Forums > Game Forums > Hamurabi > There can be only one...
Izmir Egal (73) on 7/22/2012 8:43 PM · Permalink · Report
MobyGames Trivia: "This game appeared in 1969, written by Rick Merrill."
MobyGames The Sumer Game variants: "The game was written in 1968 by Doug Dyment."
Rola (8483) on 7/22/2012 8:56 PM · edited · Permalink · Report
Well spotted. Wikipedia says it should be Dyment.
Patrick Bregger (301035) on 7/22/2012 9:11 PM · Permalink · Report
Our DOS credits say Merril.
Pseudo_Intellectual (66362) on 7/22/2012 10:09 PM · Permalink · Report
My information is only as good as my sources. Perhaps somewhere along the line Merrill's invention of the language was confused with the invention of the game that was written in that language.
http://www.1up.com/features/game-mechanics-older
"A tech author named David Ahl ported the well-known game to BASIC in 1978. Prior to that, the most popular version was played on mainframes and programmed in FOCAL. While traditional histories cite Richard Merrill as the man who created the game in FOCAL in 1969, others have claimed that a man named Doug Dyment invented it in 1968. To confuse matters even more, as early as 1965 there was a program called The Sumerian Game, programmed by William McKay of IBM."
There should be credited source available somewhere to conclusively set the record straight.
Some wonks are trying to chase down the truth as at http://six.pairlist.net/pipermail/game_preservation/2010-May/001841.html and http://www.classiccmp.org/pipermail/cctech/2010-March/074002.html