The Prisoner

: For the Australian television soap opera (1979), see Prisoner.

Computer games

In 1981, EduWare produced The Prisoner, a video game for the Apple II computer based upon the television series. The game was reportedly not officially licensed, so a number of changes had to be made in order to distance the game from a few of the more recognizable Prisoner elements. The game's designer, David Mullich, incorporated elements of Franz Kafka's The Castle into the game, in which the players assumed the role of a character referred to as # (the "number sign" in the United States and Canada). # wakes up on The Island, and explores the 20 homes, shops and service buildings there, trying to find clues as to how to escape.

Related Topics:
EduWare - ''The Prisoner'' - Apple II - Franz Kafka - The Castle - Number sign

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The player is given a three-digit number, which signifies #'s reasons for resigning. The game then attempts at numerous times to trick the player into revealing the number. One of the most nefarious was a simulated game crash which included the error message "Syntax error in line ###" where the line number was the player's resignation code. The significance of this is that this was a commonly seen error message in the Apple II's BASIC programming language; out of pure habit, the next step most users would take at this point would be to investigate the erroneous line to try and correct the error, using the command "List ###" where ### once again is the line number. Typing the game's three-digit code at any time resulted in the game being lost, and that included typing the line into the BASIC command as, unknown to the player, the game was still running.

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Considered unique among games of this sort, The Prisoner was reportedly used as a training tool for Central Intelligence Agency agents. (Around this time, EduWare also released a "game" that simulated terrorist attacks - up to and including nuclear - and the player's task is to respond to these incidents.)

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In 1982, EduWare released a sequel, Prisoner 2, with colour and improved graphics. Released near the end of the Apple II's dominance of home computers, it was not as widely successful as the first game.

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