I had the same experience when I read Ready Player One. Nearly fell out of my chair. But surely dozens of us must have played that game - dozens!
BTW you had to 'incant' a ring, near the end, and I could not have figured that out on my own. It was fantastically fun to me as a kid, despite being, lets be reasonable, impossible to beat without knowing some things outside the game. I actually believed I did beat it, in the late 90s, after I killed the 'false' wizard. However, I thought Level 4 was the game restarting back to Level 1, so exited, thinking it was all done.
Rainbow Magazines were magical and incredibly inspiring. I probably typed-up most of the games they ever published and had them saved on cassette. This one was very lengthy -> https://ia903403.us.archive.org/0/items/rainbowmagazine-1984.... (search for 'Karrak')
Sadly, my brother recorded over it before I could play it more than once ... you know, deliberately, out of pure 80s evil older-brother spite. Some part of me wants to paste that code into Claude Code, and generate some sort of working game, as an act of defiance.
I couldn't play joust on the cabinets (no money as a kid); the TRS-80 game was called Lancer. Good times, absolutely.
BTW you had to 'incant' a ring, near the end, and I could not have figured that out on my own. It was fantastically fun to me as a kid, despite being, lets be reasonable, impossible to beat without knowing some things outside the game. I actually believed I did beat it, in the late 90s, after I killed the 'false' wizard. However, I thought Level 4 was the game restarting back to Level 1, so exited, thinking it was all done.
Rainbow Magazines were magical and incredibly inspiring. I probably typed-up most of the games they ever published and had them saved on cassette. This one was very lengthy -> https://ia903403.us.archive.org/0/items/rainbowmagazine-1984.... (search for 'Karrak')
Sadly, my brother recorded over it before I could play it more than once ... you know, deliberately, out of pure 80s evil older-brother spite. Some part of me wants to paste that code into Claude Code, and generate some sort of working game, as an act of defiance.
I couldn't play joust on the cabinets (no money as a kid); the TRS-80 game was called Lancer. Good times, absolutely.