It’s not every day that I receive a Fuzzy Memory dating back to the early days of personal computing. Come to think of it, it’s no every day that I receive a Fuzzy Memory. But I digress — in this case, the computer in question isn’t even personal, but a mainframe PDP 11/34. The year? 1979.

Like always, I’m not an oracle of infinite knowledge and resources, so I need you (my adept readers) to help solve the mystery. And besides, I like making you do most of the work.

Advent, Trek, and Tripe

Robert wrote me a few days ago regarding a neolithic computer game from the disco era:

I have a new “fuzzy memory” search for you. When I first became addicted to computers in 1979, it was on a PDP 11/34 at my local college. That computer had 3 text-based games that endeared me to computers forever: Advent, Trek, and Tripe.

I have been able to find both Advent (which was the precursor to Zork) and Trek (a text-based Star Trek battle/strategy game). I have never tracked down a version of Tripe.

Tripe was a text-based parody of Star Trek. Key things that I recall about the game include:

• Away teams would raid a planet and “kill the women and rape the bad guys!”
• The ultimate weapon was the “dusn’t matter probe”. When fire, it would start playing one of Kirk’s famous speeches, at which point the enemy would commit suicide.

I don’t know if this game ever left the confines of the PDP, but it sure would be cool to track down a version of it.

Thanks,
Robert

The Search Begins

In this case, we’re fortunate: Robert knows the name of the game he’s looking for, and he knows the platform. But one key absence still prevents him from reliving his fondest gaming memories: the game itself. If anyone out there knows more about Tripe or how to obtain a copy of it, please let us know in the comments section. Perhaps there’s a more recent port of the game for another platform, or maybe someone has a disk image of the game that Robert could run on a PDP/11 emulator.

While you’re at it, feel free to leave your own mainframe memories in the comments below. Good luck!

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Have a memory of a computer, video game, computer software, or electronic toy you need help identifying? Send me an email describing your memories in detail. Hopefully, the collective genius of the VC&G readership can help solve your mystery.

This entry was posted on Thursday, November 13th, 2008 at 5:54 pm and is filed under Computer Games, Computer History, Fuzzy Memory, Regular Features, Retrogaming, Vintage Computing. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can skip to the end and leave a response. Pinging is currently not allowed.