Hidden text based games on your Mac

Any geeky Mac user should know that the Terminal is home to some good old text based games. These games come with emacs, which itself is part of the UNIX system, the foundation for your Mac OS. You don’t have to be a hardcore programmer to play them though, and they’re actually pretty easy to find.

Open up your Terminal in Applications > Utilities and type the following line: “ls /usr/share/emacs/21.2/lisp/play” (no quotes). Next, open another Terminal window and type the command “emacs” (again, without quote marks).

This will reveal a list of text based games you can play, among which you’ll find classics like Pong, Solitaire or Snake. The most popular of them all seems to be Dunnet, an adventure/ discovery game where you have to lead your character along a path. Along the way he’ll discover objects and treasures and eventually, have to work out what to do with them.

These games don’t really compare to the high graphics stuff we get to play nowadays but they’re really great time wasters and can get really addictive. Computers and applications are filled with hidden treasures like these, and it’s really just a case of uncovering them.