winning wacky outer-space novel by 
Doug Adams) and Leather Goddesses of Phobos (which lets you 
choose among three naughtiness levels, from ``prude'' to 
``lewd''; choosing ``lewd'' makes the computer asks whether 
you're at least 18; it also asks whether you're male or female, 
and you get a titillating 3-D comic book with a scratch-and-sniff 
card).
  Infocom was an independent company but has been acquired by 
Activision.

           Sierra On-Line
  Shortly after Infocom developed the microcomputer version of 
Zork, Sierra On-Line developed Super Stud Adventure, which was 
quickly renamed Softporn Adventure. Instead of exploring a cave, 
you explore a brothel. To enter the brothel, you must find the 
secret password (hint: go to the bathroom and look at the 
graffiti!) and find enough money to pay for your pleasures (by 
taking a taxi to a casino and gambling).
  That was the first urban adventure, and also the first sexual 
adventure. The ad for it showed a photograph of the programmers 
(Ken & Roberta Williams) nude in a California hot tub. 
Fortunately, the water in the tub was high enough to cover any 
problems.
  The original adventure, Infocom adventures, and Softporn 
Adventure display wonderful text but no graphics. They're called 
text adventures.
  The most ambitious graphics adventure ever created was Time 
Zone, published in 1981 by Sierra On-Line. The Time Zone program 
is so long that it fills both sides of 6 Apple disks; that's 12 
sides altogether! In fact, the game's so long that nobody's ever 
finished playing it! Here's how to play . . . 
  You use a computerized ``time machine'', which transports you 
to 9 times (400 million B.C., 10000 B.C., 50 B.C., 1000 A.D., 
1400, 1700, 1982, 2082, and 4082) and 8 locations (North America, 
South America, Europe, Africa, Asia, Australia, Antarctica, and 
Outer Space).
  Wherever you go, your screen shows a high-resolution color 
picture of where you are. For example, if you choose 
``approximately 1400'', Christopher Columbus will welcome you 
aboard his ship. Altogether, the game contains over 1400 
pictures! You travel through history, searching for clues that 
help you win.
  Time Zone is historically accurate and doesn't let you cheat. 
For example, when you find a book of matches in the year 2082, 
your time machine will let you carry the matches back to 1982 but 
not to 1700 ___ since matches weren't invented until 1800.
  Living through history isn't easy. Jonathan Rotenberg, chairman 
of the Boston Computer Society, played the game and said:
I've been killed dozens of times. I've been assassinated by 
Brazilian terrorists, karate-chopped by a Brazilian monk, eaten 
by a tyrannosaur, crushed in an Andes avalanche, stampeded by a 
buffalo, overcome by Antarctic frostbite, and harpooned by Mayan 
fishermen.
And you see it all in color!
  Time Zone sold for $99.95. Alas, teenagers didn't buy it, 
because it took too long to win and was too expensive. Sierra 
On-Line has stopped selling it.
                                         Recently, Sierra On-Line 
has made Softporn Adventure even more exciting, by adding 
graphics. The new graphic versions are called Leisure Suit Larry 
in the Land of the Lounge Lizards, Leisure Suit Larry 2: Looking 
for Love in all the Wrong Places, and Leisure Suit Larry 3: 
Passionate Patti in Pursuit of the Pulsating Pectorals.

                                                Creative Computing
                                         Dave Ahl, publisher of 
Creative Computing Magazine, copied the movie Roller Coaster onto 
a videodisk, then attached the videodisk player to the computer, 
to let the computer control which part of the movie you see. He 
wrote an adventure game that lets the computer illustrate each 
location and action by a 10-second clip from the movie. When you 
play the game, your goal is to save your friends before they ride 
on a roller coaster that crashes. It's the world's first video 
adventure. Your actions determine which part of the movie you see 
next, which disaster scenes you manage to avoid, and the fate of 
your friends. It's the world's first interactive movie.
                                         Although Dave and his 
friends all love to play the game, the Actors Guild refuses to 
let Dave sell the game to strangers. The Guild claims that when 
Dave shows the scenes in an order different from the original 
movie's, he's destroying the ``artistic integrity'' of the 
actors' performances.
                                         Ha! Does the Guild 
really believe that a grade-B horror flick has any artistic 
integrity at all?

