h2g2 The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy: Earth Edition

That you wrote a whole entry on Zork itself. Yay! I just found a re-release of Zork Nemesis, which I hadn't gotten to play before. I'm currently stuck on Kaine's world... So I go and play KOTOR for a little while, or Warcraft, then I go back and play a bit more Zork.

I hope they keep producing Zork games. Nemesis is quickly turning out to be one of my favorites. More difficult than Inquisitor, and almost as complicated as one of the text adventures.

Kaine's world can be tricky. So much depends on pattern recognition there (even more so than other worlds).

The future of Zork is grim at best, I'm afraid. While fans continue to create unofficial text adventures, Activision continues to forget their promise of a sequel to ZGI (where you actually get to use/abuse your powers as a Dungeon Master!) But I'm sure eventually someone'll revive the series.

As for Nemesis, I agree that it's a fantastic game. The artwork is great, the music is eerily beautiful, and the backstory toys with your mind.

However, I have to say that I've never considered ZNem to be a true Zork game, despite the fact that it takes place in Zork. The puzzles are tough, but many of them seem more like a scavenger hunt than traditional-type puzzles. Similarly, it didn't make me chuckle as often as most Zork games.

Oh, and don't take that as criticism against the game. It's one of my favorites of all time. I just can't play it when I'm in a "Zork" mood. I play it in my "Scary Story" mood.

I know what you mean; there's definitely an absence of whimsy. Especially when you decide to activate the bomb and blow up the universe... I've been in scary story mode anyway - just completed KOTOR, and I'll have to upgrade the computer before I can play KOTOR II.

I've not gotten to that one yet. The last graphical adventure game that I played was called "The Secret Of The Nautilus", or something. My computer kept freezing up on it, and I've just not been able to upgrade. It's mainly been text games for me.

Thank goodness for the IF Archives.

Knights of the Old Republic was (for about a year or so) the best Star Wars game made... then they came out with a bunch of other great Star Wars games, and it was shunted aside. What I like most about it is the freedom to choose whether you're going to be a dark Jedi or a light-side Jedi. I've already completed it as the good guy - now I'm going through it as the baddie.

There's nothing wrong with text games... and it's good for your typing speed!

Oh, definitely nothing wrong. I learned to type in Zork 1.

For some reason, I actually felt that I would have better chances if I could type "kill thief" faster.

Swing sword at troll!

I enjoyed the later games where Infocom started making fun of the typing styles.

Like, if you play far enough in Stationfall, it's possible to get Floyd to say something like, "Enough with the 'Floyd, Hello' stuff! I'm sick of that opening!"

There's a graphic adventure out (can't remember the name, of course) that's yet another Diablo-style hack and slash and break baskets and barrels... One of the main character's lines is "Can't stop to chat now, I've got to go break some more barrels."

Heh... have you ever kicked Floyd?

Oh, yes. Kicked, picked up, punched, killed, played with, and eaten Floyd. I got very bored during some of the times when I couldn't figure out where the next puzzles were in Planetfall.

That reminds me of some other game I played....oh, yeah. I regret to say that I played Conker's Bad Fur Day just to see what all the fuss was about. The game was just too gratuitous for my sakes (though I will admit that parts of it were funny, and other parts (It's War and Enter The Vertex) had awesome gameplay.

But the one line that made that game worth sitting through all the bad words and violence was said by a giant Bale Of Hay. You finish up in one room, and this Bale Of Hay falls from the ceiling after you leave, and scares a paintbrush and can of paint into submission. Then, after establishing his rule in the farm house, he says, "Now, to begin wandering about....aimlessly!"

That was such a perfect line. I mean,....yeah, that's exactly what characters in this type of game do.

Oh, my... I've never heard of that one! Guess I'll have to look it up... I'm all about gratuitous bad language and violence

If that's what you're all about, then Conker might be for you. It's nothing but a long, twisting tale of R-Rated humor, violence, and gross noises.

Probably the only video game that I ever sold after playing it....

If you're *really* interested, though, I'd wait for it on the X-Box as they're making a remake of it. The new game focusses on a multiplayer aspect, but has the old N64's single-player mode as an added bonus. I think they're calling this remake "Conker: Live And Reloaded" or something.

It's hard for me to believe that this game was made by the same people who did Banjo-Kazooie. Now THAT was a game that ROCKED!

