John Conway's Game of Life: PC / Mac

Can a universe of meaningful complexity emerge from a set of simple rules? In 1970 a cellular automaton caused quite a stir and appeared to lend support to this argument.

Beginning with a simple configuration of your choosing and by letting the rules run their course in an iterative sequence. A bewildering array of forms emerge: explosions, contusions, movements, self-replication, predators, prey, oscillations, stasis; to quote Darwin, 'endless forms most beautiful and most wonderful'.

What's more, the implications of any given configuration over a certain number can not be plotted with complete mathematical certainty. The Game of Life is insoluble. And it is only one of hundreds of similar cellular automaton programs that can create their own universes with boundaries infinite. What can be learned from these phenomena? In one sense the proliferation of rule-sets for these games is itself a Game of Life. Some spawn fascinating universes such as John Conway's while others amount to little or nothing.

It was proved at great length that the Life Universe could function as a universal computer or Turing Machine. This along with its production of emergent, unpredictable phenomena gave it a certain mystique. I am unsure of the significance of this, but it certainly raises interesting questions. Q. What is a game? A. Doesn't matter. Q. Is life, just a sequence of logical operations? A. No. Q. Isn't the Game of Life just a logical system, and doesn't it only tell us about the nature of other logical systems. A. I would say, yes. Q. Is the universe a logical system? A. No. Q. Is the Game of Life truly infinite? A. No. Q. What constitutes emergence? Q. To what extent can entropy be reversed? Q. What is the limit of complexity? Q. Where can I download Game of Thrones Season 4? Q. What answer remains satisfactory while alien to the word 'cause'?

Overview at The Wonders of Math
Excellent Game of Life program for PC and Mac
The Recursive Universe. A seminal book dealing with The Game of Life, entropy and modern physics.
The Life Lexicon. A taxonomic database of life objects.
Numberphile: John Conway explains why life is overhyped.
Breaking News in 'The Life Universe'

Whether you think life, the universe and everything is merely a sequence of logical operations or whether Game of Life and its philosophy is just naive computer science tosh: mucking about with the program is certainly diverting. And when someone next enters your foul smelling boudoir and asks irascibly "WHEN ARE YOU GOING TO STOP PLAYING THOSE COMPUTER GAMES AND GET A LIFE?!" you can respond "WHEN I CREATE A LIFE BY PLAYING THIS COMPUTER GAME - NOW LEAVE MY BOUDOIR!!!"

Uplink - PC / Mac / Linux

Have you ever dreamt of being the fat guy from Jurassic Park? The straggly haired loser from the X-Files? Or the delusional chump from Goldeneye? Well that wait is over. Uplink simulates the action-packed life of a computer hacker without the tedium of paranoia, programming skills etc. As you inveigle your way through corporate data enclaves, deleting files willy-nilly, manufacturing fake logs and absconding with company credits you'll slowly progress up the underworld ranks earning the virtual-respect of your peers and unlocking juicy high-profile missions. Later, as you recline on your swivel-chair after a hard days (w)hacking, thoughts turn to the delightful romance of computer upgrades and many a credit will be spent on gateway mods, RAM and helpful software (torrents?!) However don't expect to be warped suddenly into a TRONlike wonderland: your OS is distinctly quick and dirty and no amount of processor power can simulate acting skills as feeble as Keanu Reeves'.

. . .  and all this just to spy on a friends Facebook account.

. . . and all this just to hide your sordid search history.

Download Demo from Homepage
Download Bonus Disc (Soundtrack, Wallpapers etc)
Premier Mod Site 
Cyberpunk Review Article
Fassbinder's Welt am Draht (good movie about programming)

Uplink is one of a minute pool of hacking games and is easily the best. With the option of an overarching story or freelance gameplay, unique interface and excellent techno soundtrack you may wonder why hacking isn't a more popular pastime. Then you watch Jurassic Park and remember why.

