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Some additional nostalgia from 1997...

Escape from MicroSun (aka "Friday Afternoon") is a text adventure (written by a Sun Microsystems employee) where you play the part of a programmer for "MicroSun" and have to escape the office by 6pm for a date.

Although probably unintentional, those old Infocom games gave non-programmers a great educational CS experience. As you hunt treasure and outsmart the thief, or gather clues and question witnesses, you also learn to think abstractly, create and step through algorithms and carry around a lot of information in your head -- all while working at a genuine command line.

Most of these Infocom games (link below) you can get from somewhere online if you look, and play them with an interpreter such as frotz or jzip.
http://www.infocom-if.org/games/games.html

Only the Zorks are technically legal though, because they were released by Activision. You can also try them out online right here:
http://www.ifiction.org/games/play.phpz?cat=2&game =3&mode=html
http://www.ifiction.org/games/play.phpz?cat=2&game =4&mode=html
http://www.ifiction.org/games/play.phpz?cat=2&game =5&mode=html

I credit years of tinkering with Deadline and the Zorks with giving me a better early foundation beginning around age 11 than I would have had just noodling with the C-64 "Ready" prompt. (Or worse, noodling around in a modern GUI.)

C-jump seems painfully uninspiring to me. I think the problem with games like that and the programming languages "designed for kids" is that they're insincere: Your students will know immediately that they're not doing something real.

Although probably unintentional, those old Infocom games gave non-programmers a great educational CS experience. As you hunt treasure and outsmart the thief, or gather clues and question witnesses, you also learn to think abstractly, create and step through algorithms and carry around a lot of information in your head -- all while working at a genuine command line.

Most of these Infocom games (link below) you can get from somewhere online if you look, and play them with an interpreter such as frotz or jzip.
http://www.infocom-if.org/games/games.html

Only the Zorks are technically legal though, because they were released by Activision. You can also try them out online right here:
http://www.ifiction.org/games/play.phpz?cat=2&game =3&mode=html
http://www.ifiction.org/games/play.phpz?cat=2&game =4&mode=html
http://www.ifiction.org/games/play.phpz?cat=2&game =5&mode=html

I credit years of tinkering with Deadline and the Zorks with giving me a better early foundation beginning around age 11 than I would have had just noodling with the C-64 "Ready" prompt. (Or worse, noodling around in a modern GUI.)

C-jump seems painfully uninspiring to me. I think the problem with games like that and the programming languages "designed for kids" is that they're insincere: Your students will know immediately that they're not doing something real.

Although probably unintentional, those old Infocom games gave non-programmers a great educational CS experience. As you hunt treasure and outsmart the thief, or gather clues and question witnesses, you also learn to think abstractly, create and step through algorithms and carry around a lot of information in your head -- all while working at a genuine command line.

Most of these Infocom games (link below) you can get from somewhere online if you look, and play them with an interpreter such as frotz or jzip.
http://www.infocom-if.org/games/games.html

Only the Zorks are technically legal though, because they were released by Activision. You can also try them out online right here:
http://www.ifiction.org/games/play.phpz?cat=2&game =3&mode=html
http://www.ifiction.org/games/play.phpz?cat=2&game =4&mode=html
http://www.ifiction.org/games/play.phpz?cat=2&game =5&mode=html

I credit years of tinkering with Deadline and the Zorks with giving me a better early foundation beginning around age 11 than I would have had just noodling with the C-64 "Ready" prompt. (Or worse, noodling around in a modern GUI.)

C-jump seems painfully uninspiring to me. I think the problem with games like that and the programming languages "designed for kids" is that they're insincere: Your students will know immediately that they're not doing something real.

Not to mention modern day classics like "Spider and Web" (best "Aha!" puzzle I've ever encountered)...

Spider and Web (which you can play online!) is, indeed superb --- and I know the moment you mean; I remember sitting there in amazement that he'd managed to pull off something so perfect and so unexpected.

It's not perfect --- the 'that's not important right now' bits really annoyed me for reasons that would be a spoiler to go into. But it's a great game. It's also very hard.

(Background: Spider and Web is a modern adventure game written to run on Infocom's Z-machine. There's a large and vibrant community based around writing and playing adventure games --- the genre's never been healthier. You can find more information than you ever believed possible off the link above.)

They died? Oh no! You mean no more updates to some of my favourite websites?

D'oh. Can you tell that the caffeine was running low?

As an aside - the Scott Adams that used to come to mind is the one who wrote early adventure games for the budding microcomputer market. Scott Adams of Dilbert fame even has a FAQ entry noting that they're not the same Scott.

Hunt the Wumpus

Now that I've done some googling, I find that Sierra bought the rights to the original game. Here's something I just found regarding this: [article]. Also, this appears to be a web-based version, though I haven't tried it: [version].

Enjoy.

Lemme see if iFiction has a playable version... yep! Here it is.

The trilogy is better, though. Less coherent because they had to split it up, but there's more content, the puzzles are friendlier, and the connections between rooms are more sensible.

Funny, but not quite right... Try THIS.

There's also the iFiction site, too, to play his and other text adventure games online.

Enjoy!

Sierra (when they were still named Online Systems) published a game called Softporn Adventures.

Here's an image of the box.
Here it is emulated. 100% text! Softporn indeed. ;)

Yes, definitely, try IF.

The IF archive is a bit unruly, if comprehensive.

Some links I like are

Baf's guide to the IF archive A nice site with reviews of games in the IF archive.

SPAG SPAG is an online zine about IF. It's got a a scoreboard that sadly isn't updated anymore, but gives a rough guide to better IF games out there. SPAG has a numerous reviews of IF games that are generally more thorough than Baf's guide, but are therefore not always good for a quick read.

XYZZY News is probably the best site for up to date news, reviews, and links about IF. If you want a good starting place for IF, this is it.

iFiction is a good site to get IF games. It's not as comprehensive as the IF archives, and it's getting a little out of date, but it's generally well organized and is a good place to go if you want to filter out some of the less polished games.

I didn't care for Varicella, I will admit it is well written. My favorite work so far is probably Anchorhead. It's a horror piece with a sort of Lovecraftian-Northeast Atlantic-Jamesian feel. But there's plenty of great stuff out there.

Actually, there are plenty of "Infocom-like" games still being made, though the games I'm talking about range from the traditional to the not so traditional.

If you're interested in finding out more, I'd suggest reading reviews of recent text adventures from a site or two and then downloading the games from the Interactive Fiction Archive.

iFiction.Org has a lot of the infocom games online.