06-09-2015, 05:19 AM
For decades it has been debated what the very first video game ever actually was. I'm not gonna give an answer to that here because I have no damn clue. What I do know, though, is that after multiple discoveries of an "oldest" Finnish game sold commercially the search seems to finally have come to a stop, leading all the way back to 1979. This game is Chesmac, a chess simulation computer game for Telmac TMC-1800, by Raimo Suonio. The guy had a lucky break and the computer store he was working at took the game in their catalogue and he managed to sell a total of 104 copies, which at the time was quite a success for a game made and sold in Finland. As a fun little fact, he also coded in two versions of John Conway's Game of Life as bonus content.
The article about finding the game. It's mostly in Finnish but the summary is also in English.
Interview with the developer, also in Finnish.
Chesmac on a wikisite. There you can see the cover of the Microman-magazine where the game was first advertised, the entirety of its (completely Finnish) instruction booklet and even the code written by Raimo himself on some pieces of paper.
The date printed in Prosessori(Processor)-magazine. This is an article on how to save your current game.
![[Image: pic2.jpg]](/image.php?src=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.v2.fi%2Fimages%2Fgames%2Farticles%2F1524%2Fpic2.jpg&hash=ab9e56a90d2ac08145b07e14ff25d87d)
An advert for the game in Microman-magazine issue 2/1979.
![[Image: 4-8e600bb4b4.png]](https://html1-f.scribdassets.com/8bjhvhqr4047r0zg/images/4-8e600bb4b4.png)
Video footage:
The simplest of cover arts. Feel free to use this as the game's cover on the site :P Good luck finding a better one.
![[Image: X-20140728113107837.jpg]](/image.php?src=http%3A%2F%2Fotavafiles.fi%2Fplaza%2Fs%2Ff%2Feditor%2Fimages%2FX-20140728113107837.jpg&hash=4a4707630e9e97328432292bce1ca23e)
...They better not find anything older than this.
The article about finding the game. It's mostly in Finnish but the summary is also in English.
Interview with the developer, also in Finnish.
Chesmac on a wikisite. There you can see the cover of the Microman-magazine where the game was first advertised, the entirety of its (completely Finnish) instruction booklet and even the code written by Raimo himself on some pieces of paper.
The date printed in Prosessori(Processor)-magazine. This is an article on how to save your current game.
An advert for the game in Microman-magazine issue 2/1979.
Video footage:
The simplest of cover arts. Feel free to use this as the game's cover on the site :P Good luck finding a better one.
...They better not find anything older than this.