Bamboozle - Channel 4 / Teletext

Restricted to analogue receivers of television in the British Isles, Bamboozle is a quiz game transmitted over the nations Channel 4 Teletext service. Sandwiched in-between the vertical blanking signal of image frames the technology makes ingenious use of precious bandwidth. A precursor in many ways to the World Wide Web and originally developed by the BBC, similar systems were soon adopted by France (Antiope), Canada (Telidon) and the United States and their popularity spread steadily onwards to countries and channels across the globe. This revolutionary system mostly offered weather reports, newsflashes, stocks and other rather juiceless services but now and again some aspiring teletext artist attempted to make comic books, interactive stories or quizzes to provide light hearted trivial pursuits and unique gaming experiences.

All the excitement of an IMAX!

 The legendary Fun and Games page: perfect for absorbing the tedium of ad-brakes.

You just know you've had it when a Cricket or James Bond question rears its ugly head.

and I promised I wouldn't cry...

The game in question is hosted by one appropriately named Bamber Boozler (perhaps an allusion to the British game show host Bamber Gascoigne, one-time presenter of University Challenge) who presents the player with a selection of twelve (or 15 in days gone by) questions (often following a particular theme) which must be answered correctly in sequence lest you be boozled. If you answer incorrectly you have a chance to redeem yourself with a question from his wife Bambette Boozler and can resume quizzing. Bambette is not the only member of his extended family that has an interest in quizzing: his son Buster Boozler often hosts a special children's edition on Sundays, with backup from loving daughter Bonnie Boozler. Other cameos have been made by sports mad Brian Boozler, a ghost, Santa and I seem to remember one Brendel Boozler fronting a special classically themed event. I have never seen either of his parents present a quiz or indeed be alluded to and fear they may be dead.

Excellent Teletext History, Fansite and Archive
Wikipedia Article on Teletext Technology
Wikipedia Article on Bamboozle 
Article at UK Gameshows 

Even sadder is the fact that with analogue signals being replaced the length and breadth of the country the last ever bamboozle duly aired on the 14th of December 2009. This and similar divertissements helped to enrich the televisual experience: offering much needed respite from commercial brakes, news bulletins or god forbid the EastEnders omnibus: I can only hope that there is room for software of similar charm in the new gleaming digital television services of the future. As an aside...I wonder what ascii gaming treasures hailing from foreign climes, transmitted via this arcane method have and will be lost to the ongoing revolution as it brutally plunders the Earth of teletext...

Bamber Gascoigne...the enigma...

Cosmology of Kyoto - PC / Mac

"A Visual Mindscape of Old Japan"

Imagine a Google Street Map of 10th century Kyoto imbued with the myths and legends of a millenia old civilization: oblique, obtuse and relentlessly low key: the Cosmology of Kyoto panders only to travellers with an open mind and no sense of direction. After barely a few clicks you will be hopelessly lost in some medieval backwater: riled by daemon folk and obfuscated by existential peasants! The game is rich in genuine history and folklore, encouraging the traveller to learn by participation, the mythology of feudal Japan; or failing that to consult the copious documentation: which acts as your trusty dog-eared Lonely Planet. The ancient Imperial Capital Kyoto (or Heiankyo) and the legendary Heian period are brought to life with unnerving ethereal soundscapes, a litany of wails, yelps and mumbled mantras emanate from dubious side streets and a distinctive graphic style: part traditional, part modern manga depicts scenes of strange depravity, alluring mysticism and quotidian detail.














Times are tough for the peons of Heiankyo...














...and they don't get much better.














Although high in protein the brain is
perhaps not the most sensible of your
own organs to consume initialy?!














This is the future of interaction with the past.

Download from Classic PC Games
Roger Ebert's (yes...old goggle eyes himself) review for Wired
Journal of Early Modern Japan
Event List at GameFAQ's
MobyGames Screenshots

I greatly enjoy this program and have lost much time and gained much erratic knowledge plodding its labyrinthine, hallucinatory pavements: ignoring the witheringly prosaic format offered by most adventure games or edutainment titles; Cosmology of Kyoto successfully simulates the experience of entering an unfamiliar place, time and dimension (ok...not that I'd know). This game can be quite hard to find even for download (there used to be a full version at HoTU), if nothing else works I would try Underground Gamer.

