Also... I remembered this existed and might be of interest to people reading the comments here. It's the December 1980 issue of Byte Magazine, archived at the Internet Archive.
This is the "Adventure" issue, complete with a source listing of Scott Adam's Pirate's Adventure and a Robert Tinney cover illustration. Plus, reviews of commercial games and articles describing the state of the art 46 years ago. Worth a read if you're hip to interactive fiction.
I remember seeing "Choose Your Own Adventures" early in the 80s and thinking "Hmm.. Zork sure would be cool if it had a few pictures like the CYOA books." And of course, about a month later I saw the first text adventure with illustrations. I don't think I ever played Twin Kingdom Valley, but after reading the wikipedia page, I sort of want to now. Oh... aha!
This is awesome. Several years ago I found the print-out of an adventure game I wrote in my youth and modified it a bit to work with Chipmunk Basic. It wasn't NEARLY as full featured as Artic Adventure, but this is quite motivating. I'll have to find some time to port the bits of my space adventure to something that can run in a web page.
After having reviewed multiple RISC-V core generators, I suspect it is easier to teach a computer science student to design hardware than it is to teach an electrical engineering student to design software.
I started my tech career in Dallas in the mid-80s. I had friends and relatives who worked for TI while I was at a startup. The story seems to be a mish-mash of early PC and networking companies, but the vibe is spot on.
Donna's experiences at TI mirror those friends related to me. The club the gang visited felt just like the Starck Club. Engineers at Cardiff "felt" just like the engineers I worked with.
Add to that the excellent performances by the whole cast... I love this show, especially the first season that started with a PC and ended with the Mac.
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