How many Atari games were brought over from mainframe games

[JonnyBritish]

I believe that the game Nukewar was originally a mainframe game. I also think that the Civilisation series of games originally came from a mainframe game.

Does anyone have any good web pages talking about old mainframe games with perhaps links to source etc?

 

It would be interesting to get the mainframe source for nukewar then compare to the Avalon Hill Atari version for example.

[Rybags]

Star Raiders - aspects are loosely based on the Star Trek games doing the rounds, especially the Galactic Map.

 

Star Trek was on the mainframe possibly before most home computers existed. The thing is, probably all those classic mainframe games are just turn-based text only. I can't recall any having even vector graphics, you'd have needed a 3179 compatible terminal to run that anyway. And even then, it wouldn't be realtime - terminals just didn't work that way.

 

All those dictator/serf type games might have orignated from mainframes. I remember first seeing such a game for the TRS-80. Another case of being turn-based and having minimal to none reliance on any graphics.

 

No idea what language the games would have used. Most likely a compiled high-level language like Fortran or PL/1... or maybe they even took the trouble doing them in Assembler.

Some of the games floating around might have been in CLIST or REXX - it's a fairly simple job to translate that to Basic.

Edited August 18, 2010 by Rybags

[JohnBuell]

Star Raiders - aspects are loosely based on the Star Trek games doing the rounds, especially the Galactic Map.

 

Star Trek was on the mainframe possibly before most home computers existed. The thing is, probably all those classic mainframe games are just turn-based text only. I can't recall any having even vector graphics, you'd have needed a 3179 compatible terminal to run that anyway. And even then, it wouldn't be realtime - terminals just didn't work that way.

 

All those dictator/serf type games might have orignated from mainframes. I remember first seeing such a game for the TRS-80. Another case of being turn-based and having minimal to none reliance on any graphics.

 

No idea what language the games would have used. Most likely a compiled high-level language like Fortran or PL/1... or maybe they even took the trouble doing them in Assembler.

Some of the games floating around might have been in CLIST or REXX - it's a fairly simple job to translate that to Basic.

 

And of course, Zork. Was Star Raiders based on Star Trek or Spacewar (which is splitting hairs a bit, but Spacewar had already been Atari's first video game attempt)?

[Rybags]

I'd say SR was inspired by a number of things.

 

Battlestar Galactica (Zylons, Long-Range Scan), Star Wars (overall look/feel), Star Trek (Galactic Map, Torpedos). I suppose the LRS looks a bit like Space Wars too, so you might throw that in.

[ledzep]

I suppose you'd have to include Stellar Track in that grouping, too. And the Basic Programming cartridge, hahaha, probably had the same RAM as some old mainframes.

[+therealbountybob]

There was also Level 9's text adventure - Colossal Adventure from the old mainframe Adventure

link and link

[high voltage]

Plenty

 

Board games: Checkers, Chess etc

 

Just check out Plato, they had RPGs, Flight Simulators, Multiplayer games all that stuff in the middle 70s.

[jhd]

All those dictator/serf type games might have orignated from mainframes. I remember first seeing such a game for the TRS-80. Another case of being turn-based and having minimal to none reliance on any graphics.

 

Many years ago I acquired a set of PDP-8 manuals and they included such a game as a programming example.

 

Unfortunately, I no longer remember any of the details -- including what language the game was written in. It may well have been PL/I.