                                                     Spinnaker
                                         Spinnaker publishes the 
Windham Classics. It's a series of adventure games based on kid's 
novels.
                                         You become Dorothy in 
The Wizard of Oz, Jim Hawkins in Treasure Island, Fritz in Swiss 
Family Robinson, Alice in Alice in Wonderland, and Green-Sky in 
Below the Root. The games include graphics. To make those 
adventure games easy, whenever you get stuck the computer helps 
you by printing a list of words to try typing.
                                         Each computerized novel 
costs just $9.95 for the Commodore 64, $39.95 for the Apple 2e & 
2c and IBM PC.
                                         Spinnaker also publishes 
Telarium Software, based on novels that are more adult. You 
become Perry Mason in The Case of the Mandarin Murder, the crime 
reporter in Agatha Christie's The Scoop, the researcher in 
Michael Crichton's Amazon, and the major characters in Fahrenheit 
451, Rendezvous with Rama, Dragonworld, and Nine Princes in 
Amber.
                                         The Perry Mason one, 
besides being fun, also trains you to become a lawyer. It comes 
with a lawyer's handbook that explains the 6 ways to object to 
the prosecutor's questions: you can complain that the 
prosecutor's asking an IRRELEVANT question, relying on HEARSAY, 
BROWBEATING the witness, LEADING the witness to a suggested 
answer, getting an OPINION from a person who isn't an expert, or 
trying to get facts from a person who's UNQUALIFIED to know them.
                                         To make sure you 
understand those six ways to object, the handbook includes a 
multiple-choice test about them. The test is titled ``Study Guide 
for the California Bar Exam''.
                                         The game also lets you 
invent your own questions for the witnesses and give commands to 
your secretary (Della Street) and detective (Paul Drake). It 
costs $39.95 for the Apple 2e & 2c and IBM PC, $32.95 for the 
Commodore 64. The other games in the Tellarium series cost the 
same or less.
             Broderbund
  Broderbund has published a game called Where in the World is 
Carmen Sandiego? You try to catch and arrest the notorious 
international thief, Carmen Sandiego, and the other thieves in 
her organization, called the Villain's International League of 
Evil (V.I.L.E.), as they flee to 30 cities all over the world.
  To help you understand those 30 cities, the game comes with a 
geography book: the 928-page unabridged edition of The World 
Almanac and Book of Facts.
  As you play the game, you unearth clues about which cities the 
thieves are fleeing to. But to use the clues, you must look up 
facts in the almanac. By playing the game, you learn how to use 
an almanac, and also learn geography. When you figure out which 
city to travel to, the screen shows a map of the world, shows you 
traveling to the city, and then shows a snapshot of what the city 
looks like, so that the game also acts as a travelogue.
  Because the game is so educational, it's won awards from 
Classroom Computer Learning Magazine and the Software Publishers 
Association.
  Strictly speaking, it's not a true adventure game, since it 
does not let you input your own words and phrases. Instead, you 
just choose from menus, which make the game easier for 
youngsters.
  Broderbund has created three sequels. Where in the USA is 
Carmen Sandiego? has you chasing Carmen's gang across all 50 
states; the game comes with Fodor's USA travel guide. Where in 
Europe in Carmen Sandiego? takes you to all 34 countries in 
Europe and comes with Rand McNally's Concise Atlas of Europe. 
Where in Time is Carmen Sandiego? lets you romp through 
historical time periods.
  For the Apple 2 family and IBM PC, the original version costs 
$39.95, and the sequels cost $44.95 each. For the Commodore 64, 
you pay $5 less. Those are the list prices; discount dealers 
charge even less.

           Electronic Arts
  My favorite text adventure is Amnesia, published by Electronic 
Arts for the Apple 2e & 2c and IBM PC. Like Softporn Adventure, 
Amnesia takes place in a city; but Amnesia is far more 
sophisticated than its predecessor.
  When you start playing Amnesia, you wake up in a hotel room in 
New York City. You discover you have no clothes (you're stark 
naked), no money (you're flat broke), and no recollection of who 
you are ___ because you're suffering from amnesia. You don't even 
remember your name.
