Hidden Terminal game - Eliza

[chainprayer]

I'm surprised this isn't discussed more on the forums! I only found one thread relating to this, and it was an odd reference.

Open terminal, type emacs, and hit enter.

Hold shift and press esc, release.

Type xdoctor and hit enter.

Now you can talk to Eliza! Press enter twice after speaking to her.

 

[richard.mac]

thats a game in emacs, which is a program in BSD, which is Mac OS X's foundations.

nothing new, its just most novice Mac users dont dabble around in BSD.

 

[thecheda]

Crazy

I became frustrated in the first minute.

 

[jodelli]

At the prompt type (one at a time)

life <enter>

dunnet <enter>

zone <enter>

snake <enter>

To quit any of them hit <esc> <x>

These have been around for a dogs age or two.

 

[RedTomato]

Oh yes, I played with these years ago.

To play the other programs listed above, get inside Emacs, press Esc, then x, then type the name of the program.

I think there's a Hangman in there too.

To quit Emacs, press Ctrl-x, Ctrl-c. Intuitive it isn't.

 

[miles01110]

It's like playing Terminal Tetris. Fun, but much, much better alternatives = nobody cares.

 

[madog]

Not specific to Mac OS X, but in the terminal enter (or copy/paste):

telnet towel.blinkenlights.nl

You may have to wait a minute or two while it loads (you only need to hit ENTER once) depending on your connection and their server.

It's not malicious or anything (unless you hate Star Wars), but does require a decent internet connection and not a horribly slow machine.

For those who don't like fun surprises then: It's Star Wars Ep. IV in ASCII.

 

[jblagden]

I'm surprised this isn't discussed more on the forums! I only found one thread relating to this, and it was an odd reference.

Open terminal, type emacs, and hit enter.

Hold shift and press esc, release.

Type xdoctor and hit enter.

Now you can talk to Eliza! Press enter twice after speaking to her.

I tried to play that game, but it didn’t show up. I think Apple removed it sometime after Snow Leopard.

 

[RedTomato]

I tried to play that game, but it didn’t show up. I think Apple removed it sometime after Snow Leopard.

Running El Capitan here. All these games still work. You may not be entering the secret codes (!) properly.

1) Open terminal,
2) Type emacs, and hit enter.
3) Hold shift and press esc, release.
4) Press x, release.
5) type in the name of the game you want, hit enter.

To quit the game, hit <esc> <x>

Games are:

doctor
life
dunnet
zone
snake

 

[ApfelKuchen]

And, while this is all quite well documented, incidents like the recent iOS January 1, 1970 "prank" tend to put a damper on things.

 

[jblagden]

Running El Capitan here. All these games still work. You may not be entering the secret codes (!) properly.

1) Open terminal,
2) Type emacs, and hit enter.
3) Hold shift and press esc, release.
4) Press x, release.
5) type in the name of the game you want, hit enter.

To quit the game, hit <esc> <x>

Games are:

doctor
life
dunnet
zone
snake

It works for everything except Eliza.

 

[RedTomato]

It works for everything except Eliza.

Eliza works for me fine on El Capitan. Just to check we're talking about the same thing, 'doctor' is the name of the Eliza game.

 

[jblagden]

Eliza works for me fine on El Capitan. Just to check we're talking about the same thing, 'doctor' is the name of the Eliza game.

Oh. I thought it was called Eliza. The ‘doctor’ game works fine. I just didn’t realize that Eliza was called ‘doctor’.

 

[Crusader007]

Check this out for more hidden secrets

Mac OS X - Hidden Gems : Part 3: http://bit.ly/1PNyV9m
Mac OS X - Hidden Gems : Part 2: http://bit.ly/22s5TFw
Mac OS X - Hidden Gems : Part 1: http://bit.ly/1TRJlwn