The Classic Adventurer -- a bookazine dedicated to the golden era of text adventures

[Rincewind]

I just stumbled upon this one yesterday when researching old text adventures and I must share it, it's absolutely amazing!

It's a free to download, 10-part PDF series created by Mark James Hardisty from the UK between 2018-2021, focusing on less known classic text adventures. It's universally acknowledged that Infocom were the undisputed kings of the genre, then much fewer people are aware of Legend Entertainment (founded by two veteran ex-Infocom employees) and Magnetic Scrolls (the "UK Infocom", more or less). Perhaps a few have even heard about Level 9 (they were famous in the 8-bit era in Europe), but what of the rest? This was an extremely popular genre until about 1985; Gamebase64 and World of Spectrum alone lists over 4000 (!) text adventures (surely a significant percentage of those are conversions, but still an enourmous number). Let's say you want to try out a few 8-bit classics, and supposing only 3% of them are worth checking out, that's around 120 titles, so how would you even find them? (In reality, I think there are a lot more than that.)

The sad fact is that text adventures have been treated as the neglected ugly stepchildren of computer games since the late 80s. It's very hard to search for information about these lesser known adventures online, apart from scouring through magazine scans -- a time consuming endeavour. Yes, there is the Interactive Fiction Database, but most of the folks over there seem to be enamored with the text equivalent of walking simulators ("interactive fiction"); old-school "verb noun" parsers and devious puzzles are often frowned upon in those realms. Then the people of AdventureGamers and JustAdventure wouldn't even recognise a good point-and-click graphic adventure if it hit them with a rubber-chicken-with-a-pulley-in-the-middle on the forehead as of late...

That is precisely why this British gentleman's work is invaluable; apart from interviewing legendary figures of the British text adventure scene from the 80s, he also asked each of them to name five of their favourite adventure games! Plus there's also listings of the best games of each studio he covers in the series. Most parts also showcase one modern (but 100% old-school in spirit!) text adventure along with an interview with its creator. Very, very cool stuff, indeed!

Anyway, enough of me babbling; if you have even just the remotest interest in text adventures, you owe it to yourself to check out this magnificent series!

http://classicadventurer.co.uk

The Classic Adventurer is a bookazine dedicated to the golden era of text adventures.
With a visually stunning design, it contains meticulously researched articles with some of the biggest games in the genre.

Containing in-depth interviews with industry legends including Anita Sinclair, Hugh Steers, Charles Cecil MBE, Fergus McNeill, Tim Gilberts, Mike White, John Wilson, Veronika Megler, Trevor Lever and Peter Jones, Scott Adams and The Austin Brothers.

Take a look behind the scenes at some of the greatest ever text adventure games, including The Pawn, The Big Sleaze, Fish!, Doomsday Lost Echoes, The Hobbit, Hampstead and Twin Kingdom Valley.

The magazine features a raft of adventure artwork (lovingly restored by hand), articles, features and book reviews.

Spoiler

 

[Morpheus Kitami]

Interesting find! I'm more of a graphic adventure guy, but I've been starting to come around to text adventures recently. Its amazing how many of these text adventures have heaps of praise put upon them from when they were made and then nobody really talks about them, even in the IF community, as you've said. I'll read everything its got in there, but I'm curious if there's anything about a ZX Spectrum/C64 game called Valhalla, since that's something I'm researching at the moment.
(on the web there's also this place called CASA for text adventures, but that's more of a solution website than a true database)

 

[Rincewind]

Interesting find! I'm more of a graphic adventure guy, but I've been starting to come around to text adventures recently. Its amazing how many of these text adventures have heaps of praise put upon them from when they were made and then nobody really talks about them, even in the IF community, as you've said. I'll read everything its got in there, but I'm curious if there's anything about a ZX Spectrum/C64 game called Valhalla, since that's something I'm researching at the moment.
(on the web there's also this place called CASA for text adventures, but that's more of a solution website than a true database)

Yes, I've been the same until recently too, always thinking that text adventure games are simply inferior old technology. But I've come to realise that's like dismissing novels as "old inferior technology", thinking that movies are always superior. The fact that in a novel or a text adventure the only limitation is the author's imagination is often grossly underappreciated (well, and the computer's memory in those early games, of course...). It's much easier to make radical creative changes in a text based medium than having to redraw the graphics, re-film everything, etc., and I believe that contributes a lot to the final results in many cases.