  You look at yourself, and notice you're a male. Your first 
problem is to get some clothes and money. But then you learn you 
have other problems that are even more serious. For example, you 
get a call from a guy who reminds you that today is your wedding 
day, and that if you don't hurry up and marry his daughter 
without further mess-ups, he'll use his pistol. You also discover 
that the FBI is looking for you, because the state of Texas has 
reported that you're a murderer.
  After getting some clothes (so you can stop scaring the hotel's 
maids), there are several ways to get out of your jam. (I've 
tried them all!)
  One way is to say ``yes'' to the pistol-packing papa and marry 
his daughter, who takes you to Australia, where you live on a 
sheep ranch for the rest of your life. But then you never learn 
who you really are! Whenever you ask your wife about your past, 
she simply says, ``You wouldn't want to know.'' You die of old 
age, peacefully; but even on your deathbed, you
don't learn who you are; and so when you die, you feel sad. In 
that case, you score lots of points for survival, but zero for 
detective work and zero for character development.
                                         A different solution is 
to say ``no'' to the bride and ___ after getting bloodied ___ run 
out of the hotel, onto the streets of New York. Then the fun 
begins ___ because hiding on the program's disks is a complete 
map of Manhattan (from Battery Park all the way up to 110th 
Street), including all the streets and landmarks and even all the 
subway stops! Yes, this gigantic game includes 94 subway 
stations, 200 landmarks, and 3,545 street corners.
                                         As you walk one block 
north, then one block east, etc., the computer describes 
everything you pass, even the most sublime (The Museum of Modern 
Art) and the most ridiculous (Nedick's hamburger stands). You can 
ride the subway ___ after you get enough money to buy a token. 
The game even includes all the subway signs, such as ``Downtown 
___ Brooklyn'' and ``Uptown ___ Queens''. To catch the E train, 
you must hop in as soon as it arrives. Otherwise, it departs 
without you, and the computer says ``an F train comes'' instead.
                                         As night falls, the 
computer warns you to find a place to sleep. (You can't go back 
to your hotel, since you're in trouble there.) To find a free 
place to stay, you can try phoning the names in your address book 
___ once you find a phone booth, and get a quarter to pay for 
each call. The address book contains 17 listings: J.A., A.A., 
Chelsea H., drugs, F, Sue G., E.H., interlude, kvetch, J.L., R & 
J, sex, soft, Lila T., T.T.T.T., and Wit's End. Each of those 
listings is an adventure in itself, and you must explore each of 
them thoroughly, to fully discover who you really are.
                                         If your body ever gets 
weak (from sleeplessness or hunger or being hit by too many 
muggers), you faint on the sidewalk, wake up in a hospital, and 
get found there by the FBI, which returns you to the state of 
Texas, which executes you for murder. But even that deadly ending 
has a cheery note. For example, you can choose your last meal: 
would you like steak and potatoes, or turkey? When you finally 
die, you can wind up in purgatory, which consists mainly of 
getting mosquito bites, with an opportunity to take a rowboat to 
heaven, if you can just remember your real name and tell the 
boatman.
                                         The entire adventure has 
the structure of a good novel: a gripping introduction (you're a 
nude, broke, amnesiac groom in a hotel), a thorough development 
section (wandering through the streets of New York, searching for 
your identity and the meaning of life), and a conclusion (a 
whimsical death scene, or something better).
                                         The text was written by 
Thomas Disch, the award-winning sci-fi novelist. It's lyrical. 
For example, when you escape from the hotel and walk out onto the 
streets of New York, the computer says: ``It feels great to be a 
single faceless, nameless atom among the million others churning 
about in the grid of Manhattan's streets. It feels safe.''
                                         The game combines all 
our nightmares about New York into a wild, exciting adventure.
                                         The game's affected my 
own life. Now whenever something in my life goes wrong, instead 
of groaning I just say, ``I'm in another wild part of Amnesia!'' 
In Amnesia, as in life, the only way to score top points for 
living is to experience it all. To live life to the fullest, you 
must take risks, have the courage to face unknown dangers, and 
revel in the excitement of the unexpected.
                                         Though Amnesia received 
lots of praise from reviewers, sales were disappointing. 
Electronic Arts stopped publishing it. I bet if they'd rename it 
``Lost in New York'', it would sell well ___ at least in New 
York!