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