Behold, mortal, the origins of NetHack...

Jay Fenlason wrote the original Hack with help from Kenny Woodland,
Mike Thome, and Jon Payne.

Andries Brouwer did a major re-write, transforming Hack into a very different
game, and published (at least) three versions (1.0.1, 1.0.2, and 1.0.3) for
UNIX(tm) machines to the Usenet.

Don G. Kneller ported Hack 1.0.3 to Microsoft(tm) C and MS-DOS(tm), producing
PC HACK 1.01e, added support for DEC Rainbow graphics in version 1.03g, and
went on to produce at least four more versions (3.0, 3.2, 3.51, and 3.6).

R. Black ported PC HACK 3.51 to Lattice(tm) C and the Atari 520/1040ST,
producing ST Hack 1.03.

Mike Stephenson merged these various versions back together, incorporating
many of the added features, and produced NetHack version 1.4.  He then
coordinated a cast of thousands in enhancing and debugging NetHack 1.4 and 
released NetHack versions 2.2 and 2.3.

 
Later, Mike coordinated a major rewrite of the game, heading a team which
included Ken Arromdee, Jean-Christophe Collet, Steve Creps, Eric Hendrickson,
Izchak Miller, Eric S. Raymond, John Rupley, Mike Threepoint, and Janet Walz,
to produce NetHack 3.0c.

NetHack 3.0 was ported to the Atari by Eric R. Smith, to OS/2 by Timo
Hakulinen, and to VMS by David Gentzel.  The three of them and Kevin Darcy
later joined the main development team to produce subsequent revisions of
3.0.

Olaf Seibert ported NetHack 2.3 and 3.0 to the Amiga.  Norm Meluch, Stephen
Spackman and Pierre Martineau designed overlay code for PC NetHack 3.0.
Johnny Lee ported NetHack 3.0 to the Macintosh.  Along with various other
Dungeoneers, they continued to enhance the PC, Macintosh, and Amiga ports
through the later revisions of 3.0.


 
 
 
 
 
From time to time, some depraved individual out there in netland sends a
particularly intriguing modification to help out with the game.  The Gods of
the Dungeon sometimes make note of the names of the worst of these miscreants
in this, the list of Dungeoneers:

    Richard Addison           Richard P. Hughey      Eric S. Raymond
    Tom Almy                  Ari Huttunen           John Rupley
    Ken Arromdee              Del Lamb               Olaf Seibert
    Eric Backus               Greg Laskin            Kevin Sitze
    John S. Bien              Johnny Lee             Eric R. Smith
    Ralf Brown                Steve Linhart          Kevin Smolkowski
    Jean-Christophe Collet    Ken Lorber             Michael Sokolov
    Steve Creps               Benson I. Margulies    Stephen Spackman
    Kevin Darcy               Pierre Martineau       Andy Swanson
    Matthew Day               Roland McGrath         Kevin Sweet
    Jochen Erwied             Norm Meluch            Scott R. Turner
    David Gentzel             Bruce Mewborne         Janet Walz
    Mark Gooderum             Izchak Miller          Jon Watte
    Timo Hakulinen            Gil Neiger             Tom West
    Eric Hendrickson          Greg Olson             Gregg Wonderly
    Bruce Holloway            Mike Passaretti