I read this in some article the other day: "The most beautiful pictures are created by the mind." I think it was in relation to an interview with some veteran Infocom guys who insisted on *not* including any graphics in their later adventures for precisely the same reason, although they could technically do it ("just because you can it doesn't mean you have to", I'm paraphrasing what they said about this). This is the reason why I much prefer novels to movies; a movie can never ever be such a deep, intimate and personal experience as reading a book.

Having said all that, I still like graphical adventures and illustrated text adventures a lot (just like I like movies too), but I think dismissing the whole text-adventure genre for someone who otherwise loves a good adventure is a grave mistake.

Apparently, there was a big shift in gamer demographics even in the mid-80s; arcade games always sold in larger numbers, so a similar shift happened to what we've been witnessing with big dumb AAA productions in the last few decades, albeit at a much smaller scale. But as you'll learn from the series, after commercial interest in text-adventures and generally more cerebral games had vaned, the UK "homebrew" scene kept adventure games alive well into the 90s. Quite remarkable!

 

[Rincewind]

nobody really talks about them, even in the IF community

Although I don't have much contact with those folks, they've always striked me as artsy-fartsy literature-major types, not really gamers (probably an overgeneralisation on my part, but that's my impression). So I guess anything "pulpy" is frowned upon by them, but then I equally don't care about their "serious", flowery narratives. Compare that with the old-school guys who were tech nerds and assembly coders first, and story writers second. There's always exceptions, but the vast majority of the 80s catalogue (incl. graphical adventures) were written by programmer types.

And yeah, they seem to be the only ones really into text-based games these days, so that explains a lot.

 

[Morpheus Kitami]

Having said all that, I still like graphical adventures and illustrated text adventures a lot (just like I like movies too), but I think dismissing the whole text-adventure genre for someone who otherwise loves a good adventure is a grave mistake.

TBH, I think most illustrated text adventures are worse than your regular text adventures, and that was more my reason for dismissing the genre. There are so many flaws unique to the in-between step that its honestly a wonder anyone ever liked them at times. The text doesn't mention something you need, but its in the picture, or there are too few pictures for what's being depicted. An incredibly small amount of text on-screen. The slow speed of the screen getting redrawn, that's a real killer for me. Its the second worst thing you could add to an adventure game to slow it down.

Apparently, there was a big shift in gamer demographics even in the mid-80s; arcade games always sold in larger numbers, so a similar shift happened to what we've been witnessing with big dumb AAA productions in the last few decades, albeit at a much smaller scale. But as you'll learn from the series, after commercial interest in text-adventures and generally more cereberal games had vaned, the UK "homebrew" scene kept adventure games alive well into the 90s. Quite remarkable!

I will say that even going into this, I know that at no point were there ever not interesting text adventures being released. It went commercial, then the small-scale but still interesting early text engine creators, and then Inform and the modern scene happened.

Although I don't have much contact with those folks, they've always striked me as artsy-fartsy literature-major types, not really gamers (probably an overgeneralisation on my part, but that's my impression). So I guess anything "pulpy" is frowned upon by them, but then I equally don't care about their "serious", flowery narratives. Compare that with the old-school guys who were tech nerds and assembly coders primarily, and story writers second. There's always exceptions, but a vast majority of the 80s catalogue (incl. graphical adventures) were written by programmer types.

From what I've read maybe 25% of the IF scene cares for puzzles. The rest care about atmosphere, prose or dialog systems. For better or worse the scene is resistant to outside forces, as most of them don't really care about games outside of the adventure genre. Not that there's anything wrong with those, but games are supposed to have game, and IF are games. There are some interesting titles in that scene though. I played one horror game called Leadlight, though that was in Eamon, so it has some of that old-school spirit. Most of the prosey kind don't really have much of anything to them, unfortunately.

 

[Rincewind]

TBH, I think most illustrated text adventures are worse than your regular text adventures, and that was more my reason for dismissing the genre. There are so many flaws unique to the in-between step that its honestly a wonder anyone ever liked them at times. The text doesn't mention something you need, but its in the picture, or there are too few pictures for what's being depicted. An incredibly small amount of text on-screen. The slow speed of the screen getting redrawn, that's a real killer for me. Its the second worst thing you could add to an adventure game to slow it down.

