Inspecting the Foundation of Mystery House,
John Aycock, Katie Biittner
Issued Date: 24 Jul 2019
Abstract
Computer games are recent artifacts that have had, and continue to have, enormous cultural impact. In this interdisciplinary collaboration between computer science and archaeology, we closely examine one such artifact: the 1980 Apple II game Mystery House, the first graphical adventure. We focus on implementation rather than gameplay, treating the game as a digital artifact. What can we learn about the game and its development process through reverse engineering and analysis of the code, data, and game image? Our exploration includes a technical critique of the code, examining the heretofore uncritical legacy of Ken Williams as a programmer. As game development is a human activity, we place it in a theoretical framework from archaeology, to show how a field used to analyze physical artifacts might adapt to shed new light on digital games.
Open Access Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivatives: CC BY-NC-ND
Download Media
OPEN ACCESS: CC BY-NC-ND PDF Open Access
DOI: 10.1558/jca.36745
References
ACM Digital Library. n.d. "HOPL: history of programming languages". Accessed June 15, 2018. https://dl.acm.org/event.cfm?id=RE352.
Adams, S. 1979. "An adventure in small computer game simulation." Creative Computing 5, no. 8: 90-97.
Aho, A. V., and J. D. Ullman. 1977. Principles of compiler design. Addison-Wesley.
Altice, N. 2015. I AM ERROR: the Nintendo family computer / entertainment system platform. MIT Press.
Apple Computer, Inc. 1978a. Applesoft II BASIC programming reference manual.
---. 1978b. Programmer's aid #1: installation and operating manual (Apple utility programs).
Aycock, J. 2016. Retrogame archeology: exploring old computer games. Springer.
Aycock, J., and A. Reinhard. 2017. "Copy protection in Jet Set Willy: Developing methodology for retrogame archaeology." Internet Archaeology 45. https://doi.org/10.11141/ia.45.2.
Bailey, G. 2015. "Symmetrical media archaeology: boundary and context." Journal of Contemporary Archaeology 2, no. 1: 41-52.
Bar-Yosef, O., and P. Van Peer. 2009. "The chaîne opératoire approach in middle paleolithic archaeology." Current Anthropology 50, no. 1: 103-131.
Berez, J. M., M. S. Blank, and P. D. Lebling. 1989. ZIP: Z-language interpreter program. Infocom internal document, draft.
Bishop, B. 1979. "APPLE II hires picture compression." MICRO - The 6502 Journal, no. 18: 17-24.
Boellstorff, T., B. Nardi, C. Pearce, and T. Taylor. 2012. Ethnography and virtual worlds: a handbook of method. Princeton University Press.
Budge, B. n.d. "Pinball Construction Set source code for Apple II." GitHub, last modified February 24, 2013, https://github.com/billbudge/PCS_AppleII.
Byron, T. 1990. "Roberta's bequest." STart: The ST Monthly 4, no. 8: 22-26.
Calingaert, P. 1979. Assemblers, compilers, and program translation. Computer Science Press.
Copplestone, T. 2017. "Adventures in archaeological game creation." SAA Archaeological Record 17, no. 2: 33-39.
Dennis, M. 2016. "Archaeogaming?". Last modified June 2016. http://gingerygamer.com/index.php/archaeogaming
Dobres, M.-A. 2000. Technology and social agency. Blackwell Publishers.
Donovan, T. 2010. Replay: the history of video games. Yellow Ant.
Espinosa, C. 1979. Apple II reference manual. Apple Computer, Inc.
Fuller, M., ed. 2008. Software studies: a lexicon. MIT Press.
Glaeser, C. D. 1977. "Novel 8 bit multiplication." Byte 2, no. 7: 142.
González-Tennant, E. 2016. "Archaeological walking simulators." SAA Archaeological Record 16, no. 5: 23-28.
Grant, T., ed. 2001. "Sierra On-Line, Inc." International Directory of Company Histories 41:361-364.
Greenfield, P. 1994. "Video games as cultural artifacts." Journal of Applied Developmental Psychology 15:3-12.
