Hack (video game)

Hack is a 1984 roguelike video game that introduced shops as gameplay elements and expanded available monsters, items, and spells. It later became the basis for NetHack.

Hack was created in 1982 by Jay Fenlason with the assistance of Kenny Woodland, Mike Thome, and Jonathan Payne, while students at Lincoln-Sudbury Regional High School.^[4] A greatly extended version was first released on Usenet in 1984 by Andries Brouwer. Brouwer continued to work on Hack until July 1985. Don Kneller ported the game to MS-DOS and continued development there.^[5] Development on all Hack versions ended within a few years. Hack descendant NetHack was released in 1987.^[6][7]

Hack is still available for Unix, and is distributed alongside many modern Unix-like OSes,^[5] including Debian, Ubuntu, the BSDs,^[5] Fedora,^[8] and others. Hack has also been ported to a variety of non-Unix-based platforms. NetHack is available for almost all platforms which run Hack. There is one exception: Hack is available,^[9] but NetHack is unavailable, for the Game Boy Advance.

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This describes Brouwer's version 1.0.3, which is the most canonical version, being the one installed by package managers on Linux systems.

Being developed by one man means the game is more balanced. Even when the player has discovered all properties of monsters, wands, potions, and has fathomed the role of "luck", the game remains as playable as ever. It may take ages before the player reaches that stage. The player will be helped by rumors: cryptic hints, hidden in fortune cookies.

The object of the game is to delve into a dungeon to retrieve the Amulet of Yendor, and perish with as many game points as possible. The player can start out with a different ability set, such as Wizard or Cave(wo)man. The player confronts various monsters: hobgoblins, leprechauns, acid blobs, bats, centaurs, chameleons, dragons, ghosts, imps, trolls, and has weapons, armor, potions, wands, rings and special items to aid in this, e.g. related to fire there is a scroll, a ring, a monster and a wand, and their interplay is to be discovered.

There is time pressure because the player dies if their food runs out, though food is scattered around the dungeon. There is a limit to how much the player can carry, forcing them to leave valuable items behind. The amount of gold and gems the player possesses when they die increases their score, but holding them comes with a burden of more weight.

The player must enter Hell to recover the Amulet. Entering Hell for the uninitiated just means that "you burn to a crisp". In NetHack, Hell is renamed.

The player encounters special rooms such as shops, crypts, and vaults. Other spatial elements in the game are traps and swamps. As the player's experience grows, so do their abilities, score and the need for food.

Hack implements a graphical user interface using arrangements of ASCII or Extended ASCII glyphs to represent game elements. Some later ports of Hack, on AmigaOS for example, use graphical tiles in place of these letters and symbols.

You hear some noises in the distance.
 
  
 #
                                                                  ------
                                                                  |....|
                       -----                                    ##+....|
                       |..$+#                                     |...<|
                       +...|#                                     |....|
                       |...|###############                       ------
                       |...|#             #-----+-----
                       |..%|##            #|.........|
                  #    -----#             #|.[......%L
       -+----  ##############             #|.........|
       |....|   #                         #+@........|
       |....+####                        ##-----------
       |....|
       |....+
       ------
 
 
 
 
Level 1    Hp  15(15)   Ac 9    Str 16      Exp  1          

• MobyGames is a commercial database website that catalogs information on video games and the people and companies behind them via crowdsourcing. This includes over 300,000 games for hundreds of platforms.^[1] Founded in 1999, ownership of the site has changed hands several times. It has been owned by Atari SA since 2022.

Edits and submissions to the site (including screenshots, box art, developer information, game summaries, and more) go through a verification process of fact-checking by volunteer "approvers".^[2] This lengthy approval process after submission can range from minutes to days or months.^[3] The most commonly used sources are the video game's website, packaging, and credit screens. There is a published standard for game information and copy-editing.^[4] A ranking system allows users to earn points for contributing accurate information.^[5]

Registered users can rate and review games. Users can create private or public "have" and "want" lists, which can generate a list of games available for trade with other registered users. The site contains an integrated forum. Each listed game can have its own sub-forum.

MobyGames was founded on March 1, 1999, by Jim Leonard and Brian Hirt, and joined by David Berk 18 months later, the three of which had been friends since high school.^[6][7] Leonard had the idea of sharing information about computer games with a larger audience. The database began with information about games for IBM PC compatibles, relying on the founders' personal collections. Eventually, the site was opened up to allow general users to contribute information.^[5] In a 2003 interview, Berk emphasized MobyGames' dedication to taking video games more seriously than broader society and to preserving games for their important cultural influence.^[5]

In mid-2010, MobyGames was purchased by GameFly for an undisclosed amount.^[8] This was announced to the community post factum , and the site's interface was given an unpopular redesign.^[7] A few major contributors left, refusing to do volunteer work for a commercial website.{{Citation needed|date=June 2025} On December 18, 2013, MobyGames was acquired by Jeremiah Freyholtz, owner of Blue Flame Labs (a San Francisco-based game and web development company) and VGBoxArt (a site for fan-made video game box art).^[9] Blue Flame Labs reverted MobyGames' interface to its pre-overhaul look and feel,^[10] and for the next eight years, the site was run by Freyholtz and Independent Games Festival organizer Simon Carless.^[7]

On November 24, 2021, Atari SA announced a potential deal with Blue Flame Labs to purchase MobyGames for $1.5 million.^[11] The purchase was completed on 8 March 2022, with Freyholtz remaining as general manager.^[12][13][14] Over the next year, the financial boost given by Atari led to a rework of the site being built from scratch with a new backend codebase, as well as updates improving the mobile and desktop user interface.^[1] This was accomplished by investing in full-time development of the site instead of its previously part-time development.^[15]

In 2024, MobyGames began offering a paid "Pro" membership option for the site to generate additional revenue.^[16] Previously, the site had generated income exclusively through banner ads and (from March 2014 onward) a small number of patrons via the Patreon website.^[17]

• IGDB – game database used by Twitch for its search and discovery functions

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