Like many games in the
early history of video games,
Marienbad did not spread far beyond the initial location. Mainframe computers were rare throughout the world and primarily located in government or military institutions or large corporations, so were generally unavailable for amusement purposes. Elwro produced only 42 Odra 1003 mainframes between 1963 and 1965. Elwro declined to publish or advertise the game, and the title was mostly forgotten. After developing the game, Podgórski became a student at the Wojskowa Akademia Techniczna (
Military University of Technology in Warsaw), and with the assistance of fellow student Bogdan Bleja set up a version of the game there on an Odra 1003 that was mediated by a university operator. The computer, and therefore the game, could be used or played by any student, but only through an operator who received the intended input from the player and passed the information to the computer. As in Podgórski's original game instance, the game was essentially unbeatable; the operators as a result actively discouraged the players from participating. The university authorities supported this, as they wanted to forcibly remove the "nasty habit of harassing computers for logic games", which they believed should be used only for serious military purposes. Players took to holding secret meetings in front of the massive computer in the late evenings when the operators were gone. Podgórski recalled that despite knowing that the game was designed to always beat the player, many people spent many hours trying to decipher the algorithm or win. In later years, variants of nim and Marienbad were the second most popular type of computer game present on Polish computers after
noughts and crosses, since it was a relatively simple game to program. , who would later become the two-decade long host of
Wheel of Fortune from the 1970s, proposed to Polish television a game show where players compete against a computer in nim on a Momik 8b minicomputer. Meanwhile, Podgórski continued to work for Elwro, co-creating Odra computers, though he did not stop working on games. After colleagues brought a variant of the
Mancala board game from Egypt, he became inspired to adapt it to the computer. This time he did not want to create an unbeatable game, but included adjustable difficulty levels to create a fun experience regardless of the player's expertise. Writing for
Polish Bytes (
Bajty Polskie), Bartłomiej Kluska asserts that as the only copy of the Odra 1003 is kept at the
Museum of Technology in Warsaw in an inactive state, the original game of
Marienbad no longer exists outside of the memory of players. No recreations of the game have been made for more modern computers, and there are no known photos or documentation for how the game was played or created. In the research paper
Gry komputerowe jako dziedzictwo kulturowe (
Computer games as a cultural heritage) by Maria Garda, she notes that the game should be written about only in the past tense as the original elements have not been preserved, adding that while the
Marienbad algorithm can be recreated in a new programming environment, reconstruction of the physical transistors of the original computer would be nearly impossible. The paper further compared the challenges of playing this title in the modern era to playing
Super Mario Bros. on the originally intended equipment in 50 years' time.
Marienbad is considered one of the first Polish video games, developed almost 20 years before later candidates
OiX (1984),
Gąsienica (1985), and
Puszka Pandory (1986), and well before the first well-known Polish game,
Tajemnica Statuetki (1993).
Łódź game historian Bartek Kluska made this assertion in his foundational book on the Polish video gaming industry,
Polish Bytes; his research uncovered the game as 24 years older than the game that previously held the title. Kluska notes, however, that it was preceded by "Kółko i krzyżyk", a version of tic-tac-toe written by Department of Mathematical Apparatus programmer Bogdan Miś in 1960 for the
XYZ computer, using a chess-sized grid. Michał Nowicki of Gram.pl asserted that Kluska's research, in contrast with the previous and more imprecise Polish video gaming text
Dawno temu w grach (Once upon a time in games), allows Marienbad's claim as the first Polish computer or video game to be made with almost 100% certainty. An article by retailer Empik further asserts that
Marienbads simplicity and lack of video output means that the term "computer game" is a somewhat exaggerated term to describe it, much less "video game". Garda's paper claims, however, that regardless of its simplicity the game has importance as one of the earliest computer or video games from the region, although Marcin Kosman of Gamezilla notes that this first attempt at creating a Polish computer game went largely unnoticed. Jacek Głowacki of
Gry Online stated that despite its obscurity, it should be considered the ancestor of the modern Polish video gaming industry, and that its existence and creation are worth remembering. The 2018 Ars Independent Festival held an exhibition entitled "From Marienbad to Novigrad" which explored the history of the Polish video gaming industry from
Marienbad to
The Witcher 3 (2015). == See also==