Context Sensitive: Kiss the Frog

Sometimes to find a brilliant game, you have to kiss a lot of frogs. Or, as Susan Arendt explains, maybe just one.

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I really want to be able to like games like that, but normally I find I can't. I started playing games as late as around 2000 and it's really hard to go back. I cannot possibly enjoy Baldurs Gate II or Warcraft: Humans and Orcs, not because they where bad games relative to their time but because so many improvements have been made to their genres over the years that there are so many things that annoy me.

Even something like Half-Life or Fable annoy me since they have outdated problems, games who's greatest merit is innovation don't really stand the test of time except by those who played them while they where new.

But I might end up enjoying these old-school text adventures so I guess atleast I will try Zork.

Also, the ideas of frebies related to the game (not just minature big-daddies) sounds like fun, especially the smell card.

Wooot...someone else who loved LGoP. Truly stunning game, especially with the "character creation" scene. (You are faced with two doors. Both have stick figures on them. You really need to go...)

Coupled with Scott Adam's Marvel adventures, there was really great times to be had. I'd also recommend Rigel's Revenge for a Post Apocalyptic blast. ("The grenade going off was deafening. Luckily, your ears are no longer near your head. Unfortunately, neither is your body.")

I got to the maze at the end and *ahem* didn't have the puzzle book, but I think it's still on my old computer somewhere with the BBC Micro Emulator.

In fact, there's also the text adventure in Kingdom of Loathing and there's a PC Zork as well

Ah, happy days. Now if I can just put the junk mail onto the satchel....

Xkcd, of course.

There's a infocom-style text adventure based on Steve Jackson's Paranoia that's pretty insane. It's included in a few linux distros iirc.

And the real bummer about those invisiclues was that they re-invisiclued after about a year, never to be recalled.

Ah, brings back fond memories of the cleaning robot denying me a babel fish for half the afternoon!

Lost Pig is a good modern IF, as well. It's pretty short, too, if you have some time to spare at work this afternoon.

Not that I, you know, encourage goofing off or anything. No. Because that would be wrong.

Susan Arendt:
Lost Pig is a good modern IF, as well. It's pretty short, too, if you have some time to spare at work this afternoon.

Not that I, you know, encourage goofing off or anything. No. Because that would be wrong.

Quoted, screenshotted, and otherwise saved to be used out of context at a later convenience for me.

Infocom was the business. I remember saving my lunch money for weeks when I knew a new one was coming out, and riding my bike halfway across town on release day to pick it up. I was never disappointed.

And the compilations and collections you can pick up these days are great, because they keep them from being lost altogether... but I miss the packaging. They had a good time with that.

SaintWaldo:
There's a infocom-style text adventure based on Steve Jackson's Paranoia that's pretty insane. It's included in a few linux distros iirc.

OOOOOH..linky please?

Great read Sue. Just had me thinking back to the days of Casette Tapes, Game Software on Carts and when MTV was a channel that showed music videos. Those were the days.

Laters

Ali

Ooo, the good old days of Invisiclues! Great stroll down memory lane.

It's sort of funny that people treat interactive fiction as a thing of the past. There's still a strong design community that holds annual competitions and INFORM, the language these games are typically written in, is still being updated. There are things that you can do with the written word that just aren't possible with the kind of graphics-intensive mainstream games. Why do you think we still have books in modern times? If you don't know what I'm talking about I'd highly recommend Galatea or For A Change, or for something lighter there's Augmented Fourth or A Meteor, A Stone, and A Long Glass of Sherbet. Hell, just wandering around the INFORM Museum can be a good time. These games will run on virtually any computer (I hear someone even made an iPhone version of Frotz) and have a degree of wit, liveliness, and artistry not seen in most major console or PC releases.

Here's one, scroll to the bottom and you'll find a link to a DOS exe and another link to the C source.

http://www.esglabs.com/paranoia/graphics/

I know the one I played was in the distro that shipped with mKlinux (I think a BSD flavor). That's not very helpful, I know, but it's all I got other than the link above.

Citizen ROOTOFALLE-V-ILL thanks you for your co-operation Citizen, and hopes the Vulture Squadron won't hurt you too much for giving away Old Reckoning Technology. :)