If the graphics in the old arcade games were bad (as I talked about in a past blog post), the graphics in text adventure games were, well, horrible. Actually you can’t judge them because there were no graphics.
Text adventures for me, and for many others, started with this:
You are in an open field west of a big white house with a boarded front door.
There is a small mailbox here.
That was how Infocom’s Zork I started. This game started what was to be a good run for a company that wrote good games without graphics – imagine that! We had to think, type our commands in plain english (no l33tsp33k). Ah, the days when command of our language meant something to gaming.
Infocom is long and gone (Activision bought the rights to their games a while back). You can still buy the Infocom games in shrink-wrap packaging through Amazon, but there’s other ways to enjoy them.
The gaming genre for text adventures is interactive fiction (IF). Most are built using something called a Z-machine interpreter. Z-code is a programming language which is perfectly suited for interactive fiction, and just about all Infocom games were written with it. There are many different versions of Z-code, and many different versions of interpreters, for just about every OS and platform.
If you want to know more about the history of Infocom, it’s games, and it’s people, go to the Infocom home page. Well, maybe not the Infocom home page, but the closest thing you’ll find to it. It includes links to download Zork I, II, and III (the only three Infocom games that Activision does not hold the rights for, and they are freely distributed now); a history of all the games, images of box covers, and so much more. I got lost in here for about an hour in an enthralling walk down memory lane.
Once you tire of the Zork trilogy (you did download it and play them all, right?), you have to buy the games… well, not really. I’m not condoning this, but…
http://infocom.elsewhere.org/ is actually a service where you can play 29 different IF games (and most of the most popular Infocom games) online via a Telnet connection. Simply telnet to infocom.elsewhere.org, sign in with username zork (no password), and play the game you want to play. What better way to waste time at work – and your boss will think you’re coding some obscure programming language when he sees the archaic text-only interface on your screen!
For those that want to play the games when offline, you need to do two things. The first is to find, download, and install a Z-machine interperter. Then you need to download the Z-code files, which you open from the interpreter. Then you play.
There’s one place to find out how to find all items you need: http://www.latz.org/infocom/. This site is nothing short of fantastic. In addition to links to Z-code interpreters, it includes links to download Z-code files for the most popular Infocom games. And it includes the full content of the Invisiclues books for many games. (Invisiclues books were old cheat guides written in the form of FAQs. They came with a highlighter pen that would “reveal” the hidden clues. So high-tech! How I yearn for them. Damn parents made me throw out everything good.) And it includes a walkthrough for most games (if you just want to enjoy reading the game like a book).
Beyond that, if you want even more, go to The Interactive Fiction Archive, which includes hundreds of articles, FAQs, and – most importantly – downloadable IF games.
So plug in your CGA graphics card, unplug your joystick, and nuzzle up to your PC in a way you probably haven’t done for a decade…
Vikar says:
It is pitch black. You are most likely to be eaten by a grue.
> What is a grue?
The grue is a sinister, lurking presence in the dark places of the earth. Its favorite diet is adventurers, but its insatiable appetite is tempered by its fear of light. No grue has ever been seen by the light of day, and few have survived its fearsome jaws to tell the tale.
Just a little more nostalgia…