Well, I do In Magnetic Scrolls or later Legend Entertainment games everything is snappy, there is no drawing involved. But I get what you're saying, the drawing of vector graphics can be sometimes annoying in those early Speccy and C64 games. I don't care too much though because you can always activate Warp Mode, at least in VICE. But I'd say the drawing was only a problem in those very early games. Try Kayleth, I just messed around with it the other day, but I really liked what I saw. The improved Plus/4 remake is the best, I actually compared them. The text not mentioning something that you can see on the picture seems more like a feature to me than a bug (same as having to SEARCH and EXAMINE everything; I actually like that)

From what I've read maybe 25% of the IF scene cares for puzzles.

Most of the prosey kind don't really have much of anything to them, unfortunately.

Yeah, and I have zero interest in that. I just prefer a 100% passive experience of reading a book then. They also have this weird parser fetish ("a parser should understand natural English sentences") that I never cared for. I have no problem whatsoever with 2/3/4-word old-school parsers, plus to me "guessing the verb" is part of the puzzle, I see no problems there either.

 

[MRY]

As with Sierra adventures, text adventures have suffered (to at least some extent) from people treating edge-case bad behavior as the ordinary way the games functioned. The main misplaced line of attack on text adventures is that they were full of "guess the word" parser challenges where the player was stumped not by the puzzles but by an inability to communicate his intentions to the game. Very occasionally I experienced that with text adventures (and with Sierra parser games), but was not actually a major impediment to people playing them at the time. To be sure, the parsers were dumb, and so it was easy to lampoon them, and the descriptive text often identified scene elements that were foreign to the parser ("You're a ballroom lit by a beautiful chandelier." "x chandelier" "I don't understand that word."), but that was more a matter of breaking "immersion" or something, and not actually preventing one from playing.

My central problem with classic and even to an extent modern* text adventures is not the shortcomings of a parser, but the shortcomings of my mind. (* I mean, something like 1990s onward.) Text adventures output and input verbal information, but the actual gameplay (i.e., the mental solving of puzzles) is often spatial. Being able to visualize the area, the room, the objects, etc. is actually critical to solving these puzzles. But my brain can't perform the synesthesia of turning words into visuals; I love words, but when I say "they paint a scene" I don't literally mean that I see a scene, it's still just language. The most dramatic example of the verbal-spatial gap is the ubiquitous maze sequence, but honestly I have nearly as much problem with any large interconnected area in text adventures. Many classic text adventure developers were aware of this problem, but they leveraged it as difficulty-enhancing tool. (A classic technique is to have hidden exits, or exits that are not symmetrical, such Room 1 has a SE exit to Room 2, but Room 2 does not have a NW exit to Room 1.) It's not just exploration, either. Another classic technique is to bury "signal" amid "noise," so that the object you're meant to interact with is mentioned in some passing way that is designed to be overlooked at first blush.

Ultimately, the work of translating text to space, solving the puzzle in space, and then translating that back to text is too much of a hassle for me. Modern, and especially very recent, parser text adventures do all sorts of things to alleviate this (Counterfeit Monkey is a great example), but it's basically an inherent drawback as far as I'm concerned. Incidentally, this was not a problem with me when playing P&P RPGs as a kid because the DM was always trying to bridge the verbal-spatial gap, rather than treating that gap as a challenge-inducing moat between the player and winning.

As I mentioned on once before, an interesting insight into the flaws of this genre comes from reading the 1992 "The Adventure Gamer's Manual," which purports to instruct players on how to succeed at these games. On pages 47-48, it lists these ten "golden rules":

- Read the documentation and background story carefully.

- Check what you are wearing and carrying the moment you are at the starting location.

- Investigate the properties of every single item you are told about, by doing everything you can think of to and with them.

- Test every direction for exits in case there is a concealed one somewhere, by methodically entering all eight compass directions ... together with Up and Down.

- Look for a light source - and remember it use may be governed by a move counter.

- See if there is a particular place where treasures can be stored. Your s[uccess?] may depend on this.

- Use the verbs Examine and Search regularly, unless the game rap[...] indicates that this is a waste of time. If it does, then pay extra attentio[n to] each location description as a source of valuable information.

