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Old Text Adventure Games...


DavidMil

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Anybody remember the names of some of the old text adventure game? You remember, the ones that you would type...

eat coconut

and the game would say." you can't do that."

then you type...

Get rock

use rock on Coconut

eat coconut

 

I've got a great grand daughter that has been playing 'Myst' and I wanted to show her the humble begins of that game.

Of course at the time our old text adventures were state of the art.

 

DavidMil

Kingwood, Texas

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Zork is kinda the big one, (based on the older game called Adventure). There was a Zork I, II and III, easily found for 8-bit Ataris.

 

I understand the Hitch Hikers Guide to the Galaxy was a popular one of these as well, though I've never played it.

The Serpent's Star was very engaging (to me) and an evolution, still all text based interaction, with some static pictures on the top 1/2 of the screen.

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"Feelies...

nothing more than feelies.

Trying to get the most out of

adventures of text.

 

Feelies... oh woah my box has feelies..." :P

 

Infocom rulez! (Though I played a lot of Scott Adams too)./

http://gallery.guetech.org/

Edited by doctorclu
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I'm just amused that the first memory someone has of these games is saying "eat coconut".

 

My favorite of these at the time was Enchanter, though I'm not sure if it was on Atari 8 bits. That's the only one of these I think I ever finished, though I owned several. Hitchhiker's Guide was good too, but I remember it being *really* hard even for someone who had just read the books like 3 times. Lots of stuff in those games made no sense, let's face it. It was just trial and error figuring out the process the game wanted you to go through to accomplish a certain task. But I think in the Guide game there seemed to be an awful lot of ways to die that wouldn't be obvious in advance.

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My old favourite was "Lords of Karma" a 48k game that came out on tape - that you should find easily these days. It took about 5 minutes? to initialize itself at the very start, when it would say "working...". It's one of the few games in which you can die, and then restart again on a mountain top.

While not exactly capturing the flavour of - do good deeds and you'll do well in the game - it's a little bit different to others of the standard text adventure game - although it is one.

I did manage to map it out - and it's not as hard as say the Scott Adams text adventure games.

 

Harvey

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I remember 'eat coconut' because I had an argument with my eight year old son (at the time) because he was sure that coconuts grew wild

so all you had to do was take a bag and collect a bunch of the little white stringy pieces of coconut. There was no internet in those dark

ages, so I had to take him to the library to find pictures of coconuts and people opening them with machetes. The Liberian thought it was

cute, and I just wanted to go home and get a beer.

 

DavidMil

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Wishbringer is a fantasy adventure thats easier than Zork and the Enchanter series and might appeal a bit more to kids. It is a bit younger than Zork and AFAIK has an improved parser and some hint features. I think you need to download the Wishbringer map as well but that's easily found using google.

 

(One of my kids gave it a try but didn't finish it.)

Edited by slx
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I played through all 3 Zorks a year or so ago with the help of a walkthrough. I dont believe 1 person finished Zork III without the hint guide. Some much of that game made no sense that even guessing wouldnt have helped IMHO.

 

Zork I was puzzling but possible to finish with enough trial and error. My neighbors finished that one. I think they gave up on Zork II.

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I also gave up on Zork II. I never even tried 3. You know how twisted programmers brains get when they sit in front of a screen for days at a time!

Having tried programing for a couple of years, I can sympathize...

 

I've been writing down all the suggestions (except Zork) so please feel free to add any more if you think of them.

 

Thanks,

David Milsop

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Seastalker was made especially for kids and afaik gives hints to the player but has a rather technical/scientific setting.

 

Scott Adams adventures come in all kinds of settings, some with very basic graphics, but I found them not that easy to play as you usually have to find the exact word to proceed (which sometimes required a disc editor for a non native speaker without a thesaurus ;)).

 

 

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You might also want to try Sierra's Hi-res adventures like http://www.atarimania.com/game-atari-400-800-xl-xe-hi-res-adventure-6-the-dark-crystal_2468.html if you want graphics but I have not played any of them through.

 

If you great granddaughter happens to like Phineas and Ferb on TV, Wishbringer has the bonus feature of containing platypuses, btw.

 

 

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I remember 'eat coconut' because I had an argument with my eight year old son (at the time) because he was sure that coconuts grew wild

so all you had to do was take a bag and collect a bunch of the little white stringy pieces of coconut. There was no internet in those dark

ages, so I had to take him to the library to find pictures of coconuts and people opening them with machetes. The Liberian thought it was

cute, and I just wanted to go home and get a beer.

 

DavidMil

 

Well he was partly right, Coconuts grow wild. I used to enjoy the occasional coconut while on Guam.

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Wishbringer is a fantasy adventure thats easier than Zork and the Enchanter series and might appeal a bit more to kids. It is a bit younger than Zork and AFAIK has an improved parser and some hint features. I think you need to download the Wishbringer map as well but that's easily found using google.

 

(One of my kids gave it a try but didn't finish it.)

 

To me as a kid Zork was my Harry Potter series. If you think about it, the backdrop has a lot of similarities.

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Hitchhiker's Guide was good too, but I remember it being *really* hard even for someone who had just read the books like 3 times. Lots of stuff in those games made no sense, let's face it. It was just trial and error figuring out the process the game wanted you to go through to accomplish a certain task. But I think in the Guide game there seemed to be an awful lot of ways to die that wouldn't be obvious in advance.

I don't think I ever laughed so loudly, playing a videogame by myself, as when I thought I had figured out the Babelfish puzzle, only to have yet ANOTHER problem show up.

 

I remember 'eat coconut' because I had an argument with my eight year old son (at the time) because he was sure that coconuts grew wild...

There was no internet in those dark ages...

I was going to guess you were referring to MUD2, but if you didn't have the Internet, then I guess it must've been some other game.

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I have a game called Starship Titanic that I thought was a Scott Adams game, but as I look at the title I see that is was

written by Douglas Adams. Is this the same person? It's a good game with a very Scott Adams like theme and a rather

droll sense of humor. I tested it and it plays well on my computer with XP but nothing after that.

 

David

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I don't think I ever laughed so loudly, playing a videogame by myself, as when I thought I had figured out the Babelfish puzzle, only to have yet ANOTHER problem show up.

 

 

I was going to guess you were referring to MUD2, but if you didn't have the Internet, then I guess it must've been some other game.

Remember this was 1981. Most people, myself included, had no idea what the internet was. At the time only expensive colleges and some

high tech businesses had internet. In those dark and dreary days you had to pay a long distance charge (by the minute) if you wanted to call

a BBS outside your area code. Downloading a game at 300 baud took hours. I remember those days with fondness but I'm sure glad they are

gone!

 

David

 

 

 

code

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In those dark and dreary days you had to pay a long distance charge (by the minute) if you wanted to call

a BBS outside your area code.

Oh, definitely. I can't imagine how people could afford to play MUD back in its heyday. Heck, even around '98 when I was getting into text adventures and MUDs, I couldn't imagine subscribing to one.

 

Around ten years ago, they made MUD and MUD2 free-to-play, but there aren't very many players today =)

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