[TUHS] Searching for game history
Brian "Beej" Hall
beej at beej.us
Tue Apr 29 11:12:55 AEST 2025
Hi everyone,
I'm here with a Unix/Bell Labs history question at the suggestion of
BWK. I have a bit of a computing mystery on my hands...
_Conquest_ is an old game that apparently came to life in Bell Labs, but
no one seems to know anything more about it, including who the
author is.
The instructions for the game[1] contain the following text at the
bottom:
Amiga port by Bob Shimbo, orginal author unknown.
This game started life on a UNIX system at Bell Labs. It was ported
to CP/M 80 by a Scott Kamin. The manual was thrown together in an
afternoon. (Typos and corrections welcome).
You can reach me through Compuserve (UID 70260,231) or TBBS of
colorado (303)-693-4735.
The LHA archive for the Amiga was packaged in 1986.
I did get in touch with Bob Shimbo, but he writes:
You can imagine how long ago I did that port given I referenced my
Compuserve account. I don't recall where I found the code originally.
Sorry. We've been through 3 house moves since then and I don't know
where any references might have gotten to.
Scott Kamin--I found a reference to someone by his name in the CP/M
world in the 80s in New Jersey. (Internet Archive has lots of old
computer magazine scans and his name showed up in the classified ads.)
And a search turned up a snail mail address for someone in the right age
range living a few miles from the business listed in the ad. A Hail Mary
snail mail got no reply.
Does any of it ring a bell, by any chance? I've begun the work of
getting it to run on modern systems[2], and it would be great to be able
to include more history in the man page.
Cheers,
-Beej
[1] https://github.com/beejjorgensen/conquest/blob/master/instructions.txt
[2] https://github.com/beejjorgensen/conquest/
--
Brian "Beej Jorgensen" Hall
beej at beej.us https://beej.us/
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