- Look for a way of carrying extra items.

- Try to work out if a move-counter is active in the adventure as a whole.

- Above all - save your status before trying anything potentially dangerous.

To me, none of the ten rules suggests a fun feature; they are degenerate gameplay suggestions for dealing with flawed design. What is more, the next 34 pages (49-83) are devoted to mapping and dealing with mazes. And just when you think you're out of dealing with such nonsense (having reached Chapter 8, "Puzzles Galore") what should the first heading be but "8.1 Random exits" (with two subsections), followed by "8.2. One-way exits," followed by "8.3 Invisible exits." The only thing other than exit shenanigans in the 12-page "Puzzles Galore" chapter is the two-paragraph "8.4 Levers" section at its end. (In fairness, another chapter on puzzles follows.)

Regarding the criticisms of the IF scene, these strike me as misplaced. It is true that IF, like literally every other form of computer game (other than some subsets of abuse games and platformers and I guess "Souls-like" games though I've not really played them), moved to put more emphasis on narrative while reducing challenge and streamlining gameplay. But at least in what I consider the golden age of the IF scene, IF devs were infinitely better than point-and-click devs in this regard, and certainly better than AAA devs of all stripes. Hadean Lands, for instance, far outstrips probably any Codex-approved indie RPG for mechanical complexity. Even more narratively inclined devs like Emily Short produced standout games in this regard (the aforementioned Counterfeit Monkey or Savoir-Faire or Metamorphoses). It's true that all of this had more sophisticated writing than most of the oldest-school text adventures, but that isn't an obstacle to their gameplay.

 

[Rincewind]

Interesting that you mentioned "The Adventure Gamer's Manual" -- I downloaded my copy from The Mad Hatter's Column yesterday and I'm intending to read it!

Maybe I was a bit harsh about modern IF games, in truth I haven't played any of those new-school text adventures, I was just going by forum comments and I noticed the severe lack of coverage on old-school adventures in IFDB, plus their tendency to give bad scores to old puzzle based games. I guess I'll just have to play a few that you mentioned and see for myself!

In relation to your other points, I guess one person's fun can be another person's misery. I have no problems with those "golden rules" you cited, it's just stuff you need to do. To me it's a part of their charm. But then, I love mapping; I meticulously map all grid-based cRPGs I play, just like the CRPGAddict, and I'm loving every second of it -- even games that have a built-in automap! Then some people really seem to hate that kind of stuff and not having an automap is a deal-breaker for them.

Similarly, some people seem to love really complicated strategy games -- I just can't get into them, I always have this feeling that I'm managing a complicated but ultimately boring Excel spreadsheet through a convoluted UI. Same about chess, and crosswords -- some people love them, some people think they're the most boring things in the world. Go figure, I guess we're just all a bit different.

 

[MRY]

Fair points.

You should give Counterfeit Monkey a try. It's free, so the worst outcome is you waste 30 minutes!

 

[Manny]

I also come from the world of graphic adventures since I first played Maniac Mansion and the first Larry back in 1991 or so (and, well, then I also became a fan of rpgs and what they now call cinematic platformers, like that wonder that Another World is). But since a few years I also started playing text adventures (without images and with images).

From what I've read maybe 25% of the IF scene cares for puzzles. The rest care about atmosphere, prose or dialog systems. For better or worse the scene is resistant to outside forces, as most of them don't really care about games outside of the adventure genre. Not that there's anything wrong with those, but games are supposed to have game, and IF are games. There are some interesting titles in that scene though.

In general, I share the idea that the if community is more interested in the prose, the narration, the interaction with the parser, etc., than in the puzzles. But I do not agree with two points you have raised, Morpheus Kitami:

1) I think the definition of IF is already broader than the game term. For example, I do not classify Photopia or Shade as games, but as IFs. I quite liked both, although, like you, my definition of an adventure game (be it textual or graphic) implies that there are puzzles. But I also enjoy non-game IFs, as long as they use a parser (Twine-style choice-based IFs are really boring to me) and have other interesting elements. But I understand that if you expect a game, these types of IFs don't work. After all, they are a kind of equivalent to walking simulators.

