He'd tried to get us to play games like Sonic the Hedgehog and Altered Beast with him when he first hooked it up, but I wasn't interested. Not that they weren't impressive - I uttered more than one "wow" while watching the first few levels of Sonic - but they just seemed terribly impersonal to me. Playing those games, I felt razzled, perhaps even dazzled, but I didn't feel a connection to the people who made them the way I did with the folks designing the text adventures I held so dear. Besides, Infocom games gave you stuff.
Packaged inside each Infocom game were several game-related items referred to as "feelies." Wishbringer, for example, came with a copy of the letter that your in-game character has to deliver (complete with platypus stamp), a map of the area, and the Wishbringer itself, a small magical stone that glowed purple in the dark. Leather Goddesses had a 3-D comic book, the glasses to read them, and a scratch-and-sniff card that corresponded to six different locations in the game. Every time you opened a gray Infocom box, bits of the game world spilled out into your hands - a more than ample trade-off for the lack of graphics and sound, in my opinion.
An opinion that wasn't, as it turned out, shared by the masses. Interactive fiction managed to stave off death for a few years, but in the end, it simply couldn't compete with more technically impressive games and quietly faded into the background. I held on to Zork, Wishbringer, and the rest but my five-and-a-quarter inch floppy disks swiftly became obsolete. I replaced them with The Lost Treasures of Infocom, a collection on CD that encompassed virtually every Infocom game ever made, but even it is now past its prime and won't work in Windows XP. Fortunately, emulators like Frotz have been created to run the classic text adventures on just about anything, even an iPhone, so I can still visit Phobos whenever I get the urge.
The urge hits surprisingly frequently. Despite the fact that I've played these games time and time again, I'm still amazed by the beauty of their construction and the sharpness of their wit. Their technology may be antique, but their elegant gameplay is timeless. Bump mapping, ragdoll physics, downloadable content and online capabilities are fantastic advances in gaming, and I'm not about to give up my 360 or PS3, but there's a reason that Zork was one of the ten games recommended to be preserved in the Library of Congress.
If you've never given classic interactive fiction a try, now's the perfect time, before the holiday gaming cycle ramps up and you're trapped under an avalanche of AAA games. For those of you who like wordplay as much as we at The Escapist do (you know who you are), do yourself a favor and play Nord and Bert Couldn't Make Head or Tail of It - you won't regret it. If you're fond of Agatha Christie-esque mysteries, give Moonmist a try. And for a bawdy good time with a Venus flytrap, a gorilla and an angle-loving king, you just can't beat Leather Goddesses on the "Lewd" setting.
Just don't forget to search the Martian dunes for the lip balm or else you'll never kiss that stupid frog.
Susan Arendt is likely to be eaten by a grue and has neither torch or a match in her inventory.
