Game

Marienbad

1962 · Call-A-Computer time-shared mainframe computer system · Strategy · Tactical

About this game

Marienbad is an adaptation of the strategy game Nim, originally written in Poland for the Odra 1003 mainframe. The game did not originally have a specific title; in later literature the name Marienbad was applied retroactively. It is one of the earliest Polish computer games. It was inspired by a variant of Nim seen in the 1961 movie Last Year at Marienbad and described under the name "Marienbad" in the magazine Przekrój. There are several rows (four by default) of matchsticks, with a different number of matchsticks in each row. Both players (the human and the computer) take turns, in each move taking away at least one matchstick from a single row. The player left with the final matchstick loses.