Renga in Blue   Interactive fiction and the All the Adventures project

Today, this blog’s first encounter with New Zealand.

It might not seem surprising offhand New Zealand had to wait until 1983 — their population in 1982 was about 3 million, ranking it between Armenia and Papua New Guinea — but they had a computer economy out of proportion to the population.

Their first computer, in a technical sense, dated all the way back to 1949 with the MONIAC, an analogue computer with a name that invokes the ENIAC. It was designed by Bill Phillips (he of the Phillips curve relating inflation and unemployment, the source of “inflation targets” in modern economies) in order to do macroeconomics via measuring the amount of fluid in various containers.

Philips with the MONIAC, sometime between 1958 and 1967.

They had their first personal computer club in 1977 (Brian Conquer in Auckland, who read about similar clubs in the United States) so they weren’t even that late to the scene, relatively speaking, and there were multiple home-grown attempts at computers: the MDL series, the Poly and the Aamber Pegasus. They all failed for related reasons that are useful to go into, as they reflect the general trouble New Zealand hobbyist computing had in the early 80s.

The first attempt (or rather series) was via MDL; John Lovelock founded Micro Processor Ltd. in 1978. They started with engineers and hobbyists in mind, but by the MDL-3 model tried to get into the educational market (due to the government looking to pouring a great deal of money getting into every classroom); notably the computers had a shared hard drive.

They never really stretched into “personal computing”; their MDL-4 model sold about 200 units before they ended trying to make computers altogether.

Second up is the Poly-1, designed in 1980 and entering production in 1980; it was named after Wellington Polytechnic where the designers Neil Scott and Paul Bryant worked, and launched with a many-thousand-NZD price tag. The government was making moves to put a computer in every classroom (like the UK) and the duo designing the Poly tried to make a computer specifically for that need, with the most notable feature being a proprietary networking feature connecting 32 of the computers together at once. Quoting Scott:

The original design was to create it, get it working properly, and then leave it. The network was completely automatic. You didn’t have to do a thing.

From Classic Computers NZ.

The government promised $10 million in sales to fill classrooms but only $64,000 in orders came in, as the overall order got nixed from above as overspending.

The third homegrown attempt was the Aamber Pegasus, by Technosys Research Labs. This time the commercial market was more in mind, but the price tag was still high: $1000 NZD (about $900 in historical USD; enough to buy a Commodore PET at launch). Via the manual:

The machine that we are offering, while being approximately half the price of competitive products, offers much more capability in terms of expansion and ease of use. Initially we are supporting four languages with the Pegasus, these being ASSEMBLER, BASIC, FORTH and PASCAL.

I’m going to be honest: despite the effort to put a variety of computer languages by default, the hardware (default 4K memory, and see video below) seems undercooked for the price.

It did even worse than the MDL systems or Poly: “There is uncertainty as to the number of computers manufactured, estimates range from a few dozen to around 100.” It tried to get into the educational market just like other companies did — adding on network capability — but all three got crushed by the same outside force: Apple.

The offer consisted of an Apple II plus computer, one Apple disk drive, the monitor III 12in green screen with integral stand, and 30 BASIC programming tutorial manuals all for $1200. The cost to schools is usually $4812.

They were cheaper than the alternatives (and flat-out better than the Aamber), and by 1982 had 89% of the high school market. It essentially held the same position of dominance in New Zealand schools that it did in the US, although some of the cheaper machines (like the ZX80) held position when a cheaper model was needed.

Polycorp (the most plausible of the three local competitors) tried to stop Apple with a protest to the government in regard to “dumping”, so a duty of $820 was added, which simply resulted in Apple increasing the price to $2020 (as the duty was written to apply to the “dumping price”, it no longer applied to the higher price tag).

Janie McKenzie, education manager at Polycorp in 1982, quoted as saying “we intend to be around for some time”. Not long after, the company collapsed.

The $820 add-on — and the fact New Zealand never grew their own low-cost computer — is actually the most important point of all the events above when it comes to understanding their home computing market. The whole period from 1975 to 1984 with the government at the time (led by Sir Robert Muldoon) was one of protectionism:

By placing high tariffs on imported items, the government provided protection to fledgling industries. The strategy was quite successful. Nonetheless, high tariffs made many imported goods expensive to consumers.

