Main Page

Welcome to the Programming Games Wiki, a community site for programming game addicts. In a programming game players write programs to compete against each other. Feel free to add anything on-topic or just chat about the games on the discussion pages.

Featured Programming Games RobotWar was the first commercial programming game, originally written by Silas Warner for PLATO. In 1981 RobotWar was published for the Apple II by MUSE Software. OMEGA was a commercial game for the Amiga, Apple II, Atari ST, Commodore 64 and PC. OMEGA was designed by Stuart Marks and published by Origin Systems in 1989. Core War was introduced by A. K. Dewdney in Scientific American. The game Dewdney described has since been extended and implemented on a number of systems. Color Robot Battle was a commercial game for the Tandy TRS-80 Color Computer, designed and written by Glenn Sogge and Del Ogren.

Programming Games Timeline 1961 The earlier known programming games is Darwin, played on an IBM 7090 mainframe at Bell Labs. 1968 The earliest reference to Core War, 15 years before the version invented by A. K. Dewdney. 1970s Silas Warner's first version of RobotWar on the PLATO system. 1980 RobotWar was released for the Apple II by MUSE Software. 1981 Color Robot Battle was released for the TRS-80 Color Computer. 1982 The Programmable Cube Rocky's Boots The Biological Evolution Game 1983 Robot was released for the Sol-20 computer. Arena was published in the book Advanced Programming for the 16K ZX81 by Mike Costello. Combots 1984 Modern Core War was introduced by A K Dewdney in Scientific American. DROID was developed at Reichhold Chemicals as a teaching aid. Robot Odyssey was release by The Learning Company for the PC, Apple II and TRS-80 Color Computer. ChipWits 1985 CROBOTS was published as shareware by Tom Poindexter. ARENA was released as shareware by Richard Brown. Robot Arena was published for the RM 380Z series of computers by SPA Publishing. 1988 David Malmberg released P-Robots. Warrior Cycles Xtank was published by Terry Donahue. 1989 OMEGA Tanx 1990 Jintori RoboWar Struggle Warbots 1991 T-Robots Robot Battle Battle Droids 'bot 1992 PCRobots Snake Battle ARobots AT-Robots B.A.T. II – The Koshan Conspiracy 1993 CoreLife Combat Zone Robosport 1994 TclRobots C++Robots RoboRally 1995 Digital warriors A-Robots RARS Carnage Heart ToonTalk 1996 Biomass A.I. Wars (The Insect Mind) 1997 Robots SRobots TORCS StarshipSoccer War of Robot Worms 1998 Robot Warfare 1 1999 Marionette Handler AI Fleet Commander 2000 Marionette Handler 2 ARobots BattleBots MindRover Grobots