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The Story of Merlin: The 1978 Electronic Game

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mouser:
Did anyone else have one of these Merlin early electronic games, circa 1978?

I did, and it was magical.

Here's an article about it's creator and the early days of these electronics games:

http://www.xconomy.com/national/2014/02/28/bob-doyle-and-the-magic-of-merlin-the-first-mobile-game/?single_page=true




from http://games-beta.slashdot.org/story/14/03/04/001249/merlins-magic-the-inside-story-of-the-first-mobile-game

ewemoa:
Had a Simon at some point - only got to play with a Merlin on a few occasions.

app103:
I still have one in a closet somewhere, and an A/C adapter for it. It was my first non-human opponent for Mastermind.  :)

40hz:
Own one and still play with it. It's a fun gadget. :Thmbsup:

TaoPhoenix:
A few of y'all are a hair older than me. The "target sales year" of these classics stretched well into the mid 80's. So I had my Simon in 80-something.

But maybe I sorta disagree with the article pinpointing it as the early key to fun computing. I'd give that set of honors on the other side, the "PC" side dating from my Commodore 128, backed by my Atari (which I think caught fire after a four hour game of PacMan with bad ventilation that day.)

Little "tricks" like Simon didn't feel like computers - right on their heels came Nintendo handheld games, etc. Instead, the start (and finish! Yikes!) of my computing respect came from the C128 where I made some twelve simple programs of my very own. The stars were a Maze game where you could move only in right angles but had to deal with maze Tron-Esque walls of varying angles, and what I now joke about as a "New York Crowd Subway Simulator" - "Avoid the masses of faceless people, none of whom you care about, but none of whom you dare bump into"! (Holy hell, 30 years ahead of its time!!)

:D

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