In the mid 1970s I worked for Vermont’s public television station as a studio engineer. I also did some computer programming for our station. Since our station was part of the University of Vermont, we used their computers when we needed to. One of those computers had the original text adventure game installed on it. I believe this game was known as Get Lamp [actually, Adventure, of course] and that it was written in Fortran around 1972 [make that 1976 for Crowther's original experiment, 1977 for the completed game]. It was very popular with the students. I began to play it when I had time, although I never really got into the game too deep.

Eventually, when the University upgraded their computer systems, we lost access to Get Lamp. It was about this time that I got my first personal computer – the TRS-80. I began writing programs to replace the ones I once played on the University of Vermont computers. Dog Star was my attempt to replace Get Lamp.

The story line for Dog Star was influenced by Star Wars. My story takes place on something similar to the Death Star. Star Wars had a Princess Leia. In Dog Star there was a Princess Leya.

One of the influences from Get Lamp that I carried over to Dog Star was the use of a common story telling device known as “the ticking bomb.” In Get Lamp the batteries in the flashlight go dead after a certain amount of game play. After that happens it is impossible to complete the adventure. In Dog Star it was a cheeseburger that got cold.

One of the techniques I used to write Dog Star was to give objects properties. There were actions and there were objects to perform actions on. Eating a cheeseburger was one action that caused something to happen – there was no more cheeseburger after you ate it. Talking to the cheeseburger was another possibility but it didn’t do anything.

-Interview with creator of Dog Star Adventure Lance Micklus-