2) There are really great games in the IF scene, as MRY has said, with really good puzzles. You can try, for example, Theatre (Brendon Wyber, 1995), Christminster (Gareth Reed, 1995), Varicella (Adam Cadre, 1999), The King of Shreds and Patches (Jimmy Maher, 2009), or PataNoir (Simon Christiansen, 2011).

I just stumbled upon this one yesterday when researching old text adventures and I must share it, it's absolutely amazing!

And yes, Rincewind, I also think that The Classic Adventurer is an excellent zine, mainly because it focuses on a scene that is less known than the IF scene, based more on the Infocom model than the Scott Adams one. On the other hand, the European scene of homebrew text adventures, especially the English one, but also the Portuguese and Spanish ones (I am lucky to have Spanish as my first language and in Spain there were several text adventures made for spectrum), was fairly unknown for me until very very recently.

And finally, although you probably already know it, Jason Dayer's project, Renga In Blue, is excellent if you are interested in learning more about text adventures from the beginning. Jason, similar to rpgaddict, is playing all the text adventures created. The interesting thing, besides being able to read his impressions on a lot of adventures for TRS-80, apple ii and others old machines, is that at the end of each year he makes a balance with certain recommendations, a balance that is always better when done by someone who has played everything. Of course, he has just began the year 1982 , hehe.

 

[Rincewind]

My first very short-lived contact with adventure games was loading up Robin of Sherwood: The Touchstones of Rhiannon from a "game compilation" cassette on the C64 (one of those compilations that came without manuals...) I was a primary school-aged kid with no functional English then; I remember we spent half of the afternoon with my learned and much older brother-in-law, trying to decipher the mysteries of the opening text with the help of a dictionary... without much success, I must say. I remember the word "shall" completely threw us off -- that says something... Well, back to playing Paradroid and Nebulus then...

My next experience was me and my friend playing through Maniac Mansion using a walkthrough (as a happy owner of a brand new 1541 disk drive, yay!); it seems quite lame now, but even just following the walkthrough and reading the translated dialogs from the magazine was magic. We were happy to see anything happening on the screen! That was followed by Zak McKracken, then all sorts of point-and-click adventures on the Amiga later; at that point I could at least understand half of the text which was certainly a big improvement. I remember Hook and Monkey Island 1-2 quite vividly.

So I can say I'm also coming from a graphic adventure background, but I have gradually developed an intense fascination with these text adventures over the last year or so, thanks to some prestigious posters in this very forum. To me personally, it's a great satisfaction being able play through these old games I could not understand as a kid. But even taking nostalgia out of the picture (as much as possible), discovering the history and the wonderful world of this genre is an amazing journey for me, I just love it.

 

[Morpheus Kitami]

Maybe I was a bit harsh about modern IF games, in truth I haven't played any of those new-school text adventures, I was just going by forum comments and I noticed the severe lack of coverage on old-school adventures in IFDB, plus their tendency to give bad scores to old puzzle based games. I guess I'll just have to play a few that you mentioned and see for myself!

This is perhaps one thing that colored my opinion too. The Count, which I thought was one of the cleverer games, is generally ignored by the community and those who have played it put it around 3.5 stars. I believe Maher once commented that more people outside of the genre care about Adams than inside. As I'm about to expand on, it feels like the wrong kind of artsy.

1) I think the definition of IF is already broader than the game term. For example, I do not classify Photopia or Shade as games, but as IFs. I quite liked both, although, like you, my definition of an adventure game (be it textual or graphic) implies that there are puzzles. But I also enjoy non-game IFs, as long as they use a parser (Twine-style choice-based IFs are really boring to me) and have other interesting elements. But I understand that if you expect a game, these types of IFs don't work. After all, they are a kind of equivalent to walking simulators.

Thing is that doesn't strike me as it being broader than gaming, but that some IF authors try really hard to go beyond the label of gaming. Its not that there's anything wrong with being arthouse, I freaking love Yume Nikki and some of its fan-games, but by denying that it is a game, the author is being dishonest to the player and himself. (mind you, I understand some of those Twine ones might actually fit the label of not-a-game) This is not to say that all modern IF is bad, so you don't need to keep showing me examples that are good. Just that there's a pervasive attitude that drags things down from what could be down.

