{"id":15771,"date":"2019-11-03T17:00:25","date_gmt":"2019-11-03T22:00:25","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/scruss.com\/blog\/?p=15771"},"modified":"2022-10-09T08:51:45","modified_gmt":"2022-10-09T12:51:45","slug":"taxman-a-basic-game-from-1973","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/scruss.com\/blog\/2019\/11\/03\/taxman-a-basic-game-from-1973\/","title":{"rendered":"Taxman – a BASIC game from 1973"},"content":{"rendered":"\n

Back in 1973, the future definitely wasn’t equally distributed. While in Scotland we had power cuts, the looming three-day week and Miners’ Strike I<\/em>, in California, the People’s Computer Company<\/a> (PCC) was giving distributed computer access, teaching programming and publishing computer magazines. I don’t think we got that kind of access until (coincidentally) Miners’ Strike II<\/em> a little over 10 years later.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\"taxman
flares? platforms? centre parting? bow tie? It was 1973 after all<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n\n\n\n

But the People’s Computer Company magazine archive<\/a> is a sunny thing, overfilled with joyful amateur enthusiasm and thousands of lines of code fit to make Edsger Dijkstra explode. Of course it was written for the local few who had access to mainframes and terminals, but it hardly seems to come from the same world as the dark evenings in Scotland spent cursing the smug neighbours’ house with all the lights on, their diesel generator putt-putt<\/em>ing into the night.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Lots of these games from the PCC era are forgettable now. The raw challenge of guessing a number on a text screen has paled somewhat in the face of 4K photo-realistic rendering. One game I found is still a little challenging, at least until you work out the trick of it: Taxman<\/a><\/strong> (or as the authors tried to rename it later, Factor Monster<\/a>). Here’s a tiny sample game transcript:<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Hi, I'm the taxman\nDo you want the regulations?\n(1=Yes, 0=No)? 0\n\nHow many numbers do you want\nin the list? 6\n\nThe list is: 1  2  3  4  5  6 \n\nYou take? 5\nYour total is  5 \nI get  1 \nMy total is  1 \n\nNew list:  2  3  4  6 \n\nYou take? 6\nYour total is  11 \nI get  2  3 \nMy total is  6 \n\nNew list:  4 \nI get  4 \nbecause no factors of any number\nare left.\nMy total is  10 \n\nYou  11  Taxman  10 \nYou win !!!\n\nAgain (1=yes, 0=no)?<\/pre>\n\n\n\n
Seems I sneaked a lucky win there, but it’s harder than it looks. The rules are simple:<\/p>\n\n\n\n