In the ever-evolving world of technology, millions of individuals the world over work magic with bits and bytes. A case in point is the recent ARS Technica article on a quirky game Andy created for the HP 200LX palmtop.
Back in the 1990s, Andy was a software engineer at Hewlett-Packard, working on developing palmtop computers. As an “out-of-school” hire and newbie on the team, Andy contributed to various aspects of the HP 200LX palmtop, including its database engine, which became the foundation for all palmtop applications. Like most developers, his work generally went unnoticed but a little Easter egg he put on the device recently grabbed someone’s attention over at ARS Technica. That egg was a first-person game called, “Lair of Squid.”
“Lair of Squid may not be a household name, but it embodies the spirit of creativity and determination that has always driven the game industry forward.” – ARS Technica
Coded in his spare time on nights and weekends, Andy had to write the game in a short time-frame to get it in before code freeze. He also had to deal with the constraints of the HP 200LX, which was designed to run for over a month on two AA batteries. (It featured a 7.91 MHz 80186 CPU, a monochrome 640×200 CGA display, and 1–4 megabytes of RAM.) And, although the hardware had built-in routines to write bitmaps to the display, the bitmaps couldn’t skew or scale. So, Andy wrote his own routines to fake a 3D perspective. The “unofficial” game, which flew under the radar of senior management, was included in the product with tacit approval.
Benj Edwards from ARS Technica recently discovered the game and was intrigued by it, so he tracked Andy down. His in-depth article describes the game as “the weirdest pack-in game of all time” and “the most unexpected Easter egg in palmtop history”. He also states: “Lair of Squid may not be a household name, but it embodies the spirit of creativity and determination that has always driven the game industry forward.”
Andy is the first person to tell you that this game is not one of his greatest coding achievements but, to me, it serves as a reminder that innovation often comes from those who quietly go about their work far away from the spotlight.
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