TAXMAN: a more-difficult-than-it-looks BASIC game from 1973

[scruss]

Way back when, the People's Computer Company out of California published a whole load of terminal-based BASIC games in their eponymous People's Computer Company magazine. Most of them are too simple to be of interest, but TAXMAN — a factor choosing game — provides a bit of a challenge.
I did a minimal port to Locomotive BASIC (formatting the text for 40 columns, putting pauses in the instructions since we're not running on paper teletypes, and moving one DIM command that would choke more modern interpreters) and uploaded it here: taxman.dsk. I hope you like it.

I wrote a bit more about it and included ports to other 8-bit machines (including BBC Micro, Apple II, C64, Spectrum and the ZX81) here: Taxman – a BASIC game from 1973
I'd just like to say that the ZX81 was not a particularly amusing port.
A transcript of a short game follows:

Code Select Expand

Hi, I'm the taxman
Do you want the regulations?
(1=Yes, 0=No)? 0

How many numbers do you want in the list? 6
The list is: 1  2  3  4  5  6

You take? 5
Your total is  5
I get  1
My total is  1

New list:  2  3  4  6
You take? 6

Your total is  11
I get  2  3
My total is  6

New list:  4
I get  4
because no factors of any number are left.


My total is  10

You  11  Taxman  10

You win !!!

Again (1=yes, 0=no)?


[AMSDOS]

Taxman reminds me of another game called NIM, which was also another early BASIC game I think.


Having a look through the People's Computer Company Magazine revealed some other BASIC material on Joel & Andy's Page 16, I did a little altering to the "Andy Fire Prints Out An Image", which might come in useful for later games even if they seem useless.
I'm always interested in Bits & Pieces for getting ideas from, it's just a pity I couldn't read the other bit of code to produce a flower pattern from properly, it appears to be an printing issue stemming back from that magazine.

[scruss]

Taxman reminds me of another game called NIM, which was also another early BASIC game I think.

Nim is a classic misère; that is, a game that you've lost if you make the wrong first move. Taxman is mean, but I don't think it's strictly a one-shot at not losing

[Anthony Flack]

John Conway did extensive investigations of mathematical games like Nim, subsequent to his development of the surreal numbers. He and his collaborators produced an entire book about them:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Winning_Ways_for_Your_Mathematical_Plays