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A good article although I was a little disappointed to see that they didn't mention Magnetic Scrolls who developed several adventure games in mid 1980s and early 1990s.

The amazing thing about them (at the time) was the language parser. Previous adventures games could only handle verb-noun commands (eg. "hit box") but it could cope with more complex things such as "go right, open the door and look out of the window".

My personal favourite game was Corruption which I first saw on an Amstrad PCW although it was available for a lot more platforms. Although I never played them, The Guild Of Thieves, Pawn and Jinxter were considered some of their finer efforts.

You can get a Magnetic Scroll emulator for a wide variety of platforms to run many of their games.

So, Wikipedia was wrong about Corruption being a text adventure game? Or did you miss that the article was about graphic adventure games?

A good article although I was a little disappointed to see that they didn't mention Magnetic Scrolls who developed several adventure games in mid 1980s and early 1990s.

The amazing thing about them (at the time) was the language parser. Previous adventures games could only handle verb-noun commands (eg. "hit box") but it could cope with more complex things such as "go right, open the door and look out of the window".

My personal favourite game was Corruption which I first saw on an Amstrad PCW although it was available for a lot more platforms. Although I never played them, The Guild Of Thieves, Pawn and Jinxter were considered some of their finer efforts.

You can get a Magnetic Scroll emulator for a wide variety of platforms to run many of their games.

This wouldn't work in emulation (or with any modern Z-code interpreter), but there is a Japenese Zork port for the Sega Saturn. The Real videos aren't working for me and the screenshots at if-legends.org are offline, so I can't tell how it's played. I imagine a menu would work just fine as an interface to the not-so-sophisticated Zork-era parser and world model, but the game does have its "secret" word(s) - how do you offer those up for selection without giving them away? Oh well.

The IBM PC version of KQ1 was 4 color CGA. If you had a PCjr. or Tandy you could get 16 color EGA mode.
Check out this website for details.

Call me a geek, but the first company I thought of was Level 9 Computing ...

Typing got cumbersome sometimes, but the later games where you could point/click were a great improvement.

Police Quest? Gold Rush?

Check out the older stuff here:

http://www.if-legends.org/~adventure/Sierra_On-Lin e,_Inc.html

Even independent games like Hugo were a ton of fun.

I realize you may be thinking about LA games like Monkey Island and Sam&Max, but they had a history of smart and very funny games even before then.

the two that spring to mind most handily are Indiana Jones and the Last Crusade and Loom ("Do you know the name Bobbin Threadbare?" [#3])

These are the true classics. I agree, however, that these kind of games have lost any kind of marketability in the face of Dooms and Halos and GTAs. OMFG!! Monkey Island was leaked two weeks earlY!!

Oh well.

I realize you may be thinking about LA games like Monkey Island and Sam&Max, but they had a history of smart and very funny games even before then.

the two that spring to mind most handily are Indiana Jones and the Last Crusade and Loom ("Do you know the name Bobbin Threadbare?" [#3])

These are the true classics. I agree, however, that these kind of games have lost any kind of marketability in the face of Dooms and Halos and GTAs. OMFG!! Monkey Island was leaked two weeks earlY!!

Oh well.

Some pictures here.

I don't know if they were any good, but they didn't sell well.

I have always been fond of the atmospheric cover art for Wasteland and the naive-yet-groovy picture on the Tass Times in Tone Town box as well as the "artist's rendition" of an LCP on the little cassette case for Little Computer People.

(I'm too lazy to google for links. Be my guest and explore the Internet yourself!)

I will give you a link to my absolute favourite, tough. I love the way it all looks completely different from what I'd pictured in my head, especially the house. I guess Infocom's motto still holds true...

You mean, like this?

Great game.

Firebird Linux.

You might want to check BT don't still have a trademark on that name - it was their old software marque. They've shown a willingness to try silly lawsuits in the past.

You know... it's a shame with all that wonderful holodeck technology that the command interriptor was reverse engineered from Scott Adam's Pirate Adventure.

