Why? This is from a time when there weren't any "other games". Heck, there were no computer games, period: there were only applications that could be described as "a sort of game on the computer" but only in the sense that you were asked to perform a task, tell the application what you though the task parameters should be, and then the application told you whether you were right.
Applications were also still measured in bytes (the idea of the average program being so large that everything needed to be described in kilobytes was still in its infancy). So you literally didn't have enough space to hide 100 bugs that would linger unnoticed for 55 years: 100 bugs would be your entire source code. In fact, here's the source code for the game in the article: https://www.cs.brandeis.edu/~storer/LunarLander/LunarLander/... - it's 2027 bytes. If it had 100 bugs, or even 5, it either wouldn't run, or it would be obviously wrong.
And that source code also illustrates the kind of "game" this is: it's just a text prompt to get you to fill in the values that set up the flight, and then it runs a simulation with your parameters and spits out the result. That was enough to constitute a game people would play religiously, back in the day.
The game is tiny. It does not even have any graphics. It would be an impressive feat to fit even 10 bugs in there, and still have it seem like a functioning game.
Applications were also still measured in bytes (the idea of the average program being so large that everything needed to be described in kilobytes was still in its infancy). So you literally didn't have enough space to hide 100 bugs that would linger unnoticed for 55 years: 100 bugs would be your entire source code. In fact, here's the source code for the game in the article: https://www.cs.brandeis.edu/~storer/LunarLander/LunarLander/... - it's 2027 bytes. If it had 100 bugs, or even 5, it either wouldn't run, or it would be obviously wrong.
And that source code also illustrates the kind of "game" this is: it's just a text prompt to get you to fill in the values that set up the flight, and then it runs a simulation with your parameters and spits out the result. That was enough to constitute a game people would play religiously, back in the day.
Things changed a lot since then =D