And finally, although you probably already know it, Jason Dayer's project, Renga In Blue, is excellent if you are interested in learning more about text adventures from the beginning. Jason, similar to rpgaddict, is playing all the text adventures created. The interesting thing, besides being able to read his impressions on a lot of adventures for TRS-80, apple ii and others old machines, is that at the end of each year he makes a balance with certain recommendations, a balance that is always better when done by someone who has played everything. Of course, he has just began the year 1982 , hehe.

One of the things I really like about him, is that even though some of those titles aren't so good, there's a real impression that he likes them anyway. It makes the whole thing a joy to read.

 

[Rincewind]

Thing is that doesn't strike me as it being broader than gaming, but that some IF authors try really hard to go beyond the label of gaming. Its not that there's anything wrong with being arthouse, I freaking love Yume Nikki and some of its fan-games, but by denying that it is a game, the author is being dishonest to the player and himself. (mind you, I understand some of those Twine ones might actually fit the label of not-a-game) This is not to say that all modern IF is bad, so you don't need to keep showing me examples that are good. Just that there's a pervasive attitude that drags things down from what could be down.

Yeah, and I couldn't help but notice this kind of "cork sniffer" mentality ("we don't do games, we do art that is beyond games"). It's just this generally slightly snobbish attitude of the community that rubs me the wrong way, but I'm sure there's plenty of nice IF authors who are different and write great *games*. It's similar to people who claim they can't read certain sci-fi authors because their "prose" is too basic (e.g. Philip K. Dick, one of my favourite authors is often the target of this, or Asimov) -- well, suffice to say, I don't like those people too much. I like authors who say a lot with a few words; I don't care about virtuosity at all.

In any case, I will definitely try some of the universally recommended IF works of outstanding quality at some point (Adam Cadre, Emily Short, etc.), but I have a feeling these authors are not the "problematic" people (from our perspective, that is); it's more the attitude of the current IF community at large.

One of the things I really like about him, is that even though some of those titles aren't so good, there's a real impression that he likes them anyway. It makes the whole thing a joy to read.

I've only skimmed a few (same thing I do with The Adventurer's Guild reviews) because I want to avoid spoilers at all costs. Maybe I'll have another look if you guys are saying it's a good source of information.

 

[Manny]

Rincewind, similarly, when I started playing adventure games, my English was pretty basic; in fact, much of my knowledge of english comes from playing adventures with a dictionary next to me. And I also share your excitement about playing text adventures now. I haven't really played that many, but playing Zork, Deadline, Adventureland or The Black Sanctum recently gives me a pleasure that I don't feel with more recent graphical games, except in very particular cases.

Morpheus Kitami, well, I haven't really followed the forums or the IF community discussions that much, so there may be that attitude you mention (and which I assume is the ""cork sniffer" mentality" that Rincewind is talking about), although I haven't seen it that much in what I've read (except perhaps a little in certain articles by Maher). My impression came from certain particular texts, such as Montfort's book Twisty Little Passages, in which he defines the IF genre by the simulation of the world and by the use of the parser, and leaves out the idea of “game" so that existing "artifacts" like Photopia fit neatly into the category. In any case, my comment and my examples were not intended to imply that this should be the way to define the term "IF" but to show that there is a current within that scene that thinks that the notion of IF is broader than that of "game", regardless of whether or not we agree on that idea. The last thing I want is to enter a discussion of categories as interesting as that can be sometimes (for that matter, I've already read the discussion about "blobbers" and "dungeon crawlers" in another thread, and I know that can get infinite hehe). Speaking on a personal level, if we understand the game as an experience in which we must use an ability to overcome some obstacle until we reach a win state, I find it hard to place Photopia or Shade in that category. But I understand that not everyone categorizes the same. After all, this discussion is old and I imagine it will continue.

 

[Morpheus Kitami]

This discussion about using games to learn English reminds me of how I thought it was always a shame no one ever tried really taking advantage of that. Outside of one Japanese VN nobody ever really did something like that. Granted, there are plenty of games released exclusively in one language, but you don't know how difficult the language used in one game is until after you've finished it.

I've only skimmed a few (same thing I do with The Adventurer's Guild reviews) because I want to avoid spoilers at all costs. Maybe I'll have another look if you guys are saying it's a good source of information.

