A Simple Computer Game

Games are suppose to be fun. We have them today and our kids play them. In fact, some adults still play them.

As with anything good, they tend to get better. Think about it. We now have the Wii. Gaming merged with excercising. What a concept.

But back in the day games were very different.

Now during this period computers were stored in large computer rooms and they were very large and required many resources in keeping them operational.

Well, at a university that I went to for a short time. They had an online system that allowed programming students to generate their code and then submit the code to the mainframe for execution.

At the time this was cutting technology. The alternative was punching out our programs on computer cards and then running them through a Card Reader for execution.

The real beauty in this online system was that it had its own language. It was very similar to the Basic language that would be developed a couple of years later.

As it turned out. Many people would write all sorts of programs to do various things. Most of the time the students wrote stupid text based computer games. There was the Lunar Lander and even a StarTrek games. At the time it was fun.

Well, I joined in the madness as well to put my mark in this world so I began to craft my own game.

I am still reluctant to share the actual name of the game because deep down I fear that some university executive is still searching for as well as a military officer.

So I will call it Game X.

Once I perfected it. I sent a global message to all my friends telling them about my game.

Here is what it did.

When you started the game. It asked for your name. It then asked if you were ready. Regardless, if you said Yes or No the program did it’s thing.

And the thing was this.

It changed the game players account password, it sent me a message telling me the ID that was used and it logged the user off the system.

It was very simple.

Well, one day I was sitting at my terminal and I get my infamous message that someone had played the game.

So I logged into the account that I had use for creating the game. I read the incoming message and I logoff. I then logged into the account that I had just captured and I immediately checked the status.

Well, it belonged to an Officer of a military school who was a professor.

A cold chill came up my spine.

I immediately changed the password and then I sent out another global message telling the students at that military school what the password was and I logged out of his account.

I then got up and walked out of the room and out the back door of the building. I left campus.

As it turned out. When I got up my roommate was in there and he did not pay any attention to me. He knew I was going to our apartment. All of my other friends were in there as well from class.

Now here comes the craziness.

The room was immediately placed into confinement. No one could leave. The university’s computer administration had raided the room and was in the process of interrogating everyone.

Except me.

They tried and tried to find out who I was and where I was.

My roommate knew I had written the program but he kept his mouth shut and the secret remained in tact.

They did find out who I was but since I never set foot on campus after that incident they could not touch me.

Had the computer laws of today had been active in those days then there is no telling what would have happened to me.

All for the sake of fun.