Gratuitous bad language I like, but gross noises I can do without!

Speaking of which, the new Leisure Suit Larry game is just like that - lots of gross noises, genitalia references, and gratuitous sex jokes. Disappointing - but the original was pretty cheesy, too, so I shouldn't be surprised.

It looks like I might have to break down and get an X-box, because the new Oddworld game is for Xbox only. Dangit.

I've never played the Leisure Suit Larry games.

However, I think that LSL is actually based on a text adventure.

And we've officially come full circle.

Yup. SoftPorn, the original... which I played on the school library computers.

I've considered downloading it from the IF Archives, but I just get this feeling that I shouldn't. People've told me that it's worse than Leather Goddesses Of Phobos (which can be set on Tame mode, and wouldn't be so offensive if it weren't for the groundbreaking work of folks like Captain Kirk and Dirk Benedict's Starbuck*

As games go, it's pretty lame. It's got that obnoxious two-word parser, and the descriptions are repetitive, and there's something awful that happens to you with every 'conquest.'

So I wouldn't bother. I enjoyed Leather Goddesses (actually, I never got to finish that game because it required a map that came with the box - which I didn't find until I erased the saved position for the game, which means I had to start over... etc.) It's much more creative than SoftPorn.

See, I respect LGOP for two principle reasons:

First of all, it's not entirely about the adult humor. That's a heavy overtone, but if you choose the game can leave that out entirely. And you know, it's still a fantastic game on its own (I mean, the "Riddle Riddle" was a pretty creative concept, and a funny concept right after you answer it).

Second of all, it was written by Steve Meretzky who is, in my opinion, the absolute best of the Infocom implementors. Even better than Steve Meretzky. I mean, he did LGOP as a pure comedy/sci-fi tribute to Buck Rogers (essentially), he did Zork Zero and Sorcerer (and you know how I love Zork games, especially the funny ones. That Jester always cracks me up), and he did A Mind Forever Voyaging (which proves that he can do a serious story without relying on the comedy to pull his weight).

LGOP was, however, a bit unfair at times. I'm a very Save-Happy person, and don't bother coming up with new names for my saved games, meaning that I normally don't have more than one save file for a single game (a habit that I got from my parent's Commodore 64 when I first discovered Zork), and if you miss something in LGOP and make it all the way to the Endgame, there's no way to go back and fix it.

As such, it might not've received a high ranking if it were produced by someone in the amateur text adventure field these days. The rules and standards for those games are higher than some of Infocom's greatest treasures (the "cave crawl" type games such as Zork and Adventure are almost considered archaic, last I checked).

I know what you mean... That time period at Infocom was a busy one, so I think a lot of games slipped through the cracks when they should have been quality-tested a bit more. Hitchhiker's was like that - if you didn't feed the dog the cheese sandwich, you'd get eaten by the dog half-way through the game.

Mind Forever Voyaging was a great game, too - one of the few I actually finished.

(the "cave crawl" type games such as Zork and Adventure are almost considered archaic, last I checked)

Weird, huh? I still regard Zork as one of the all-time greats.

I think the reason that they're considered outdated is twofold.

First of all, there's been a shift away from "interactive fiction games" to "interactive fiction stories." In short, there needs to be some basic plot and some sort of character drive, just as you would find in a traditional story (I mean, in Zork I the plot was basically "You find a cave. Look for stuff", and the character drive was "You're greedy. Find treasure.")

Second of all, people have, in general, gradually forgotten how to create a "non-linear" text game. You get a lot of "Story leads to puzzle leads to solution leads to story leads to puzzle leads to solution leads to story...." games where your option is basically just one puzzle at a time, or a "hallway game" as I see them. In Zork or Adventure, the geography was more like a true "cave" where you had a myriad of options at a time. From the beginning of Zork you could explore the forest, or snoop around the house. Once you get to the house and get rid of that Troll, there's any number of things you can start off with (the maze, Flood Control Dam #3, the Temple area, etc.)

Most cave games made today truly are inferior to their predecessors because the aren't truly caves. They're perfectly linear rock fissures with a bunch of stumbling blocks between you and your prizes.

That's why the Crater Labs, Inc. game that I'm (slowly) working on is a game designed to be non-linear. There's always at least two puzzles that you can work on until just about the very end of the game. And a bunch of "secrets" that really expand the concept of how I see working on puzzles.