David Crane and Activision wanted to try something different in the mid-1980s, and the end result was the Little Computer People Discovery Kit containing the House On A Disk. Onscreen a side-on view of a miniature house was revealed, with each room having an activity or movement associated with it. Into this moved a Little Computer Person (LCP) and his pet dog; a unique code on each disk gave a different name and appearance.
The player used over two hundred words to interact with the LCP, sending him books and records, asking him to write a letter or simply watching the LCP in his daily routine. Food and water must be topped up to prevent the LCP falling ill.
The tape version lacked the games the player could play with the LCP but otherwise was fully functional. Years before Will Wright created The Sims, C64 users were interacting with little people living inside their machine.
