You may not have heard of Habitat. The video game, released in 1986, never made a huge splash, although the studio behind it — Lucasfilm Games, later known as LucasArts — would go on to create some classics. But it's a forgotten piece of history: years before massively multiplayer online games came into vogue, the game allowed Commodore 64 users to interact with each other through a dial-in online service, billed by the hour.
This week, the Museum of Art and Digital Entertainment announced that's it's since taken some steps to remedy that gap in the historical record, releasing the game's source code online. That code is now publicly viewable on Github.
The museum has been working on the project since 2013, and now has a call out for coders to help bring the game back to its full online glory. "This will take time and effort, but with the help of all of you, out there, who have patiently waited for us to make this move, we should be able to bring Habitat back online," the museum said in a message posted this week.