Forums > Suggestions > Has there been talk about Mainframe/Timesharing as a platform?
The cranky hermit (2926) on 11/20/2015 2:15 PM · Permalink · Report
Sample user story: I am a gamer who is curious about the "Roguelike" genre's history, so I use MG to look up Rogue. According to MG, the first release was DOS in 1984, and now I think its place in the chronology comes after Telengard, Sword of Fargoal, and Hack. But this is incorrect; it was first played in 1980, well before those games.
I think that having "Arcade" as a platform sets a precedent that it's OK to add "Mainframe/Timesharing" as a categorical platform, and there's a lot of important history that deserves documentation. Adventure, Zork, The Oregon Trail, and Tetris are other big computer games with minicomputer origins. And the murky history of the PLATO IV system is pretty important to the genre of CRPGs; you have possibly the first CRPGs ever, and Oubliette, a very different game from its DOS release, is a clear predecessor to Wizardry.
I know there are some things that made this tricky. Reliable information on these systems is scarce, and defining what constitutes a "release" is complicated. But has anyone talked about it?
Tracy Poff (2094) on 11/20/2015 2:42 PM · Permalink · Report
Oh my, yes! We have talked about it! That's the most advanced effort I know of in that direction, from last year.
The short version is that we all think it's a really good and important idea, but we have no idea how to actually go about navigating this particular maze of twisty little passages.
Are we a year wiser, or only a year older? Is it time to revisit the issue?
The cranky hermit (2926) on 11/20/2015 5:55 PM · Permalink · Report
Thanks for that discussion! That was... overwhelming.
I like Rola's question "how do I access this game." I'd expand it to mean "how DID I access this game during the year of its release." The platforms in MG seem to answer this question pretty consistently. The consoles mean "have this console and run the media on it," the OS's mean "have this OS and run the media on it," and arcade means "visit an establishment that owns one of these things."
These methods come to mind:
"Be in the physical presence of a minicomputer."
"Use a thin client (dumb terminal, SSH, wireless streaming HDMI dongle, whatever) to connect to the host."
"Get source code or byte code and use your favorite compatible interpreter to play it."
Either would be overridden by any existing specific platforms. For instance, a browser game could be considered a thin client game, but we already have Browser for that. And PS Now titles would go under PS4. Though if Sony released the API and a bunch of PS now apps started popping up, it could be considered "thin client." And Infocom's titles would stay as they are; even though you CAN extract the Z-code from a TRS-80 release and play it in Frotz, that's not how you were expected to play Zork in 1980. But a fanmade Z-code adventure distributed without an interpreter could qualify, as might a BASIC game that was originally published in a magazine, which you had to type yourself in order to play.
Specific details like what kind of machine hosts the game, or what language the source code is in, seem like details that belong in tech specs. Which I realize is important too.