So, the “cheap end of the pool” hobbyists that flooded the UK had trouble getting started in New Zealand; a postmortem of sorts was written in 1987 which notes:

In New Zealand the sales tax priced the microcomputer beyond the reach of many potential hobbyists and it was not until the tax and licensing regulations changed that products were more readily accessible to the low end user.

The same postmortem (titled “Memo: Atari US. What plans for NZ? Reply: Ask Australia”) also highlights the other interlinked issue: the country was sort of an afterthought to Australia. Essentially, New Zealand received their computers and parts last compared to the larger markets. An Atari supplier who severed ties with the US is quoted as saying:

We were having trouble getting stock from the USA. At the moment we are still importing parts until another dealer takes over, but we are not importing either hardware or software. Existing stocks are being sold off and we are caretaking for spare parts.

All these elements put together mean despite the signs of a vibrant scene…

Club contacts from November 1982.

…it isn’t terribly shocking we have to wait until (probably) late 1983 for the first adventure game from New Zealand we can play. Specifically, Robots on Terminus IV by Antarctic Computing.

The “probably late 1983” there is because it the first ad we have for the game is from a December 1983 issue of Computer Input, a NZ-specific magazine without many copies available. There’s an ad in the November issue for only one game (the currently lost Detention Center on Nebulon) but the general sense I get is that there’s more ads dating back farther we just haven’t seen yet.

Photo provided by Brian Blackie.

Brian Blackie (who has the game on his site) actually has it marked at 1982 but he doesn’t have anything on the tape or packaging indicating that date; it’s certainly plausible. The ZX81 version (the only one extant of any of Antartic Computing’s products) is slightly quirky, with a period mark doing space and Z doing backspace; the ZX81 keyboard requires two button presses for backspace and I can understand trying to do something symmetrical to type a space, but it took a while for me to get used to playing.

We have landed on a planet to do a mission, I assume involving robots; I have no idea what “our mission” is. However, we have access to an armory on our ship with some heavy duty machinery, so I assume it involves killing robots somehow. In inventory is a “remote control” device to start, and there is a door with a sensor downstairs; the right action is to POINT DEVICE to open the door.

POINT is one of our rarer verbs, so it’s useful to pull open the verb list now (this is made by hand, not studying source code):

OPEN, PRESS, PUSH, PULL, TURN, SHOOT, WEAR, INSERT, LEAVE, THREAD, SCREW, UNSCREW, PLACE, POINT

Enough of these words (THREAD, PLACE, UNSCREW) live on the rare side that I expect there will be some surprise “isolate” verbs I haven’t run into on any game yet.

After some pointless searching for a space suit I realized this is a planet with a regular atmosphere we can just step out onto; the city is a regular city with regular aliens in it.

Disembarking, there’s a SCREWDRIVER at the landing bay, and to the north is a city street with a few venues, like an art gallery, a casino, a pub, and a department store. I guess we’re in Space Vegas.

The department store has some sand shoes we can just take (nobody seems to mind), and the gallery has what looks like a hint for something we will see in the desert. The pub is filled with creatures I haven’t been able to interact with and a coin that can be picked up; the coin can be taken over to the casino and the FRUIT MACHINE, but trying to pull the lever after inserting a coin causes the lever to break off.

Is the whole purpose of this scene to get a lever?

Finally to the north is a desert maze (again just like Vegas)…

…and the main result (other than a suspicious dry well along the way) is a mysterious monolith.

I have been unable to interact with the monolith in any way, but it doesn’t help that I’m not clear what noun is intended here (four letter parser, so “HUGE”, “STON”, “MONO”, “JEWE”, “RED”, and “BLUE” are all possible). There’s no walkthrough or other documentation, and I don’t have a good way of looking at source code, so there are likely a lot of brute-force attempts in my future. I certainly am intrigued; usually our planets have been completely abandoned, Space Vegas is a new setting.