"In my old home
which I forsook, the cherries
are in bloom."

Darklands - PC *Masterpiece*

Heroic Role-Playing Adventures in Medieval Germany

The computer RPG has become a rather different sort of animal to the pen and paper progenitors of the genre. The computer was originally expected to take the role of dungeon master: encouraging the player to engage imaginatively with the source material: however this attitude gave way very quickly to the computer acting as automated taskmaster, reducing the player (by way of exp, new weapons, magic etc) to an beleaguered dogsbody; grinding characters, amassing trinkets and killing the proverbial foozle. I am not saying this style of play isn't fun and it can be integrated with the more imaginative style of cRPG: but it should be considered of secondary importance if you want a game with substance.

Darklands is made of such wondrous substance and is amongst the handful of computer RPG's that grasped the potential of the medium. The only RPG ever released by legendary software house Microprose (developed by MPSLabs), it offers the player an experience unique in the computer gaming canon. The game world exists as a fantastical palimpsest of the real medieval Germany, where the myths, legends and superstitions of the time are layered over the deep historical reality of the period: encounters play out more like vignettes while beautifully illustrated story boards explain your current predicament. Characters age, grow old and die, skills are learnt and then forgotten, equipment rusts, your fame waxes and wanes and the game world is persistent, evolving and never ends...

Should modern games come bundled with a GPS?
No...probably not.












Another night on bald mountain.












"Well lets see...I can use flails, poleaxes and have a virtue of 99"
"You've got the job...but can you toss burgers?!"

Premier Darklands Fansite
Darklands Yahoo Discussion Group
Download from Abandonia
Intro at Youtube
History of cRPG at Gamasutra

...if you are looking for a game to play that will actually provide an enriching experience rather than a banal glorification of positive feedback then Darklands is the answer: it has had the answer since 1992 and almost nobody wants to know...

GNU Backgammon - PC / Mac

Hurmph! (he/she exclaims after being soundly thrashed) You should play me at chess it is far more logical.

Harooo! (he/she exclaims after winning with two lucky roles) Backgammon is more realistic than chess because it contains luck and I am just lucky.

Both these responses are true enough but miss the beauty of backgammon: the eventual triumph of tactics over luck. It is this for me makes the game more satisfying than chess. Plus when people insist on carping about the grand complexity of chess; I always hasten to add that a computer game like Heroes of Might and Magic 3 (or god forbid MOO3) is more complicated than chess by a factor of about 10! Naturally nobody who plays chess seriously knows anything about Heroes of Might and Magic...

...I know that in the Eastern Block, somewhere, lurks the Kasparov of HOMAM.

Anyway...Backgammon is still a long way from being solved like Draughts (in fact this was only a soft solution...all imperfect permutations have not been mapped...but good enough) and GNU Backgammon is the perhaps the most powerful and highly ranked artificial backgammon intelligence (ABI) in the world. In the computer Olympics of 2006 it crushed the nearest competitor BGBlitz 3-1 (in sets of 5, 15 point matches). Using advanced neural networks it can compete favourably with the best human and cybernetic (mainly BGBlitz, Jellyfish & Snowie) players in the world. If you can win a best of 7 match against GNU on Grand Master level then you should go and do something else! Not only is GNU incredibly strong, it is feature rich; including hundreds of dispaly, difficulty, match analysis and tutoring modes.

