IF games from the old online service "The Source"?

[Mike Putch]

Hmmm, perhaps this is the better newsgroup for this query (rather
than RAIF, which had no answer).
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Does anyone remember a couple of IF games on the old online service
"The Source"? It later fell on hard times and was bought by Compuserve
(who had not yet been bought by AOL -- there has always seemed a certain
poetic justice there to me).
Anyway, there was a game called PIT and there was another game called
Explore (the latter was rather interesting, being a bit of a meta-game
sendup of some of the popular adventure games). I suspect the source
code was Fortran (as were many things on Primos platforms, which The
Source used), but then some of the old Primos Fortran games have been
generously ported to C (e.g., Chris Newall's "Chimaera").
So I thought I would ask this group, as the most likely clue toward
this bit of history (I am not even sure whether STC (Source
Telecomputing Corp) owned the rights to them or if they were licensed
from third parties. And my web searching so far has turned up no trace
of these.
Thanks in advance!

MJP

[Mark Smithson]

>Does anyone remember a couple of IF games on the old online service
>"The Source"? It later fell on hard times and was bought by Compuserve
>(who had not yet been bought by AOL -- there has always seemed a certain
>poetic justice there to me).
> Anyway, there was a game called PIT and there was another game called
>Explore (the latter was rather interesting, being a bit of a meta-game
>sendup of some of the popular adventure games). I suspect the source
>code was Fortran (as were many things on Primos platforms, which The
>Source used), but then some of the old Primos Fortran games have been
>generously ported to C (e.g., Chris Newall's "Chimaera").
> So I thought I would ask this group, as the most likely clue toward
>this bit of history (I am not even sure whether STC (Source
>Telecomputing Corp) owned the rights to them or if they were licensed
>from third parties. And my web searching so far has turned up no trace
>of these.
> Thanks in advance!
>
>MJP
>
>

I too have wondered about the fate of these old IF games.

Late last year, I came across the following thread entitled "Anyone remember
PITS on The Source":
http://slashdot.org/comments.pl?cid=549294&sid=9482

I emailed the author and asked if he had any updates.

This was his response:
---------------------------------
Unfortunately, no.
I managed to talk to someone very high up who used to work for The Source, but
he was so into the business side of things, he doesn't know what services they
offered. Though he did confirm they were using
DataGenerals.

[Mike Putch]

Thanks Mark! I was starting to wonder if I had hallucinated those
two games.
I will loop the two of you in with any further progress.

MJP