Jay Fenlason's Hack - Revision history

Critlist: Clarify differences between Fenlason’s Hack and Brouwer’s Hack 1.0

2026-02-03T19:07:30Z

Clarify differences between Fenlason’s Hack and Brouwer’s Hack 1.0

Critlist: Correct special room information across Hack variants

2026-02-03T18:52:23Z

Correct special room information across Hack variants

Critlist: Update Variants section to reflect preserved original Hack source

2026-02-03T07:47:19Z

Update Variants section to reflect preserved original Hack source

Critlist: Correct Hack development background and add primary sources

2026-02-03T07:42:07Z

Correct Hack development background and add primary sources

Critlist: Clarify availability of Fenlason Hack source and add citation

2026-02-03T07:19:09Z

Clarify availability of Fenlason Hack source and add citation

Umbire the Phantom: pothole, italics

2025-01-16T14:55:29Z

pothole, italics

Umbire the Phantom: /* Rings */ pothole

2024-12-29T01:52:59Z

‎Rings: pothole

Umbire the Phantom: /* Hack for PDP-11 and PC/IX Hack */ use wayback due to link rot

2024-12-19T16:11:24Z

‎Hack for PDP-11 and PC/IX Hack: use wayback due to link rot

Umbire the Phantom: /* Main monster list */ pothole

2024-10-15T13:07:43Z

‎Main monster list: pothole

Umbire the Phantom: pothole

2024-09-27T19:12:59Z

pothole

@@ Line 64: / Line 64: @@
 [[Hack 1.0]] was developed by [[Andries Brouwer]] and posted to Usenet in December 1984.  All other versions of Hack and NetHack are descended from this version.
-==Main differences from Andries Brouwer's Hack==
+==Main differences from Andries Brouwer’s Hack==
-*The concept of a [[role]] was introduced in Hack 1.0, and is not present in the other versions.  Hack121 begins with a screen from which the player may buy equipment; this is mentioned by Robert Grover as a feature of Fenlason's original version.  Brouwer presumably removed this screen fairly early on: PDP-11 Hack, being derived from an early draft of Andries Brouwer's Hack, starts the player off as a generic fighter character.
+Fenlason’s original Hack differs substantially from Andries Brouwer’s Hack 1.0 in both structure and gameplay systems. The preserved Fenlason codebase contains a single-character dungeon exploration game without [[roles]], [[pets]], [[shops]], or other complex subsystems that later became central to Hack and NetHack.
-*The exact goal of the adventurer is uncertain.  The [[Amulet of Yendor]] is not mentioned.
-*Hack121 does not have [[pet]]s.  PDP-11 Hack starts the player off with a little [[dog]], suggesting that pets were a relatively early addition by Brouwer.
+Hack 1.0 introduces player roles, a formalized end goal centered on the [[Amulet of Yendor]], a pet system, and multiple new gameplay subsystems including shops, special room types, and the segmented worm mechanic. Brouwer later described Hack 1.0 as being almost entirely rewritten relative to Fenlason’s original sources.
 ==Special room types==

@@ Line 70: / Line 70: @@
 ==Special room types==
-It seems likely that [[shop]]s were the only special room type in Fenlason's original code.
+No special room types are present in the version of Hack submitted to the USENIX 82-1 software distribution tape. The preserved USENIX version contains no shops or other designated special rooms.
-Hack121 has shops.  No other special room types are presently known to exist in hack121.
+The DOS binary known as hack121 begins the game in a shop. This represents the earliest known appearance of a shop in any Hack-related variant. As no source code for hack121 is known to survive, and the provenance of the port is uncertain, it is not possible to determine whether the shop was introduced by the porter or derived from a later, now-lost version of Fenlason’s Hack.
-PDP-11 Hack has shops (mkshop), [[zoo]]s (mkzoo), [[graveyard]]s (mkyard), [[swamp]]s (mkswamp) and [[vault]]s (mk_knox).  The developers of PDP-11 Hack, per their readme, implemented vaults, swamps, zoos and graveyards themselves, leaving shops as the only roomtype which was present in the sources they originally obtained.  Vaults, in particular, are implemented very differently to Hack 1.0.
+Hack for PDP-11 and PC/IX includes shops as well as additional special room types such as zoos, graveyards, swamps, and vaults. According to the PDP-11 Hack documentation, these room types were implemented by the port’s developers themselves, with shops already present in the codebase they obtained. Vaults in particular are implemented in a manner distinct from later Hack and NetHack versions.
-Hack 1.0 has vaults (not delegated), shops (mkshop) and zoos (mkzoo).
+Andries Brouwer’s Hack reintroduces shops and expands the use of special room types, forming the basis for their continued development in later Hack and NetHack variants.
 ==Mazes==

