Reading the ebook about computing in the 60s and 70s, I learned about the HP 2100, a computer that could serve up to 32 users at the same time.
This computer did not have screens, but wrote everything on this kind of “printer+keyboard”, a teletype.
Everything that should appear on the screen, was instead printed on paper by the teletype, that could be far, connected by phone.
This computer was very expensive, around $100k, so it was reserved for academic, military or business users. Of course, when someone is bored, will play games. This is a game that it’s still possible to play today, by writing
telnet mickey.publicvm.com
your PC will connect to this HP 2100 simulator and will let you play to this “pre-historical” games (a note: in some Windows versions, the telnet command is not preinstalled)
How does it work? First of all, imagine being in a cave with 20 rooms, all interconnected. This is a drawing from the original programmer:
In a room could be a deadly pit, some huge bats that will bring you somewhere else at random, or the Wumpus. If the monster is inside that room, it could be startled and run in an adjacent cave (75% chance) or it could eat us (25%).
When the teletype prints out our adventure, you should image the map:
Of course, for today standards this is unplayable, but it’s interesting to see how computer games were played 45 years ago.
I did a gameplay video:
Or you could play this javascript version: https://osric.com/wumpus/