How a childhood memory, a forgotten online service, and two years of reverse engineering led me to bring NAPLPS back to life.

A before-and-after look at an image translated into NAPLPS format.

[ Please welcome Joe Hammond, a graphic designer and amateur software developer who has spent the past couple of years reverse-engineering NAPLPS — the graphics language that powered PRODIGY — so that authentic new NAPLPS files can be created again. Below, he tells the story of how a childhood memory turned into one of the deepest technical rabbit holes he’s ever fallen into. –Benj ]

Every programmer has a moment that starts it all.

For me, it was PRODIGY.

When I was a kid, my father subscribed to PRODIGY. At the time I didn’t appreciate what he had really given me. To me it was just this incredible place that existed inside our computer. I could play games, read news, send messages, and explore. The modem would shriek while it connected, and moments later this colorful world appeared on the screen.

Those afternoons sitting in front of that monitor with my dad were my introduction to technology. Looking back now, I can honestly say that without those experiences I probably wouldn’t have become a software developer.

Thirty years later, after becoming involved with Prodigy Reloaded, I discovered something I never knew as a kid: those graphics I’d spent so much time looking at had a name: NAPLPS.

That discovery sent me down one of the deepest technical rabbit holes I’ve ever fallen into.

[ Continue reading Resurrecting Prodigy’s Dead Graphics Language » ]