Download from Official GNU Backgammon Website
Selection of other Backgammon Programs to Download
Origins of Backgammon
Rules of the Game (not Renoir)
Yahoo Online Backgammon Server
Play the Royal Mesopotamian Game of Ur online at the British Museum
The Finest Book on Modern Backgammon: Magriel

Backgammon has existed in some form or another for at least five thousand years (possibly originating from the Royal Board Game of Ur in ancient Mesopotamia) although the modern version was draughted by Elizabethan tavern crawlers and finally standardised by Edmond Hoyle in 1743. Backgammon is truly a deep and rewarding game, but be warned: on the path to enlightenment you will be almost irreparably annoyed!!

Encarta Mindmaze - PC

Midway upon the journey of our life I found myself within a forest dark, For the straightforward pathway had been lost. Was Dante in fact playing Encarta Mindmaze and just being overly poetic?

This exploratory quiz game is a phenomena rarely encountered by the post-Wikipedia generation, only in the days when Encarta came lumped with your old 90's PC, in a desperate bid for some entertainment value, did many bored and unsuspecting PC users inadvertently stumble upon this initially fun but eventually witheringly tedious program. Lumber all the way to 20,000 points and you were amply rewarded with this text box (I thought I'd post this to save you the monumental task):

You enter a throne room filled with people. The king and queen are in their thrones. The other castle denizens stand in groups of three and four, talking, drinking and laughing. When the king notices you, he clears his throat, silencing the room. "Your attention, good friends! Our rescuer is here! Strange one from another time, we must thank you for breaking the curse and saving our castle. We know that you are anxious to return home, and the sorceress is prepared to perform the necessary magic, but we hope that you will honor us by first attending a banquet to be held in your honor this evening. Rather soon, actually: many of us are very hungry!

You enjoy the fine banquet that follows and are prepared to be sent back home by the sorceress. However, on the way to her chambers, the court alchemist stops you in the hall. "I'm so glad I found you, he says. The king did not reward you sufficiently, in my opinion, and I intend to make up for his oversight. I have nearly perfected the formula for changing lead into gold, and when I am finished, I will give you bags of it to take home with you! Just stay around a few more days... A week at most... No more than a month, definitely... A year at the absolute most, and I'm certain I'll have it..." He wanders off, lost in thought, and you hurry to the sorceress to be sent home at last.

Wikipedia Article
Some kids who have yet to play a "real" computer game!

Basically you navigate through a medieval maze (a dungeon crawl, if you will), enter strangely decorated rooms and answer general knowledge questions at varying degrees of difficulty. It doesn't sound like much but it had some strange sort of Borgian / Poe-esque atmosphere that could hold you in its thrall for hours. I believe it originally surfaced in Encarta 95 and has become less and less well known since becoming a hidden feature (ctrl-z) on later versions. It doesn't exist as a separate download to my knowledge; so if you fancy reliving those rainy days, I suggest picking up a copy of Encarta 95 for pennies, going through the usual channels or blowing the dust from that musty old software bundle...Microsoft Golf anyone?!

Quiz & Dragons - Arcade

You would think challenging a Black Pudding to a pub quiz would result in dreadful embarrassment for said Pudding...not so! It appears he has an almost limitless database of knowledge on American T.V shows of the fifties, baseball statistics and capital cities (why on earth wasn't this mentioned in the Monstrous Manual!), indeed the same can be said for; Troglodytes, Trolls, Bugbears, Owlbears, Wyverns, Werebadgers and many more of your favorite fantasy denizens.

The moment I saw this game I knew there was still true genius at work in the world! Travelling various fantasy maps via the role of die and engaging its ludicrous inhabitants in a battle of trivia. Along the way you may stop off at an inn where you can heal your wounds (yes...answer wrongly and you receive not only the shame of being outsmarted by a Kobold but actual physical damage...indeed you can die from not knowing the full names of all lead roles in Golden Girls) or perhaps meet a friendly elf who may bestow upon you a powerful magical artifact. Eventually after slaying the seven most mightiest dragons in the land you go on to duke it out in a test of wits with the irksome arch-deamon Gordian.

Only one of these characters looks particularly studious!


What a wonderful, wonderful world.


Surprisingly astute for a slime.


