Jim Pez Posted September 6, 2016 Share Posted September 6, 2016 What do you think is the best text based game from the 70's and 80's Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
doctorclu Posted September 6, 2016 Share Posted September 6, 2016 (edited) All things Infocom. Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy and the first Zork game are my favorites. I did an interview with Michael Berlyn who was one of the developers of Suspended, Cuthroats, and other text games. Interview latter two thirds talks about the development of Bubsy Bobcat, but the first third talks about his past leading up to that point. Check it out here... Edited September 6, 2016 by doctorclu 3 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
+save2600 Posted September 6, 2016 Share Posted September 6, 2016 Tough to pick just one! The Infocom's are great, as are the Scott Adams Adventures: http://freearcade.com/Zplet.jav/Scottadams.html 3 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
carlsson Posted September 6, 2016 Share Posted September 6, 2016 Does text based strictly mean type in games (often adventure games, but there were others), or also ASCII oriented games with some form of instant or turn based action? Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
BassGuitari Posted September 6, 2016 Share Posted September 6, 2016 A lot of Trek games were purely ASCII. The Scott Adams and Adventure games and Zork games are obviously classics. Hamurabi's pretty fun for a while. There were tons of great text-based games for PC; Castle Adventure, Rogue, and the Kroz series are some of my favorites. 1 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
JamesD Posted September 6, 2016 Share Posted September 6, 2016 A lot of Trek games were purely ASCII. The Scott Adams and Adventure games and Zork games are obviously classics. Hamurabi's pretty fun for a while. There were tons of great text-based games for PC; Castle Adventure, Rogue, and the Kroz series are some of my favorites. One of the best Trek games, StarTrek III.5, originated on the TRS-80 Model I. I loved that game! While it had graphics, they were really just printable characters and any machine with user definable graphics could achieve similar results. I'm sure you could even substitute standard ASCII characters for machines like CP/M. The first graphics adventures on the TRS-80 just used printable characters, so the same things could be done with text characters I'm sure. I remember some game on an Island... Lost Island or something like that. I don't know what year they came out but... You also have RPGs like Rogue, Hack, Moria, etc... If you have network access, there are MUDs. One of those was available for the CoCo 3, either Rogue or Hack. An easy way to kill a lot of hours. As far as text adventures go, Infocom, Adventure International, etc... obviously come to mind. I think the later the game the better they were. Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy is one of the best, but it helps to be a fan of the book. I haven't played all of them. FWIW, some of the modern Interactive Fiction surpasses the old Infocom games. It would be nice to see some of those titles running from an 8 bit. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
mr_me Posted September 6, 2016 Share Posted September 6, 2016 Leisure Suit Larry. Its the only one I really played. 1 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
doctorclu Posted September 6, 2016 Share Posted September 6, 2016 One of the best Trek games, StarTrek III.5, originated on the TRS-80 Model I. I loved that game! While it had graphics, they were really just printable characters and any machine with user definable graphics could achieve similar results. I loved Star Trek 3.5 on the Atari 400/800. It was a basic program so you could break into it and change up things. I believe I modified to from 3000 to 3,000,000 units of energy. I would one shot kill klingons. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
BassGuitari Posted September 6, 2016 Share Posted September 6, 2016 One of the best Trek games, StarTrek III.5, originated on the TRS-80 Model I. I loved that game! While it had graphics, they were really just printable characters and any machine with user definable graphics could achieve similar results. I'm sure you could even substitute standard ASCII characters for machines like CP/M. The first graphics adventures on the TRS-80 just used printable characters, so the same things could be done with text characters I'm sure. I remember some game on an Island... Lost Island or something like that. I love Star Trek III on the TRS-80, but I didn't mention it explicitly because it had a lot of semi-graphics stuff going. Seems like a lot them did on the TRS-80. Star Trek: The Computer Game really didn't though, except for a warp/impulse compass. One cool thing about that one is that you could warp outside the galactic boundaries and explore intergalactic space. For purely ASCII-only games, AppleTrek/StarTrek for Apple II is really good, but also especially challenging because it's in real time. 1 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Mr SQL Posted September 6, 2016 Share Posted September 6, 2016 Zork, and that other adventure running on a mainframe that started it all - Colossal Cave. That one was really awesome Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
+DZ-Jay Posted September 6, 2016 Share Posted September 6, 2016 Leisure Suit Larry. Its the only one I really played. Not really a "text adventure," although it was based on Softporn, which was. 1 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Ransom Posted September 6, 2016 Share Posted September 6, 2016 Deadline was my favorite, with the first Zork close behind. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
mr_me Posted September 6, 2016 Share Posted September 6, 2016 Not really a "text adventure," although it was based on Softporn, which was. The original Leisure Suit Larry is most certainly "text based" and far from being anything pornographic. I'm not familiar with Softporn Adventure, is it any good? Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
+DZ-Jay Posted September 6, 2016 Share Posted September 6, 2016 (edited) The original Leisure Suit Larry is a Sierra graphic adventure game with a text parser interface, not a "text adventure" (or "interactive fiction," as the genre was called). Softporn Adventure is the purely textual adventure released before, from which it was based. It's pretty much the same story, but without the pictures. dZ. Edited September 6, 2016 by DZ-Jay Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Keatah Posted September 6, 2016 Share Posted September 6, 2016 Don't think there'll be any one best text game. But rather we will all have our favorites, with mine being OO-Topos. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
David Baldwin Posted September 6, 2016 Share Posted September 6, 2016 Pleanty of text games on the BBSs like Legand of the Red Dragon is a good text game to play. 1 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Omega-TI Posted September 6, 2016 Share Posted September 6, 2016 amurabi's pretty fun for a while. I cannot say what is best because there were so many different games on so many platforms. But like you, I enjoyed Hammurabi on the TRS-80 Model III. 1 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Newsdee Posted September 7, 2016 Share Posted September 7, 2016 Dwarf Fortress and ZZT. They're ANSI and from a later era, so not sure if they qualify... 2 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
BassGuitari Posted September 7, 2016 Share Posted September 7, 2016 Dwarf Fortress and ZZT. They're ANSI and from a later era, so not sure if they qualify... ZZT! I was trying to think of the name of that one. It's been a while. That was a great one, too. Anyone play Insanity? I spent quite a bit of time with this one when I found it on a CD full of shareware games in the mid-'90s. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
JamesD Posted September 7, 2016 Share Posted September 7, 2016 Don't think there'll be any one best text game. But rather we will all have our favorites, with mine being OO-Topos. Didn't OO-Topos have hi-res graphics? Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
am1933 Posted September 7, 2016 Share Posted September 7, 2016 Two of my favourites. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Ransom Posted September 7, 2016 Share Posted September 7, 2016 I guess that technically Dandy is a text-based game. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
shoestring Posted September 8, 2016 Share Posted September 8, 2016 The Pawn, Guild Of Thieves feature colour graphics but are still classified as text based adventure games. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Nebulon Posted September 23, 2016 Share Posted September 23, 2016 The Zork series is great. And if you accept ASCII text character games, I'd vote for Rogue. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
jdgabbard Posted September 25, 2016 Share Posted September 25, 2016 I never played Text-Based games in the 80s. But in the 90s-2000s it was Elendor. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
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