Aycock, JohnBiittner, Katie2020-09-282022-05-312022-05-312019Aycock, 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.36745https://hdl.handle.net/20.500.14078/1696Computer 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.901.59KBPDFenAttribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivs (CC BY-NC-ND)archaeogamingbinary reverse engineeringchaîne opératoirecomputer gameKen WilliamsMystery HouseOn-Line SystemsSierra On-LineArticlehttps://doi.org/10.1558/jca.36745