Gries, D. 1971. Compiler construction for digital computers. Wiley.
Haigh, T. 2015. "The tears of Donald Knuth." Communications of the ACM 58, no. 1: 40-44.
Huhtamo, E., and J. Parikka. 2011. "Introduction," in Media archaeology: approaches, applications, and implications, 1-15. University of California Press.
Ingold, T. 1997. "Eight themes in the anthropology of technology." Social Analysis: the International Journal of Social and Cultural Practice 41, no. 1: 106-138.
Jong, P. 2006. "Ken Williams. Adventure Classic Gaming." Interview. http://www.adventureclassicgaming.com/index.php/site/interviews/197/.
K. M. 2018. The archaeology of tomb raider. Accessed June 15, 2018. https://tombraiderarchaeology.com/.
Kirschenbaum, M. G. 2008. Mechanisms: new media and the forensic imagination. MIT Press.
Leff, B. 1981. "Distribution does not a publisher make." Letter to the editor, Softalk 1, no. 8: 8.
Lemonnier, P. 1992. Elements for an anthropology of technology. Anthropological Papers Museum of Anthropology University of Michigan No. 88.
Lerseth, R. J. 1977. "A plot is incomplete without characters," in The best of Byte volume 1, edited by D. H. Ahl and C. T. Helmers Jr., 300-308. Creative Computing Press.
Levy, S. 1984. Hackers: heroes of the computer revolution. Dell.
On-Line Systems. 1980a. Apple II software from On-Line Systems. Advertisement, MICRO - The 6502 Journal, no. 26: 1.
---. 1980b. New Apple II / Apple II Plus software from On-Line Systems. Advertisement, MICRO - The 6502 Journal, no. 24: 80.
---. 1981. LISA: a professional assembly language development system for Apple computers. Version 2.5.
Loguidice, B., and M. Barton. 2009. Vintage games: an insider look at the history of Grand Theft Auto, Super Mario, and the most influential games of all time. Focal Press (Elsevier).
Maher, J. 2011a. "Mystery House, part 1". Last modified October 8, 2011. https://www.filfre.net/2011/10/mystery-house-part-1/.
---. 2011b. "On-Line Systems is born." Last modified October 17, 2011. https://www.filfre.net/2011/10/on-line-systems-is-born/.
Marino, M. C. 2006. "Critical code studies." Electronic Book Review. Last modified December 04, 2006. http://electronicbookreview.com/thread/electropoetics/codology.
Mol, A., C. Ariese-Vandemeulebroucke, K. Boom, A. Politopoulos, and V. Vandemeulebroucke. 2016. "Video games in archaeology: enjoyable but trivial?" SAA Archaeological Record 16, no. 5: 11-15.
Montfort, N. 2003. Twisty little passages: an approach to interactive fiction. MIT Press.
Newman, M. Z. 2017. Atari age: The emergence of video games in America. MIT Press.
Nooney, L. 2013. "A pedestal, a table, a love letter: archaeologies of gender in videogame history." Game Studies 13, no. 2. http://gamestudies.org/ 1302/articles/nooney.
---. 2017. "Let's begin again: Sierra On-Line and the origins of the graphical adventure game." American Journal of Play 10, no. 1: 71-98. http://www.journalofplay.org/sites/www.journalofplay.org/files/pdfarticles/10-1-Article-3-Lets-begin-again.pdf.
Perry, S., and C. Morgan. 2015. "Materializing media archaeologies: the MAD-P hard drive excavation." Journal of Contemporary Archaeology 2, no. 1: 94-104.
Ramsay, M. 2012. Gamers at work: stories behind the games people play. Apress.
Rawitsch, D. 2017. Classic game postmortem: Oregon Trail. Game Developer's
Conference 2017. https://www.gdcvault.com/play/1024251/ClassicGame-Postmortem-Oregon-Trail.
Raymond (Ed.), E. S. 2003. "Superprogrammer." The Jargon File, version 4.4.7, 2003. http://www.catb.org/jargon/html/S/superprogrammer.html.
