A Critical Hit
acriticalhit.com · Group blog · on HN since 2017
Kate Willaert's site covers video game history, with interviews and research on early games like Moonlander and The Sumerian Game.
What HN saysHN commenters praise her research and link her pieces on Moonlander, the Sumerian Game, and the earliest software Easter egg for historical context.
15HN people shared it
6linked it in comments
9stories submitted
160story points
2 years agolast shared
2017people per year2026
Most-shared posts
- 1The Sumerian Game: The Most Important Video Game You've Never Heard Of (2021)7 people · 155 points · first shared 2019 · 19 comments on HN
- 2Make Love Not War: Talking with the Creator of the First Software Easter Egg4 people · 4 points · first shared 2021 · discussion on HN
- 3Moonlander one giant leap for game design2 people · first shared 2022
- 4How Did Fans React to the Empire Strikes Back in 1980?1 people · 1 points · first shared 2017 · discussion on HN
- 5Video essays1 people · first shared 2022
What HN people wrote when they linked it
amiga386 · 2024-04-10
Sad.
They (THEY(TM)) also took away typing "man" at 00:01 (or later 00:30) would print "gimme gimme gimme"
https://unix.stackexchange.com/questions/405783/why-does-man-print-gim…
And they took away the "MAKE LOVE" (returns "NOT WAR?") easter egg in MIT's TECO editor on the PDP-6
https://www.acriticalhit.com/make-love-not-war-first-software-easter-e…
salty-horse · 2022-02-03
Kate Willært does great research. I highly recommend checking out the video essays:
https://www.acriticalhit.com/category/video-essays/
dn3500 · 2024-06-14
I was confused for a minute because I remember playing Spacewar on a PDP-1 in the 1960s and mis-remembered there also being a lander game. But there wasn't, Storer was the first. There is an interesting history here:
https://www.acriticalhit.com/moonlander-one-giant-leap-for-game-design…
caslon · 2022-04-08
It also mentions Jack Burness, the author of MOONLANDER.
Here's an article that interviewed him last year:
https://www.acriticalhit.com/moonlander-one-giant-leap-for-game-design…
jquast · 2020-04-09
I would like to think the very first strategy home computer game was about Hammurabi, Hamurabi.bas, https://www.acriticalhit.com/sumerian-game-most-important-video-game-y…
DonHopkins · 2024-07-07
Hamurabi is a text-based strategy video game of land and resource management. It was first developed under the name King of Sumeria or The Sumer Game by Doug Dyment in 1968 at Digital Equipment Corporation as a computer game for fellow employee Richard Merrill's newly invented FOCAL programming language.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hamurabi_(video_game)
Ahl, David (November 1978). BASIC Computer Games (2nd ed.). Workman Publishing. pp. 78–79. ISBN 978-0-89480-052-8. (archive)
https://archive.org/details/Basic_Computer_Games_Microcomputer_Edition…
Hamurabi - (1978) - Apple II - WIN! HD
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CIbiqMO0EY4
Long before Where In The World Is Carmen Sandiego or The Oregon Trail, there was The Sumerian Game.
https://www.acriticalhit.com/sumerian-game-most-important-video-game-y…
Game Mechanics That Are Older Than You Think
Our mythbusting run that reveals the true pioneers behind physics, first-person shooting, and light-guns (not Half-Life 2, Doom, and Duck Hunt respectively).
City Simulation - Credited to: SimCity (1989) - Beaten by 24 years
https://web.archive.org/web/20160207152548/http://www.1up.com/features…