@@ Line 18: / Line 18: @@
 ==Variants==
-The exact content of the original Hack is not known for sure (but see the comments section of [http://gonnagan.wordpress.com/2011/04/23/hack-update/#comments this post] for a possible lead).  Three derivatives are known to exist.  The rest of this article covers mainly Hack for PDP-11 and "hack121".
+The original Hack developed by Jay Fenlason is now known to survive in the form of a preserved project tree, including the version submitted to the USENIX 82-1 distribution tape and evidence of further iterative development. Several derivative and ported versions of Hack were also created during the early 1980s. This section describes notable variants and ports that circulated independently of the original development tree.
 ===Hack 1.21 (hack121)===

@@ Line 9: / Line 9: @@
 ==Background==
-Development began shortly after the 1982 USENIX conference in Boston, MA where Michael Toy and Ken Arnold (the authors of the then closed-source [[Rogue (game)|Rogue]]) spoke.  In Fenlason's own words:
+Development of Hack began in 1981 at Lincoln-Sudbury Regional High School in Massachusetts, where Jay Fenlason and other students had access to a PDP-11 system running Unix. The school’s computing environment, administered by a student-run Computer Center Users Society, emphasized experimentation and peer collaboration rather than formal coursework.<ref name=harvey-lsrhs>[https://people.eecs.berkeley.edu/~bh/lsrhs.html Brian Harvey, “Computer Hacking and Ethics: The Lincoln-Sudbury Case Study”], ACM Select Panel on Hacking, 1985.</ref>
-:"I was curious about some of the game play issues involved in designing it, things like how the rooms and corridors were generated, so I started hacking up some random level generators and stuff to try things out. Someone looked over my shoulder and said, 'what's that?' So I sort of explained and they said, 'oh, that's cool; when do we get to play it?'"<ref name=linux>"[https://www.linux.com/news/train-life-nethacks-papa/ On The Train Of Life With Nethack’s Papa]" (2000), Julie Bresnick, Linux.com.</ref><ref name=newsforge>"[http://web.archive.org/web/20030512112023/http://newsforge.com/article.pl?sid=00/12/03/2052246&mode=thread&tid=9 On the train of life with Nethack's papa]" (2000) [2003], Julie Bresnick, Newsforge.com by Internet Archive.</ref>
+Fenlason developed Hack as an original program exploring dungeon-based gameplay, focusing on procedural room and corridor generation, monster behavior, and item interaction. By the first half of 1982, Hack had reached a sufficiently complete state to be submitted for external distribution.
-The only publication of the original Hack was on a USENIX software distribution tape, apparently the first 1984 USENIX tape (of which no online copy is known to exist), where it accompanied Jon Payne's text editor JOVE.  It proved to be very popular:
+Hack was included in the USENIX 82-1 software distribution tape, submitted by Brian Harvey, then Computer Director at Lincoln-Sudbury. Contemporary evidence from *;login:* (Vol. 7, No. 3, June 1982) confirms that the tape had been completed prior to the Summer 1982 USENIX conference in Boston, where it was subsequently distributed. Hack therefore predates the conference presentations held at that meeting.<ref>[https://archive.org/details/login_june-1982/page/n13/mode/2up *;login:* Vol. 7, No. 3 (June 1982)], USENIX Association.</ref>
-:"Usenix had biannual<sup>[sic: semiannual]</sup> meetings, Unix users would get together and swap war stories. For each meeting they'd put together a tape of some of the contributed software. I put [Hack] on the tape and forgot about it until someone I know mentioned that the two most popular pieces of software on that particular tape were my silly game and my friend Jonathon's text editor. Since then there's been several different versions of Hack written, and I think I'm the only person who still uses that text editor."<ref name=linux/><ref name=newsforge/>
+The USENIX distribution tape also contained Jon Payne’s text editor JOVE. Although no online copy of the tape is known to exist, Hack was widely used by recipients and became one of the more notable programs included. Fenlason later recalled that following its inclusion on the USENIX distribution tape, Hack attracted considerable attention, with discussion often focusing on Hack alongside Jon Payne’s text editor JOVE.<ref name=linux>[https://www.linux.com/news/train-life-nethacks-papa/ On The Train Of Life With NetHack’s Papa], Julie Bresnick, Linux.com, 2000.</ref>
 ==Variants==