---. n.d. Jargon chaff file. http://www.catb.org/jargon/chaff.html#bum.
Reinhard, A. 2013. "What is archaeogaming?" Last modified June 09, 2013 https://archaeogaming.com/ 2013/06/09/what-is-archaeogaming/.
---. 2015a. "Archaeogaming map (revised)." Last modified December 18, 2015. https://archaeogaming.com/ 2015/12/18/archaeogaming-map-revised/.
---. 2015b. "Archaeogaming: tools and methods." Last modified September 18, 2015. https://archaeogaming. com/2015/09/18/archaeogaming-tools-and-methods/.
---. 2015c. "Excavating Atari: where the media was the archaeology." Journal of Contemporary Archaeology 2, no. 1: 86-93.
---. 2016a. "Materialization of the immaterial." Last modified March 09, 2016. https://archaeogaming.com/2016/03/09/materialization-of-the immaterial/.
---. 2016b. "Towards archaeological tools and methods for excavating virtual spaces." SAA Archaeological Record 16, no. 5: 19-22.
---. 2017. "The (Harris) matrix, part 1: visualizing software stratigraphy." Last modified April 02, 2017. https://archaeogaming.com/2017/04/02/the-harris-matrix-parti-visualizing-software-stratigraphy/.
Roux, V. 2016. "Ceramic manufacture: the chaîne opératoire approach." In Oxford handbook of archaeological ceramic analysis, edited by A. Hunt, 1-17.
Sather, J. 1983. Understanding the Apple II. Quality Software.
Savetz, K. 2016. "Phoenix Software source code." AtariAge. Last modified November 6, 2016. http://atariage.com/forums/topic/258786-phoenix-software-sourcecode/.
Sellet, F. 1993. "Chaîne opératoire: the concept and its applications." Lithic Technology 18 no. 1/2: 106-112.
Sierra Help Pages. n.d. Mystery House help. Accessed June 15, 2018. http://www.sierrahelp.com/Games/MysteryHouseHelp.html.
Sillar, B., and M. Tite. 2000. "The challenge of 'technological choices' for material science approaches in archaeology." Archaeometry 42:2-20.
Sinclair, A. 2000. "Constellations of knowledge: human agency and material affordance in lithic technology," in Agency in archaeology, edited by M.-A. Dobres and J. E. Robb, 196-212. Routledge.
Sotamaa, O. 2014. "Artifact," in Routledge companion to video game studies, edited by M. J. P. Wolf and B. Perrone, 3-9. Taylor / Francis/Routledge.
Spafford, E. H. 1989. "The Internet worm program: an analysis." ACM SIGCOMM Computer Communications Review 19, no. 1: 17-57.
Styhre, A., A. M. Sazczepanska, and B. Remneland-Wihkamn. 2018. "Consecrating video games as cultural artifacts: intellectual legitimization as a source of industry renewal." Scandinavian Journal of Management 34: 22-28.
Tommervik, A. 1981. "Exec On-Line Systems: adventures in programming." Softalk 1, no. 6: 4-6.
Tringham, R., and M. Ashley. 2015. "Becoming archaeological." Journal of Contemporary Archaeology 2, no. 1: 29-41.
Trivette, D. B. 1985. "Inside King's Quest." Compute! 7, no. 2: 136-138.
Watrall, E. 2002. "Interactive entertainment as public archaeology." SAA Archaeological Record 2, no. 2: 37-39.
Wexler, J., A. Bevan, C. Bonacchi, A. Keinan-Schoonbaert, D. Pett, and N. Wilkin. 2015. "Collective re-excavation and lost media from the last century of British prehistoric studies." Journal of Contemporary Archaeology 2, no. 1: 126-142.
Wiegers, K. E. 2002. Peer reviews in software: a practical guide. Addison-Wesley.
Williams, K. n.d. Introduction to the Roberta Williams anthology. Sierra Help Pages. Accessed on June 15, 2018. http://www.sierrahelp.com/Misc/IntroductionToRWAnth.html.
Worth, D., and P. Lechner. 1981. Beneath Apple DOS. Quality Software.