Try standing on the window sill and saying yo-ho.

I wouldn't invest in a high-end gaming stations because most high-end games seem to suck. They're all about graphics, but the game-play sucks ass

I understand your need to troll, sir, and well - count me as your "catch" for today. But I will still name some titles that in my opinion obliterate your thesis: "Deux Ex", "Max Payne", "Return To Castle Wolfenstein", "Medal Of Honor", "Red Faction", the whole "Tomb Raider" series.

And no, I'm not just a kiddo who started gaming. My private "golden era" were the purely text-based adventure games published by the famous Level 9 company. I doubt, sir, if you are mature enough to even know the genre.

If you like Infocom adventures you should Download Frotz! 2.4.1. This interpreter installs into /usr/local/bin and runs in the Terminal. It would be nice to have a Cocoa front-end for this. Perhaps some cool Mac Geek will find the time....

Frotz! 2.4.3 is also available in source code form if you're into building from source. You just have to make sure you have the ncurses library installed (Fink helps). I had to rename the "init_process" function (in src/common/process.c and src/main.c) to "my_init_process" before it would build. Some kind of symbol conflict with libSystem....

You can play Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy on the web but I don't think it allows you to save the game.

Fortunately you can download the HHGG data file (option-click) right off the web and play it in Frotz!

As for other Infocom and Z-engine games, here are some links to resources straight out of the Mac Frotz readme file:

• Interactive Fiction Archive
• Baf's Guide
• XYZZYnews
• Infocom (unofficial)
• Infocom (unofficial)
• Infocom Documentation Project
• Infocom Gallery
• InterData Development
• Ye Olde Infocomme Shoppe
• IF Database
• Doe's IF Page
• "Infocom Games"

History seems to have forgotten the _real_ prototypes of modern, first-person shooters: the "Freescape" series of games that Incentive software developed in the eighties. These games featured a fully featured 3D environment and point-and-click shooter action.

While DooM is remembered for uniting groundbreaking technology, unlimited playability and innovative marketing, it _has_ not invented the genre.

To me, failing to credit this company and these games, which undoubtly inspired Looking Glass Studios (and therefore inspired John Carmack), lowers the journalistic value of this book. Games like Total Eclipse or Dark Side should have been mentioned, because these games, even if they ran on now obsolete hardware like the Amiga and the C64, provided the inspirational vision that made all Quake, Unreal and Thief possible.

To which I say: who cares? As long as people (managers) will be confusing the things. (Like: "Firebird DB? Must be from the same guys that do Firebird Browser. I tried that, didn't like it. Hence - we are not using the DB." etc...).

FirebirdSQL may be top of the search results pile now, but they took that position from someone else too....

Maybe Firebird is named after the dead software company and Thunderbird is named after the Gerry Anderson SF TV series?

Oh well, at least there'll be a really obvious choice of icon for Thunderbird 1.0.

could you imagine seeing that box at your neighborhood software store?

Actually, better yet was the magazine ad for Softporn adventure.. it featured 3 "nude" women in a hot tub with champaigne glasses and the bubbles coming just over the line-of-profanity. Interesting fact is that one woman was (I believe) Ken Williams' assistant, one was his wife, Roberta Williams (i.e. the creator of Kings Quest and many others), and the other, I forget. You can see the ad here. Roberta is the one on the far right.

the highlight for that year is "Leisure Suit Larry is born (without a name)", it seems likely that that's what "Softporn Adventure" turned in to

Indeed it was. Google found pages here and here (pg 69, ha).

The three Apple II programs any 12 year old boy was sure to have in the early-mid 80s were "Softporn Adventure", "Strip Poker" (with Suzi or Melissa!), and another one I can't quite remember the name of - if it had a name at all. It might have been called "Spanish Fly" but probably not. It wasn't a game, just a badly drawn hi-res cartoon that used page flipping and crummy beeps to remarkable effect (not really).