Plough, Plover, and XYZZY

Very few of you will know what these words mean. For the those that do, you might be ready for a blast from the past.

You see, way back in the bad old days, there were no computer games. Then one day, a bored software guy realized that you could program a computer to present you with not just a game, but a whole adventure! Thus, the computer "quest" gaming genre were born with Adventure, sometimes called Colossal Caves.

I first played this game as a small child at my dad's lab. They would get me set up with a teletype terminal -- a keyboard attached to a mainframe computer, but instead of a glass screen it typed everything out on a scroll of paper -- and I'd be off adventuring the seemingly endless caverns and pathways.

(No, this wasn't in the 70's. I may be one step past 'young', but I'm not a dinosaur. This was in the 80's, and the equipment was outdated even then.)

My, how times have changed. The other day I thought, "I bet there is a java version of that old game out there somewhere." It took me all of 10 seconds (no kidding) on Google to find it.

If you want a glimpse at the earliest computer games, give it a go. As for XYZZY? Yes, the game has secrets.