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Inspecting the foundation of Mystery House

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dc.contributor.authorAycock, John
dc.contributor.authorBiittner, Katie
dc.date.accessioned2020-09-28
dc.date.accessioned2022-05-31T01:15:15Z
dc.date.available2022-05-31T01:15:15Z
dc.date.issued2019
dc.description.abstractComputer games are recent artifacts that have had, and continue to have, enormous cultural impact. In this interdisciplinary collaboration between computer science and archaeology, we closely examine one such artifact: the 1980 Apple II game Mystery House, the first graphical adventure. We focus on implementation rather than gameplay, treating the game as a digital artifact. What can we learn about the game and its development process through reverse engineering and analysis of the code, data, and game image? Our exploration includes a technical critique of the code, examining the heretofore uncritical legacy of Ken Williams as a programmer. As game development is a human activity, we place it in a theoretical framework from archaeology, to show how a field used to analyze physical artifacts might adapt to shed new light on digital games.
dc.format.extent901.59KB
dc.format.mimetypePDF
dc.identifier.citationAycock, J. and Biittner, K. (2019). Inspecting the foundation of Mystery House. Journal of Contemporary Archaeology, 6(2), 183-205. https://doi.org/10.1558/jca.36745
dc.identifier.doihttps://doi.org/10.1558/jca.36745
dc.identifier.urihttps://hdl.handle.net/20.500.14078/1696
dc.languageEnglish
dc.language.isoen
dc.rightsAttribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivs (CC BY-NC-ND)
dc.rights.urihttps://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/4.0/
dc.subjectarchaeogaming
dc.subjectbinary reverse engineering
dc.subjectchaîne opératoire
dc.subjectcomputer game
dc.subjectKen Williams
dc.subjectMystery House
dc.subjectOn-Line Systems
dc.subjectSierra On-Line
dc.titleInspecting the foundation of Mystery Houseen
dc.typeArticle

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