Geeky Games Imbedded in OSX
Many computers, including Macs, have secret games. Who knew?
In an attempt to find OSX text-based games I inadvertently stumbled across some wonderful geeky games imbedded in the Terminal of Macintosh computers with OSX.
Though according to one poster at Apple, "This isn't really part of the Mac OS, it's a part of emacs which is part of the UNIX system."
All you have to do to find out if your Mac has these games is to go to your Applications folder, open up the Utilities folder, and then open the Terminal folder. From the prompt, type in: ls /usr/share/emacs/21.2/lisp/play
I also recommend cutting and pasting the above since the first character is a lowercase 'L', not the number one. (1) After you enter the phrase above you will get a list of games on your machine. From there, you can open a new terminal window and type in: emacs and then Enter. Press Escape + X at the same time. From there, type in the name of the game you want to play and voila!
If you are a high-quality graphics gaming geek, this will not impress you. The imbedded terminal games are fun. From the Terminal window I typed in: emacs -batch -l dunnet
Dunnet is a classic text-based game that makes you use your imagination and problem-solve in an old-school, hair-pulling kind of way. To get started you can type in: help (Enter) and you will get basic commands for moving around in your virtual space and being able to explore and collect treasures.
Embedded games and/or Easter Eggs are nothing new in the world of computers. They are relics of the fun and creative people who did the coding and wanted to spread the love and show off their skills. Even if you are a PC-user, there have got to be some secret hidden goodies on your hard drive. Ready? Start gaming!
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