THE CODE OF LAWS

A text-based management game that tasked players with distributing resources to their citizens, Hamurabi was a strategy precursor that could be found in schools and on mainframes in the ’60s. Originally known as TheSumerGame, it was rewritten in BASIC and spread to microcomputers in the ’70s. Unfortunately it was more like maths homework than a game. Hamurabi proved to be popular with prospective programmers. After being published in BASIC Computer Games, a collection of type-in programs, people started making custom versions. These programmers included Walter Bright, who was originally working on a

Hamurabi game before creating the Civilization progenitor, Empire.