"For centuries have I guarded this treasure against the folly of mortals, you're fate will be no different from others. PREPARE TO MEET YOUR MAKER...Who was the star of Good Morning Vietnam?!"

Download from Emu Asylum
Article at SydLexia
Wikipedia Entry
Technical Info from System 16

Not all of the questions require you to have been born in small town America circa 1940, in fact there are a few rather excellent categories; such as mythology, literature and science. For this reason I would pick as my choice of character, the Wizard, as his special ability allows him on occasion to change to a more interesting branch of question. This game was originaly released at the Arcades and of course came be emulated on MAME; and later has made an appearance as part of the second installment of Capcom Classics for the PSP and PS2. Heartaly reccomended this to anyone who likes quizzes and dragons (and who doesnt!?)!

3 in Three - Mac *Masterpiece*

'There is no number 3 in Three'

3 in Three by Cliff Johnson is the best puzzle game ever made (with one possible exception...his earlier masterstroke: The Fools Errand). Welcome to a peculiar alien landscape ruled my letters, curious symbols and the omnipresent letter legislator. You are a typical number 3 (female) exiled from your spreadsheet during an unusual power surge and sent spiralling into the bowels of the computer. Your quest is to make the tortuous journey back to the desktop; through fields of binary digits, warped tesseracts and garbled symbolic crossroads: while all the time pandering the ludicrous machinations and cryptic jabberings of dollar signs, question marks, self important full stops and of course the letters.

Your so-called friends.


Ctrl-s.


Logic Grid


Linguistic Blackjack


Alphanumeralogical Codes

Between each puzzle is often a short cut scene where the true jumbled nature of communication is revealed and journeying ever deeper into the darkest recesses of the machine you come to realise that mathematics and language are not as different as they seem. Essentially 3 tries to tame the ambiguity of language with the rigours of mathematical logic while questing for a personal identity outside the rigid framework of number theory. All in a days work.

Cliff Johnsons Homepage
Home of the Underdogs Entry

A truly sublime game that will take give you many enjoyable evenings: puzzling contentedly into the night. It only ever recieved a release on the Mac but by using the excellent (and free) Mac Classic emulator for PC: Executor (donwload links and serial codes available on Cliff Johnson's site) the game can reach those who like their bread butter side up.

System Shock 2 - PC *Masterpiece*

Ranking amongst the very finest games ever made, System Shock 2 is still heralding the future of computer gaming almost ten years after its initial release. Alone and in constant danger, on board a vast starship billions of miles from Earth, you alone must thwart the sinister machinations of both a maniacal rogue artificial intelligence and an unknown alien consciousness; starting out with nothing more that a wrench. You wake to find the ship empty of human life and in a disturbing series of pre-recorded messages, journals and psychokinetic emanations (ghosts), slowly the dismal fate of your crew is revealed. Never in any other game has fear been made so palpable, never has the desire to survive transcended into virtual reality so distinctly. Played on the hardest difficulty setting (highly recommended) every bullet, every skill point and every ounce of cunning must be used to navigate the tortuous corridors of your interstellar prison. The groans, ominous mantras and the cold whirr of defence turrets keeps you transfixed to the edge of your seat; the use of sound in a game has never been used to such powerful effect. This game is deep and involving on a level that almost no other can match; employing the full use of an extensive range of weaponry, abundant psychic powers, skills, research trees, exotic cybernetic upgrades and gadgets. Ultimately System Shock 2 combines the depth and involvement of the best computer RPG's with the instant immersiveness typical of games from other genres. Merely describing the game mechanics do not do this game justice; the complete experience is one that will live on in video game legend.

Download from Underdogs
System Shock 2 Fansite
My Gamefaqs Top Ten Cyberpunk Games

It requires a little bit of patching and tweaking to get flawless performance on XP. There are various level editors, graphic updates and bug fixes which are all available from the aforementioned fansite. System Shock 2 gives a taste of what computer games could be. There can be no greater accolade.