For a lot of games, I do mean a lot of games, he is possibly the only information on them around. Some are interesting, some are not. There's one Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy game called Galactic Hitchhiker that was a recent interesting discovery. And then a lot of Scott Adams-style games. More than I ever thought existed. In that respect I guess Adams is the Ultima of the adventure world.

Morpheus Kitami, well, I haven't really followed the forums or the IF community discussions that much, so there may be that attitude you mention (and which I assume is the ""cork sniffer" mentality" that Rincewind is talking about), although I haven't seen it that much in what I've read (except perhaps a little in certain articles by Maher)

I think that's partially feeling a disconnect. I sometimes read some of the blogs and old IFComp reviews and get that notion. Don't get me wrong, there are good things there, I still read it, and I also think that the IF community has it together better than any other gaming community. People aren't throwing constant crapfests at one another, even if some people there actually hate each other, I don't see those people having big public rows, or at least they know enough to hide that in the closet. There isn't really an adventure community anymore and the CRPG community, well, I think a good chunk of the userbase of every major website hates the other website's userbases' guts.

In any case, my comment and my examples were not intended to imply that this should be the way to define the term "IF" but to show that there is a current within that scene that thinks that the notion of IF is broader than that of "game", regardless of whether or not we agree on that idea.

Fair enough, I tend to react that way about such comments instinctively. Its just something that rubs me the wrong way.
(and I agree on not turning this into another neverending autistic debate like on blobbers)

 

[Neuromancer]

This discussion about using games to learn English reminds me of how I thought it was always a shame no one ever tried really taking advantage of that. Outside of one Japanese VN nobody ever really did something like that. Granted, there are plenty of games released exclusively in one language, but you don't know how difficult the language used in one game is until after you've finished it.

Some of the Sierra games from the SCI-16 era had multi language releases.

I know for example that there was a version of Leisure Suit Larry 3 where could display English text, French text and even both languages at the same time. You could also switch the parser on the fly to accept English or French input.

This is a great way to learn a language IMO.

 

[Don Peste]

CAAD is a similar magazine in Spanish. Latest issue has a feature on Portuguese IF games, by Rogerio Biondi and Planeta Sinclair: https://www.caad.es/fichas/caad-54.html

 

[VonHoffenHeimer]

I've got a few physical copies of these magazines. They are good quality. I recommend them.

 

[Rincewind]

CAAD is a similar magazine in Spanish. Latest issue has a feature on Portuguese IF games, by Rogerio Biondi and Planeta Sinclair: https://www.caad.es/fichas/caad-54.html

You know what, this actually inspires me to learn a bit of Spanish, just enough to be able to understand modern written text and play adventure games (shouldn't be too hard with a classic VERB NOUN parser; you don't even need to learn to form your own grammatically correct sentences).

Turns out that Spanish is the second most popular language used in text adventures according to the Classic Adventures Solution Archive (CASA), 720 entries after the 6530 entries of English games. German is at a very respectable third place (567 entries), which is good news for me because I only need to brush up my German to play Drachen von Laas (a quite interesting RPG/adventure hybrid from the creators of the Realms of Arkania series, with lots of lovely Magnetic Scrolls-style still images).

 

[v1rus]

Besides Zork, what would you fellas say are must-plays of the genre?

 

[Neuromancer]

I liked Planetfall a lot.

The Enchanter series (Enchanter, Sorcerer, Spellbreaker) is also very good.
It plays in the same universe as Zork and can be considered as a continuation of the original Zork trilogy.

 

[Morpheus Kitami]

I would say The Count and Adventureland.
I have heard that the original Adventure is still worth playing, but I couldn't tell you which of the many ports and versions you should play.

 

[Rincewind]

Besides Zork, what would you fellas say are must-plays of the genre?

You can't go wrong with any Infocom, Magnetic Scrolls or Legend Entertainment game. Of these, only the Infocom games are pure text adventures (except for a few later titles that feature still images). If you just want to play a good adventure and aren't that much interested in the history of these games, I suggest to just pick one of these.

 

[Don Peste]

A couple of interesting links:
Infocom Gamebase http://www.gb64.com/forum/viewtopic.php?t=5137
Article about Infocom on Retro Gamer #10 (2005) p.30 https://issuu.com/thiagoaugusto60/docs/retrogamer.issue.010

 

[Jvegi]

There is this modern s-f porn text adventure game that's supposed to be very good actually.