Guest player Tim Gilberts joins for interstellar exploration of two oft-overlooked sci-fi titles of the 1970s: Aldebaran III by Peter Langston, and Dog Star Adventure by Lance Micklus.
retroadventurers.podbean.com/e/38/

March 23, 2026 - 00:13 UTC

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A magazine type-in adventure sounds like it would reveal its secrets as you key it in 🧐

I’ve probably said this before, but as a youngster I spent many an hour typing in software from magazines with my father. We’d alternate typing in and reading out the code, then swapping for verification step.
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It certainly was a risk. But it's early 1979 and people want to just DO ANYTHING with their computer, so sometimes it was worth it even if the game was partially spoiled by the code and/or the comments!
(and some type-in adventures did have an obscured format to minimize the spoil.)
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And you've probably heard me say things like this somewhere, but: once (one of the) magazines figured out compact checksums for their listings, any publisher who didn't get onboard deserved to be poked with sharp sticks.
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