Seven stories about seven pieces of software from the Internet Archives.
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I'm Kay Lovelace. I'm a writer, performer, and creative developer based in Edinburgh.
Extreme thanks go to @jeffpar who developed PCjs, the emulator on which this project relies. It's truly an accomplishment.
This program was written for my son, Charles, who wanted to work on the computer (hit on the keyboard and move the mouse), because he saw his parents working on the computer. However, he was too young mentally and did not have the fine motor skills necessary for programs that show A when "a" is hit, etc. He just wanted to push the keys or move the mouse and see something happen. He likes drawing flowers and making lines when the mouse is moved. I also wanted him to become familiar with a mouse and how it works. This program was conceived to give him a way to hit some keys and see something happen and also to learn mouse operations.
He learned surprisingly quickly (and remembered) where the arrow keys are located, where the keys that made the color of line change and how the mouse worked (including the buttons). This program has been a very positive experience for Charles; I hope you find that to be true for your child as well.
Charles is in his 20s now. He is, perhaps amusingly, quite into Star Trek. The manual was authored by a woman called Patti, who is a church organist. Her husband worked at a large tech company.
I like to imagine this as a sort of household affair. The parents, through whatever configuration, developed the software out of a desire to entertain and educate their child, who tests and thereby verifies the interest in the software, which is then sold. The company, AssistWare, was a family unit.
It's hard to place, but there's something in this that's very different both from the high-industrial world of Microsoft, IBM and the start-up culture of... so many other companies. It's even different to the slightly less glamorous bedroom-programmer. There's something homely about this, something, perhaps, a little less alienated.
It's a nice idea, even if that's all it is.
AssistWare, NC
You'll need to put in a date pre-millennium as this is a genuine y2k bug situation. Don't forget to put in the date in mm/dd/yy format. Try 10/31/99.
Computing's most obvious application is to automate laborious calculations. This 'numerology' application should therefore come as no surprise. What should come as a surprise, however, is that we have seen so little following on from this.
Sure, there are birth chart calculators, numerology sites, etc, but no real innovation. We might expect, if we were in the 1980's looking forwards, that this new ability to calculate would create whole new fields of numeromancy. We are in a wealth of data from which we could divine the future just as well as if not better than the creaky methods of the past. So why not? There seem to me to be two possible reasons:
R.K. West Consulting seems to be inactive, but Rosemary West continues to post semi-regularly on a number of her blogs, to be found at rkwest.com.
I have seen this graphic around the BBS's before. It has been around as "DUCK.DRW" and "HITAKEY.BAS". I would like to thank whomever originally created the graphic, But I have never seen any names attached to either file.
Well, I saw the Hitakey file and it gave me the idea to get the old paint program out. With a little editing, and a small program to display the screens, the duck moves.
Use HIT.EXE just like a DOS "Pause" command, or just put it in your Autoexec to put a smile on your face in the morning. Slip it into your friends computer to put a smile on their face.
The graphic, destructive urge towards the computer was a feature of early mass-computer culture. It is a recognizable trope, of the early 90s cubicle dweller with the print-out computer-violent comic taped to his montior. Maybe kicking it off a cliff, battling with it, or as in this case — taking a hammer to the machine.
Perhaps this is just a simple venting of frustration at an emerging technology, before ideas like 'usability' has come to be applied, but for me it brings to mind the sudden, immediate violence that is the antithesis of the computer worker's slow, closely confined task.
It is worth imagining, even though we have now, for whatever reason, generally abandoned our fantasy violence towards our desires, what would happen to you if — for instance — you awoke from a violent haze moments from now to discover all your devices smashed apart. What would change about your life? It might not look very much like freedom to you, but perhaps it did, for this duck — no longer sitting — whoever's self-insert it might be.
Anonymous
Take note of the FAIL SAFE CODE you are given at the start of the game — you will need it to arm the bomb. All commands and options must be given in captial letters only.
To get started, type NA, enter, and then enter your target. It will give you a bearing and a distance. Type CO, enter, and then type in the bearing to direct yourself towards the target. You can use AU to 'fast-forward' so as not to wait while the plane travels. After you bomb the target, you will need to return to 'TH' to complete the mission, which can be navigated to as before. Full manual here.
It is advised that you obtain a map of the Soviet Union to help you for directional assistance in course setting.
The primary target is chosen at random from the list of targets. All targets have a population of more than one million persons.
Reading the original manual for this game is an experience with a slight horror to it. The first quote above is, for me, the most chilling. It is quite unnecessary to have a map to play this game. The idea of a gamer in the early 1980s firing up this game with a map of Russia on the table... it chills me. I don't remember a game, aside from this one, that takes such an ambivalent attitude to mass slaughter.
It has none of the relish in death that modern games have. You fly the plane, you reach the target, you drop the bomb, you evade the ensuing missiles, you fly home. You might imagine there is some fantasy explosion, but there is not. Not even a described bang. ARKHANGELSK DESTROYED. That is all. You fly back generally unaccosted by the missiles that tracked you on the way in, as if over a ghostly, wasted landscape.
This game was released the year after the Soviet Union invaded Afghanistan.
Anonymous
Type in your name and press enter. From here on, the space key will select things — not the enter key. Follow the prompts as you prefer, and when you get to the main icon screen you'll notice there are icons along the side and also in the middle. Use the arrow keys to navigate the icons, and if you want to access the icons on the sides of the screen you'll need to press Esc.
Alter Ego was written and designed by a psychologist called Dr. Peter J. Favaro, based on interviews with hundreds of people about their most memorable life experiences.
"Most of us fantasize about doing things differently, living alternate lifestyles, walking in someone else's shoes. I created Alter Ego so we can all do so in a risk-free and fun way."
It's almost impossible to add more to this #RetroNewAesthetic. But it's worth noting that there were two versions of this game made, Alter Ego Male and Alter Ego Female. It's left as an exercise for the player to decide how plausible this 'Female' version is, having been written by a man.
Dr. Peter J. Favaro is still active in psychology and technology, specialising in conflict resolution for divorced and divorcing parents. He runs a service employing technology in conflict management including moderated chats and messages, detailed at behavioranalytics.net
This is the address and general locatility of Olsen Outdoors software. You can see quite a few lakes nearby. It's not hard to imagine Dick Olsen crossing Beaver Brook Rd on his way to fish at Forge Pond, maybe with a few of his buddies.
It's not hard to imgaine him talking about his software with his buddies, out there, about what he's working on. BASSTOUR, BASS CLASS, BASSDUEL DELUXE:
NEW! BassDuel is a TWO player version of BassTour with a new user interface. Two players fish simultaneously from the same boat, just like in real tournament competition. Six totally new (hardly ever been fished) lakes that are Bass Class and BassTour compatible. More lure choices too! Catch the giant bass that resides in each lake and win a FREE program disk! Requires 512k of memory and EGA. Supports mouse AND joystick.
None of this is hard to imagine. And there's something in this about alienation. Writing these shareware packages was integrated into Dick Olsen's life, a part of the outdoors. IRL and URL, for him, perhaps, and his users, were part of the same thing.
Richard Olsen, as far as I can make out, passed away in September 2010.