Editing Phoenix (computer) (section)

== Games ==
{| class="wikitable" style="float;" width="100%"
|+ [[Interactive fiction]] games developed on Phoenix using the ''[[Acheton]]'' system<ref name=Montfort>{{cite book|title=Twisty Little Passages: An Approach To Interactive Fiction|author=Nick Montfort|pages=115–116|year=2005|publisher=MIT Press|isbn=0-262-63318-3}}</ref>
|-
! Game !! Year !! Authors' names (Phoenix login names in parentheses)
|-
| ''[[Acheton]]'' || 1978 || Jon Thackray (JGT1), David Seal (DJS6), and [[Jonathan Partington|Jonathan R. Partington]] (JRP1)
|-
| ''Murdac'' || 1982 || Jonathan R. Partington
|-
| ''Avon'' || 1982 || Jonathan R. Partington
|-
| ''Brand X'' || 1979 || [[Jonathan Mestel]] (AJM8) and [[Peter Killworth]] (PDK1)
|-
| ''Hamil'' || 1982 || Jonathan R. Partington
|-
| ''Quondam'' || 1980 || Rod Underwood (RU10)
|-
| ''Hezarin'' || 1980 || Steve Tinney, Alex Shipp, and Jon Thackray
|-
| ''Xeno'' || 1989 || Jonathan Mestel
|-
| ''Fyleet'' || 1985 || Jonathan R. Partington
|-
| ''Crobe'' || 1986 || Jonathan R. Partington
|-
| ''Sangraal'' || 1987 || Jonathan R. Partington
|-
| ''Nidus'' || 1987 || Adam Atkinson (AJFA1)
|-
| ''Parc'' || 1983 || John Rennie (JR26)
|-
| ''Xerb'' || unknown || Andrew Lipson (ASL1)
|-
| ''Spycatcher'' || circa 1988 || Jonathan R. Partington and Jon Thackray
|}

One recreational activity on Phoenix was the playing of [[interactive fiction]] games.  Because the games were large and demanded significant machine resources whilst running, they were generally played outside of prime time, when research palled.  (The exit message of one game, ''Fyleet'' written by [[Jonathan Partington]] in 1985, was "Well go and do some work then".)  Other games were ''Advent'' (a.k.a. ''[[Colossal Cave Adventure|Colossal Cave]]''), ''[[Zork]]'' (a.k.a. ''Dungeon''), and ''[[Acheton]]''.<ref name=Montfort /><ref>{{cite book|title=The Inform Designer's Manual|author=[[Graham Nelson]]|chapter=A short history of interactive fiction|pages=347|year=2001|publisher=Dan Sanderson|isbn=0-9713119-0-0}}</ref>

''Acheton'' was created by two Cambridge graduate students, Jon Thackray and David Seal, in 1978–1979, and expanded over the ensuring two years with the aid of Jonathan Partington.  It was written with the aid of a game assembler, which, unlike the contemporary [[Zork Implementation Language|ZIL]] game assembler from [[Infocom]], was freely available for use by all users of Phoenix between 1980 and 1995.<ref name=Montfort />

Several large early British games developed on Phoenix were sold commercially for microcomputers by [[Acornsoft]] and, later, [[Topologika]]. This was comparable to Infocom's contemporaneous commercialisation of the [[MIT]] mainframe game [[Zork]]. Many of these games were subsequently translated by [[Graham Nelson]] to run on the [[Z-Machine]].

The commercial release of ''Brand X'' was ''[[Philosopher's Quest]]''.<ref name=Montfort />