Living: Games People Play: 1977

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Smart little computers provide mental aerobics Ding, ding, ding, ding, ding!" The sound of a fire bell, imitated flawlessly and gleefully by a high-pitched human voice, informs the neighborhood that Moppet has conquered Machine. They are well matched: Lizie is small, going on eleven, with brightly lit hazel eyes. The vanquished mechanism is a small desktop computer called Comp IV, new this year at under $40, with flashing red lights.

Comp IV starts things off by thinking of— but not revealing — a number, and its human opponent tries to work out the secret by punching pushbuttons. Milton Bradley Co., which makes the gadget, supplies scratch pads for adults and slow-witted children, but self-respecting eleven-year-olds disdain these. The girl also does not bother with the relatively easy three-and four-digit problems. She plays at the rarefied five-digit level, which means she must hit on one out of a possible 30,240 combinations, and she keeps her notes in her head, the way the computer does.

She skips across the living room to where her father is playing chess. "Watch this," he says, stabbing furiously at a keyboard. He is 26 moves into a grim queen's gambit saber duel with Chess Challenger, a $275 computerized overachiever built by Fidelity Electronics, Ltd. The machine is playing at the highest of its three levels, claimed in some ads to equal 1650, the rating of an average club player (the estimate is too generous). It has occurred to the father that it could be a great improvement, in the interest of strict fairness, if the computer had an aperture down which martinis could be poured. The valiant human attacker has such an aperture. Nevertheless he has forced a crack in the dreaded robot's pawn fortress, and he sends his queen slashing in, punching "H3 to H6" and the encode button on the keyboard. The red light-emitting diodes of the machine's digital display flicker for about 30 seconds.

"He's really sweating," says the father, sensing the kill. Lizie scowls. "How do you know it's a he?" But now the sweating is over,and the checkmated computer weeps a bright red tear: "I lose." "Right, it's a he," says Lizie.

A great many Americans are discovering this Christmas that sending a computer to the showers in bitter defeat swells human self-esteem in a wonderfully satisfying way (and losing to the wretched thing raises the dark suspicion that humanity's number may be up). Stores are full of computer games—or, in some cases, are sold out of items like Parker Bros.' Code Name: Sector (up to $50), in which the computer plays the part of a hunted submarine, and Milton Bradley's bleeping, buzzing Electronic Battleship (also up to $50)—and customers trying to buy them. Games are the most important segment of the toy market. Manufacturers are expected to gross some $450 million in 1977, up 10% from the previous year. Last season TV action games of the Pong variety were the electronic craze, and manufacturers Fairchild and Atari are back on the market with more versatile and more expensive cassette models.