Re: Announcing: Fyleet, Crobe, Sangraal

["Adam Atkinson" <ghira@mistral.co.uk>]

On 13-Sep-99 02:14:13, David Glasser said:

>Now, I don't know much about the Phoenix culture, but the original
>players of the games were all users of the Phoenix mainframe at
>Cambridge.  I'm guessing that many of the players knew each other, or at
>the least could communicate through some form of email or whatever.

Yes

>Was part of the reason for the super-hard no-cheat puzzles that people
>wanted to be able to proclaim that they were the first to beat each new
>game?

I don't really think so. The games appeared between 1978 (Acheton) and,
say, 1989 (Xerb). The community of regular players changed quite a bit
over that time, as you might expect given that undergraduates tend to
come and go. When I was there (mid to late 80s) there was one new JRP1
game a year, and that was about it. Most of the games on the system
had been there for quite a while.

>  Was the joy of playing a Phoenix game not just that it is fun to
>solve a puzzle, but to hope that you completed it before your peers?

There might have been a certain amount of that ... but the only time
it was visible was after the release of Sangraal. The first 10 people
to finish had their names added to the blackboard in Nastil-Xarn,
which was initially empty.

-- 
Adam Atkinson (ghira@mistral.co.uk)
If I were a bumble bee
Z wouldn't be a U.F.D.