Old 8080 Space game published as a book

[whartung]

Back in the day (late 70s), someone published a space game of some kind, for the 8080 (I think), as a machine language source listing in a book.

I may have glanced at the book, but I don't recall.

But the book was dedicated to this one game, it wasn't a book of games.

I don't recall for what machine/system it was designed for, if any. It may simply have needed some kind of character I/O, that you filled in when you typed the code into your system.

I'm just curious if anyone recalls that book, and what it might have been named, or anything else about it.

 

[syzygy]

This, perhaps? Although the space game is combined with two other non-space games.

 

[smp]

I found the Scelbi Galaxy game book on the Internet Archive:

https://ia803208.us.archive.org/28/items/Scelbi-Galaxy-Game-for-the-6800-Robert-Findley-1977/Scelbi%27s_Galaxy_Game_for_the_6800_Robert_Findley_1977.pdf

And I see on Scelbi.com that there is an 8080 version. You may be able to get that one here:

https://www.scelbi.com/files/docs/books/Galaxy%20Game.pdf

Good luck!
smp

 

[whartung]

I found the Scelbi Galaxy game book on the Internet Archive:

Yea, that has to be it.

Looks like a generic Star Trek version, just ported to 6800/8080.

Thanks!

 

[Anthony325]

Back in the day (late 70s), someone published a space game of some kind, for the 8080 (I think), as a machine language source listing in a book.

I may have glanced at the book, but I don't recall.

But the book was dedicated to this one game, it wasn't a book of games.

I don't recall for what machine/system it was designed for, if any. It may simply have needed some kind of character I/O, that you filled in when you typed the code into your system.

I'm just curious if anyone recalls that book, and what it might have been named, or anything else about it. retro bowl college

That sounds really intriguing—early machine-language games published as book listings are a rare slice of computing history! Do you remember if the book focused on teaching programming, or was it mainly about sharing the game itself?

 

[whartung]

Do you remember if the book focused on teaching programming, or was it mainly about sharing the game itself?

Yea, if you look at the ones linked above, you'll see that they're just program listings. It was simply the most fundamental way to distribute software, plus the fact that it targeted the most basic of machines and the base requirements of "here are the char-in and char-out routine you'll probably need to replace to get this to work on your system.

I think one of them even has the hard coded address highlight in the hex dump so you could port that hex dump to a different memory location.

That just brings up memories where I had a PET book/magazine. And it had a Life program in it. We didn't have an assembler, so we just typed in the hex listing (to what, I don't recall). My friend and I did it 3 separate times, but it never worked.

 

[smp]

That sounds really intriguing—early machine-language games published as book listings are a rare slice of computing history! Do you remember if the book focused on teaching programming, or was it mainly about sharing the game itself?

Take a look at the links provided in post #3 and see for yourself.
I believe the books were simply the machine code for the game, with explanations for what each section was doing.

smp