Trivia - Origin of the Wumpus!

N

Nyx

Guest
Unless someone finds an earlier reference, check out what I lucked into while researching old video games for an editorial:

You hear bats. You feel a draft. You smell a Wumpus.

Along with a mainframe Star Trek adventure game, the next widely popular computer game after Spacewar is Hunt the Wumpus aka Wump, developed by Gregory Yob on a Time-Sharing System at the University of Massachusettes in Dartmouth in 1972. A text based game, you move around a system of connected caves, arrmed with only five arrows, searching out the elusive Wumpus creature which is also roaming about. In each room you are given clues to happenings in the surrounding caves...you may feel a draught from one of the lethal bottomless pits scattered around, hear a pack of bats that will carry you away to a random cave, or even smell the mighty beast itself. The object is to fire an arrow into the room which contains the Wumpus.
Click to expand...
I knew there had to be a story behind a name as cool as the Wumpus. Now I've got to track down someone who's actually played the game to see if it thrashes. Hehe.
 
S

Spiderman

Administrator
Staff member
I seem to remember Wumpus came from a Lewis Carrol poem or book... but I'm 93% NOT positive about that... :)
 
Z

Zadok001

Guest
"but I'm 93% NOT positive about that..."

It took me almost a minute to fully rationalize the meaning of that statement, Spidey. :)
 
S

Sammy Dead-O

Guest
I think I read in InQuest that R&D named Hunted Wumpus after that game. It would stand to reason, then, that Thrashing Wumpus could come up as a relative to the hunted variety.
 
S

Spiderman

Administrator
Staff member
Zadok: I but live to confuse! :)

Hey, Sammy Dead-O makes sense, but I'm wondering did the game get ITS inspiration from somewhere or did they make it up right then? Hmm...
 
S

Sammy Dead-O

Guest
I guess I sorta skirted around the real question here. I don't know where it came from originally, but searching for it around the net brings up some interesting stuff.
 
S

Sidar Jabari

Guest
There is a very good Interactive fiction game about Wumpus Hunting, written by Andrew Plotkin.

It's pretty hard to explain how to get into interactive fiction, well, given the amount of time I have to type this so I'll just point you in the direction of the site that got me started.

http://www.wurb.com/if/index.html

I'll give you a brief idea of how to get started.

1) Get Winfrotz. There will probably be a link to it in the introduction section of Baf's guide. It's the interpreter that lets you play the *.z5 or *.z8 adventure game files. Most of the good games are in this format.

2) Search by author, on Baf's guide, for Andrew Plotkin. You will find Hunter, in Darkness (his wumpus game) and loads of other cool stuff. Download all the games you find here.

3) If you like what you've seen so far, go to the ***** star section of Baf's reviews and play all of those. I especially recommend Christminster.

Enjoy!
 
S

SwingMage

Guest
Yeah, I-F Rules!

have to get back into that someday. . .

That Andrew Plotkin game was pretty good, if i remember correctly, didn't beat it tho.

i think the original game maker just made up that name, and the Lewis Carol thinggie. . . i think that was a Jabberwocky
 
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