John Aycock, Katie Biittner
Issued Date: 24 Jul 2019
Abstract
Computer games are recent artifacts that have had, and continue to have, enormous cultural impact. In this interdisciplinary collaboration between computer science and archaeology, we closely examine one such artifact: the 1980 Apple II game Mystery House, the first graphical adventure. We focus on implementation rather than gameplay, treating the game as a digital artifact. What can we learn about the game and its development process through reverse engineering and analysis of the code, data, and game image? Our exploration includes a technical critique of the code, examining the heretofore uncritical legacy of Ken Williams as a programmer. As game development is a human activity, we place it in a theoretical framework from archaeology, to show how a field used to analyze physical artifacts might adapt to shed new light on digital games.
Open Access Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivatives: CC BY-NC-ND
Download Media
OPEN ACCESS: CC BY-NC-ND PDF Open Access
DOI: 10.1558/jca.36745
References
ACM Digital Library. n.d. "HOPL: history of programming languages". Accessed June 15, 2018. https://dl.acm.org/event.cfm?id=RE352.
Adams, S. 1979. "An adventure in small computer game simulation." Creative Computing 5, no. 8: 90-97.
Aho, A. V., and J. D. Ullman. 1977. Principles of compiler design. Addison-Wesley.
Altice, N. 2015. I AM ERROR: the Nintendo family computer / entertainment system platform. MIT Press.
Apple Computer, Inc. 1978a. Applesoft II BASIC programming reference manual.
---. 1978b. Programmer's aid #1: installation and operating manual (Apple utility programs).
Aycock, J. 2016. Retrogame archeology: exploring old computer games. Springer.
Aycock, J., and A. Reinhard. 2017. "Copy protection in Jet Set Willy: Developing methodology for retrogame archaeology." Internet Archaeology 45. https://doi.org/10.11141/ia.45.2.
Bailey, G. 2015. "Symmetrical media archaeology: boundary and context." Journal of Contemporary Archaeology 2, no. 1: 41-52.
Bar-Yosef, O., and P. Van Peer. 2009. "The chaîne opératoire approach in middle paleolithic archaeology." Current Anthropology 50, no. 1: 103-131.
Berez, J. M., M. S. Blank, and P. D. Lebling. 1989. ZIP: Z-language interpreter program. Infocom internal document, draft.
Bishop, B. 1979. "APPLE II hires picture compression." MICRO - The 6502 Journal, no. 18: 17-24.
Boellstorff, T., B. Nardi, C. Pearce, and T. Taylor. 2012. Ethnography and virtual worlds: a handbook of method. Princeton University Press.
Budge, B. n.d. "Pinball Construction Set source code for Apple II." GitHub, last modified February 24, 2013, https://github.com/billbudge/PCS_AppleII.
Byron, T. 1990. "Roberta's bequest." STart: The ST Monthly 4, no. 8: 22-26.
Calingaert, P. 1979. Assemblers, compilers, and program translation. Computer Science Press.
Copplestone, T. 2017. "Adventures in archaeological game creation." SAA Archaeological Record 17, no. 2: 33-39.
Dennis, M. 2016. "Archaeogaming?". Last modified June 2016. http://gingerygamer.com/index.php/archaeogaming
Dobres, M.-A. 2000. Technology and social agency. Blackwell Publishers.
Donovan, T. 2010. Replay: the history of video games. Yellow Ant.
Espinosa, C. 1979. Apple II reference manual. Apple Computer, Inc.
Fuller, M., ed. 2008. Software studies: a lexicon. MIT Press.
Glaeser, C. D. 1977. "Novel 8 bit multiplication." Byte 2, no. 7: 142.
González-Tennant, E. 2016. "Archaeological walking simulators." SAA Archaeological Record 16, no. 5: 23-28.
Grant, T., ed. 2001. "Sierra On-Line, Inc." International Directory of Company Histories 41:361-364.
Greenfield, P. 1994. "Video games as cultural artifacts." Journal of Applied Developmental Psychology 15:3-12.
