To set the age of the game, I played it on my oldest brother’s hand-built Altair(some number) computer when that was cutting edge. You booted the thing by flipping a whole series of switches on the case – it took several minutes, even though he had the sequence memorized. The game itself might have been typed in from a printout in a computer fan magazine, though then it could be stored and loaded via the high tech breakthrough of storing on a tape on a basic cassette recorder.
I cannot recall what the game was called, and unfortunately Eldest Brother is long dead. (Though the Altair still sits in a box in the attic…)
The game was in black and white ((actually his screen was green and white.) There was one or multiple targets (depending on the level) represented I think by a white dot, maybe an asterisk or just a little circle. There were other white dots, several sizes, that were sort of little spiky balls.
The game play consisted of clicking on or very near a white dot, which acted as it you’d transfered energy to the dot. and made it move around the screen in sort of mechanically believable paths. Like, if you clicked at six o’clock to the dot, it would move towards the top of the screen. Clicking closer made the dot go faster, a bit further away it went slower. You could click near a moving dot to cause its path to warp appropriately. If your moving dot hit the edge of the screen it rebounded. It your dot hit another, they would affect each other, or sometimes get stuck together.
The goal was to get your dot to run into the target circle(s) which would sort of eat them. You had some limit, I don’t remember if it was number of clicks or time elapsed, to feed all the dots to the targets.
Believe it or not, I remember it being fun to play! But hey, this was just slightly after people would spend hours playing Pong.
Does this ring any bells for anyone? Maybe I could find it if I knew the title – they say the Internet never forgets!
The game you are thinking of is Target, a classic text-based or minimal character-graphics game that was adapted for the MITS Altair 8800 microcomputer in 1976. [1, 2]
How the Game Worked
The Gameplay: The game rendered a very simple playing area using character symbols (like a period or asterisk .) to represent a “dot” or missile, and another symbol to represent a target.
The Goal: Players used specific keys to change the trajectory or position of the moving dot across the terminal interface to make it successfully hit the target.
Yikes, classic good news/bad news. Someone else remembers the game and its name … but the name is the same as a chain of retail stores! All those “Target is having a computer game sale” links are totally swamping what I’m looking for.
Well, including terms like “Altair” in your search narrows it down considerably.
The May 1976 issue of “Computer Notes” references it, seems they had a separate mailing for the actual listings however.
Looks like it would have been 197 bytes, which is barely longer than the first two sentences of this reply I’m typing to you now? Games have sure become bloated in the 50 years since…
Type a description of the game, with references to the Altair, the game play, etc., into one of the LLMs and have it spit out a playable HTML version of the game. The result will be more than 197 bytes…
ETA: I just clicked on that Computer Notes link and, man, does that bring back memories of being a home computer hobbyist. My drug of choice was the Apple ][, not the Altair, though.
Looks like it’s here, you can order the source listing from this enthusiast page:
Scroll down to “Altair Software Library Update,” under “Altair software and miscelaneous” [sic]
" Target is a 9-page listing using a VDM video display and “bit 7 of an input device” (front panel?)."
Altair Software Library update, 60 pgs
short descriptions of several dozen programs, coding sheet,
source listings of: JAMON, kill the bit, target.
JAMON is five pages of code listings. Commands are to load
and dump and "go", all in octal (bleah). Kill the bit is a
one-page listing of a game using the front panel only.
Target is a 9-page listing using a VDM video display and
"bit 7 of an input device" (front panel?).
Not sure what he charges, but presumably worth it for a bit of nostalgia and the memories of playing with your late older brother.
Odd that you posted this request, I was just shopping for an Altair kit/replica yesterday.
If you found the game, I seriously doubt you could find a machine to run it. When Windows went to a 32bit platform, it had a tool that could run 16-bit apps via NTVDM (NT Virtual DOS Machine) and WOW (Windows on Windows). You could play some really old games right in Windows. Unfortunately, when Windows went to a 64 bit platform, those options no longer exist.
Interesting how our memories get warped… You remembered it as “clicking” near the dots, even though that was well before the computer mouse came into use. But that’s now so much the default way of interacting with computers, that your memory applied it to pre-mouse games as well.