@@ Line 4: / Line 4: @@
 '''HACK''' is a roguelike role-playing game written by [[Jay Fenlason]], with contributions from Kenny Woodland, Mike Thome, and Jon Payne, from which all subsequent versions of [[Hack]] and all versions of ''[[NetHack]]'' are descended.  '''Jay Fenlason's Hack''' is the term given to the original Hack, without the extensive modifications by [[Andries Brouwer]] which are present in the more widely distributed version.
-At present, source code for the original is not available online.  A DOS port with user interface changes is available in binary form, all of Brouwer's versions are available as source code, and the source code for an early variant dubbed "Hack for PDP-11", which was based on a leaked early draft of Andries Brouwer's version, is also available.
+At present, source code for the original was long believed to be unavailable online; however, a preserved copy of Jay Fenlason’s original Hack project tree has since surfaced via academic and archival channels. This project tree, preserved by Brian Harvey, contains the working directory for the USENIX 82-1 submission as well as evidence of further iterative development.<ref name=fenlason-tree>[https://github.com/Sustainable-Games/fenlason-hack Fenlason Hack source tree], GitHub repository preserved by Dan Stormont, accessed 3 February 2026.</ref>
 ==Background==

@@ Line 2: / Line 2: @@
 {{NetHack Versions}}
-'''HACK''' is a roguelike role-playing game written by [[Jay Fenlason]], with contributions from Kenny Woodland, Mike Thome, and Jon Payne, from which all subsequent versions of [[Hack]] and all versions of [[NetHack]] are descended.  '''Jay Fenlason's Hack''' is the term given to the original Hack, without the extensive modifications by [[Andries Brouwer]] which are present in the more widely distributed version.
+'''HACK''' is a roguelike role-playing game written by [[Jay Fenlason]], with contributions from Kenny Woodland, Mike Thome, and Jon Payne, from which all subsequent versions of [[Hack]] and all versions of ''[[NetHack]]'' are descended.  '''Jay Fenlason's Hack''' is the term given to the original Hack, without the extensive modifications by [[Andries Brouwer]] which are present in the more widely distributed version.
 At present, source code for the original is not available online.  A DOS port with user interface changes is available in binary form, all of Brouwer's versions are available as source code, and the source code for an early variant dubbed "Hack for PDP-11", which was based on a leaked early draft of Andries Brouwer's version, is also available.
@@ Line 163: / Line 163: @@
 |-
 |robber (R)
-|[[nymph]] (N)
+|[[Nymph (monster)|nymph]] (N)
 |nymph (N)
 |-

@@ Line 957: / Line 957: @@
 |[[ring of levitation|levitation]]
 |-
-|poison resistance
+|[[ring of poison resistance|poison resistance]]
 |poison resistance
 |poison resistance