Gries, D. 1971. Compiler construction for digital computers. Wiley.
Haigh, T. 2015. "The tears of Donald Knuth." Communications of the ACM 58, no. 1: 40-44.
Huhtamo, E., and J. Parikka. 2011. "Introduction," in Media archaeology: approaches, applications, and implications, 1-15. University of California Press.
Ingold, T. 1997. "Eight themes in the anthropology of technology." Social Analysis: the International Journal of Social and Cultural Practice 41, no. 1: 106-138.
Jong, P. 2006. "Ken Williams. Adventure Classic Gaming." Interview. http://www.adventureclassicgaming.com/index.php/site/interviews/197/.
K. M. 2018. The archaeology of tomb raider. Accessed June 15, 2018. https://tombraiderarchaeology.com/.
Kirschenbaum, M. G. 2008. Mechanisms: new media and the forensic imagination. MIT Press.
Leff, B. 1981. "Distribution does not a publisher make." Letter to the editor, Softalk 1, no. 8: 8.
Lemonnier, P. 1992. Elements for an anthropology of technology. Anthropological Papers Museum of Anthropology University of Michigan No. 88.
Lerseth, R. J. 1977. "A plot is incomplete without characters," in The best of Byte volume 1, edited by D. H. Ahl and C. T. Helmers Jr., 300-308. Creative Computing Press.
Levy, S. 1984. Hackers: heroes of the computer revolution. Dell.
On-Line Systems. 1980a. Apple II software from On-Line Systems. Advertisement, MICRO - The 6502 Journal, no. 26: 1.
---. 1980b. New Apple II / Apple II Plus software from On-Line Systems. Advertisement, MICRO - The 6502 Journal, no. 24: 80.
---. 1981. LISA: a professional assembly language development system for Apple computers. Version 2.5.
Loguidice, B., and M. Barton. 2009. Vintage games: an insider look at the history of Grand Theft Auto, Super Mario, and the most influential games of all time. Focal Press (Elsevier).
Maher, J. 2011a. "Mystery House, part 1". Last modified October 8, 2011. https://www.filfre.net/2011/10/mystery-house-part-1/.
---. 2011b. "On-Line Systems is born." Last modified October 17, 2011. https://www.filfre.net/2011/10/on-line-systems-is-born/.
Marino, M. C. 2006. "Critical code studies." Electronic Book Review. Last modified December 04, 2006. http://electronicbookreview.com/thread/electropoetics/codology.
Mol, A., C. Ariese-Vandemeulebroucke, K. Boom, A. Politopoulos, and V. Vandemeulebroucke. 2016. "Video games in archaeology: enjoyable but trivial?" SAA Archaeological Record 16, no. 5: 11-15.
Montfort, N. 2003. Twisty little passages: an approach to interactive fiction. MIT Press.
Newman, M. Z. 2017. Atari age: The emergence of video games in America. MIT Press.
Nooney, L. 2013. "A pedestal, a table, a love letter: archaeologies of gender in videogame history." Game Studies 13, no. 2. http://gamestudies.org/ 1302/articles/nooney.
---. 2017. "Let's begin again: Sierra On-Line and the origins of the graphical adventure game." American Journal of Play 10, no. 1: 71-98. http://www.journalofplay.org/sites/www.journalofplay.org/files/pdfarticles/10-1-Article-3-Lets-begin-again.pdf.
Perry, S., and C. Morgan. 2015. "Materializing media archaeologies: the MAD-P hard drive excavation." Journal of Contemporary Archaeology 2, no. 1: 94-104.
Ramsay, M. 2012. Gamers at work: stories behind the games people play. Apress.
Rawitsch, D. 2017. Classic game postmortem: Oregon Trail. Game Developer's
Conference 2017. https://www.gdcvault.com/play/1024251/ClassicGame-Postmortem-Oregon-Trail.
Raymond (Ed.), E. S. 2003. "Superprogrammer." The Jargon File, version 4.4.7, 2003. http://www.catb.org/jargon/html/S/superprogrammer.html.
---. n.d. Jargon chaff file. http://www.catb.org/jargon/chaff.html#bum.
Reinhard, A. 2013. "What is archaeogaming?" Last modified June 09, 2013 https://archaeogaming.com/ 2013/06/09/what-is-archaeogaming/.
---. 2015a. "Archaeogaming map (revised)." Last modified December 18, 2015. https://archaeogaming.com/ 2015/12/18/archaeogaming-map-revised/.
---. 2015b. "Archaeogaming: tools and methods." Last modified September 18, 2015. https://archaeogaming. com/2015/09/18/archaeogaming-tools-and-methods/.
---. 2015c. "Excavating Atari: where the media was the archaeology." Journal of Contemporary Archaeology 2, no. 1: 86-93.
---. 2016a. "Materialization of the immaterial." Last modified March 09, 2016. https://archaeogaming.com/2016/03/09/materialization-of-the immaterial/.
---. 2016b. "Towards archaeological tools and methods for excavating virtual spaces." SAA Archaeological Record 16, no. 5: 19-22.
---. 2017. "The (Harris) matrix, part 1: visualizing software stratigraphy." Last modified April 02, 2017. https://archaeogaming.com/2017/04/02/the-harris-matrix-parti-visualizing-software-stratigraphy/.
Roux, V. 2016. "Ceramic manufacture: the chaîne opératoire approach." In Oxford handbook of archaeological ceramic analysis, edited by A. Hunt, 1-17.
Sather, J. 1983. Understanding the Apple II. Quality Software.
Savetz, K. 2016. "Phoenix Software source code." AtariAge. Last modified November 6, 2016. http://atariage.com/forums/topic/258786-phoenix-software-sourcecode/.
Sellet, F. 1993. "Chaîne opératoire: the concept and its applications." Lithic Technology 18 no. 1/2: 106-112.
Sierra Help Pages. n.d. Mystery House help. Accessed June 15, 2018. http://www.sierrahelp.com/Games/MysteryHouseHelp.html.
Sillar, B., and M. Tite. 2000. "The challenge of 'technological choices' for material science approaches in archaeology." Archaeometry 42:2-20.
Sinclair, A. 2000. "Constellations of knowledge: human agency and material affordance in lithic technology," in Agency in archaeology, edited by M.-A. Dobres and J. E. Robb, 196-212. Routledge.
Sotamaa, O. 2014. "Artifact," in Routledge companion to video game studies, edited by M. J. P. Wolf and B. Perrone, 3-9. Taylor / Francis/Routledge.
Spafford, E. H. 1989. "The Internet worm program: an analysis." ACM SIGCOMM Computer Communications Review 19, no. 1: 17-57.
Styhre, A., A. M. Sazczepanska, and B. Remneland-Wihkamn. 2018. "Consecrating video games as cultural artifacts: intellectual legitimization as a source of industry renewal." Scandinavian Journal of Management 34: 22-28.
Tommervik, A. 1981. "Exec On-Line Systems: adventures in programming." Softalk 1, no. 6: 4-6.
Tringham, R., and M. Ashley. 2015. "Becoming archaeological." Journal of Contemporary Archaeology 2, no. 1: 29-41.
Trivette, D. B. 1985. "Inside King's Quest." Compute! 7, no. 2: 136-138.
Watrall, E. 2002. "Interactive entertainment as public archaeology." SAA Archaeological Record 2, no. 2: 37-39.
Wexler, J., A. Bevan, C. Bonacchi, A. Keinan-Schoonbaert, D. Pett, and N. Wilkin. 2015. "Collective re-excavation and lost media from the last century of British prehistoric studies." Journal of Contemporary Archaeology 2, no. 1: 126-142.
Wiegers, K. E. 2002. Peer reviews in software: a practical guide. Addison-Wesley.
Williams, K. n.d. Introduction to the Roberta Williams anthology. Sierra Help Pages. Accessed on June 15, 2018. http://www.sierrahelp.com/Misc/IntroductionToRWAnth.html.
Worth, D., and P. Lechner. 1981. Beneath Apple DOS. Quality Software.
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