@@ Line 62: / Line 62: @@
 The shar files of both versions are archived at Google Groups:
-*Hack for PDP-11 [https://groups.google.com/forum/message/raw?msg=net.sources/5uBrrldg_Q0/6x0XmngexDgJ Part 1], [https://groups.google.com/forum/message/raw?msg=net.sources/LieFm-Ll9_0/VnsKgJfljOwJ Part 2], [https://groups.google.com/forum/message/raw?msg=net.sources/r-dOSRjQpMU/Nlyr0PxMgBsJ Part 3], [https://groups.google.com/forum/message/raw?msg=net.sources/VAYLAAsSkLI/BqDjDPAWmrwJ Part 4], [https://groups.google.com/forum/message/raw?msg=net.sources/-IXg25AJoeY/LS8yFJ9WIA0J Part 5] ([https://altavista.superglobalmegacorp.com/usenet/news021f2/b37/net/sources/2493.txt Mirror 1], [https://altavista.superglobalmegacorp.com/usenet/news021f2/b37/net/sources/2484.txt 2], [https://altavista.superglobalmegacorp.com/usenet/news021f2/b37/net/sources/2485.txt 3], [https://altavista.superglobalmegacorp.com/usenet/news021f2/b37/net/sources/2483.txt 4], [https://altavista.superglobalmegacorp.com/usenet/news021f2/b37/net/sources/2486.txt 5]).
+*Hack for PDP-11 [https://groups.google.com/forum/message/raw?msg=net.sources/5uBrrldg_Q0/6x0XmngexDgJ Part 1], [https://groups.google.com/forum/message/raw?msg=net.sources/LieFm-Ll9_0/VnsKgJfljOwJ Part 2], [https://groups.google.com/forum/message/raw?msg=net.sources/r-dOSRjQpMU/Nlyr0PxMgBsJ Part 3], [https://groups.google.com/forum/message/raw?msg=net.sources/VAYLAAsSkLI/BqDjDPAWmrwJ Part 4], [https://groups.google.com/forum/message/raw?msg=net.sources/-IXg25AJoeY/LS8yFJ9WIA0J Part 5] ([https://web.archive.org/web/20231226072817/https://altavista.superglobalmegacorp.com/usenet/news021f2/b37/net/sources/2493.txt Mirror 1], [https://web.archive.org/web/20231225230056/https://altavista.superglobalmegacorp.com/usenet/news021f2/b37/net/sources/2484.txt 2], [https://web.archive.org/web/20231121062237/https://altavista.superglobalmegacorp.com/usenet/news021f2/b37/net/sources/2485.txt 3], [https://web.archive.org/web/20231120211957/https://altavista.superglobalmegacorp.com/usenet/news021f2/b37/net/sources/2483.txt 4], [https://web.archive.org/web/20231121000956/https://altavista.superglobalmegacorp.com/usenet/news021f2/b37/net/sources/2486.txt 5]).
-*PC/IX Hack [https://groups.google.com/forum/message/raw?msg=net.sources.games/DZojzOjXB58/D8oxg2kIGhMJ Part 1], [https://groups.google.com/forum/message/raw?msg=net.sources.games/wEiQQRKsmf8/kiKUF0OzCtYJ Part 2], [https://groups.google.com/forum/message/raw?msg=net.sources.games/DjFLmksGV0A/eQcVkX0r7c0J Part 3], [https://groups.google.com/forum/message/raw?msg=net.sources.games/igffaAj-Rx4/LKiMv3f52GEJ Part 4], [https://groups.google.com/forum/message/raw?msg=net.sources.games/HB4_-2PClaw/hGdwfbnukpsJ Part 5] ([https://altavista.superglobalmegacorp.com/usenet/news026f2/b46/net/sources/games/107.txt Mirror 1], [https://altavista.superglobalmegacorp.com/usenet/news026f2/b46/net/sources/games/110.txt 2], [https://altavista.superglobalmegacorp.com/usenet/news026f2/b46/net/sources/games/111.txt 3], [https://altavista.superglobalmegacorp.com/usenet/news026f2/b46/net/sources/games/108.txt 4], [https://altavista.superglobalmegacorp.com/usenet/news026f2/b46/net/sources/games/109.txt 5]).
+*PC/IX Hack [https://groups.google.com/forum/message/raw?msg=net.sources.games/DZojzOjXB58/D8oxg2kIGhMJ Part 1], [https://groups.google.com/forum/message/raw?msg=net.sources.games/wEiQQRKsmf8/kiKUF0OzCtYJ Part 2], [https://groups.google.com/forum/message/raw?msg=net.sources.games/DjFLmksGV0A/eQcVkX0r7c0J Part 3], [https://groups.google.com/forum/message/raw?msg=net.sources.games/igffaAj-Rx4/LKiMv3f52GEJ Part 4], [https://groups.google.com/forum/message/raw?msg=net.sources.games/HB4_-2PClaw/hGdwfbnukpsJ Part 5] ([https://web.archive.org/web/20230912070650/https://altavista.superglobalmegacorp.com/usenet/news026f2/b46/net/sources/games/107.txt Mirror 1], [https://web.archive.org/web/20230912070649/https://altavista.superglobalmegacorp.com/usenet/news026f2/b46/net/sources/games/110.txt 2], [https://web.archive.org/web/20231120221538/https://altavista.superglobalmegacorp.com/usenet/news026f2/b46/net/sources/games/111.txt 3], [https://web.archive.org/web/20231224153451/https://altavista.superglobalmegacorp.com/usenet/news026f2/b46/net/sources/games/108.txt 4], [https://web.archive.org/web/20231120221005/https://altavista.superglobalmegacorp.com/usenet/news026f2/b46/net/sources/games/109.txt 5]).
 ===Hack 1.0===

@@ Line 294: / Line 294: @@
 |chameleon (:)
 |-
-|[[dragon]] (D)
+|[[Dragon (monster)|dragon]] (D)
 |dragon (D)
 |dragon (D)

@@ Line 674: / Line 674: @@
 |-
+|
-|[[potion of gain ability|gain strength]]
+|[[potion of gain strength]]
 |gain strength
 |gain strength