Yeah, so this protfolio is going to look half-assed and broken since I'm obviously doing it last minute. But hey, half-assed and and broken is better than none at all.
It was back in the days when computers didn't have Megahurtz and real system specs labeled on them, when a 386 and a 486 were the top of the line. My 386 got introduced to the wonders of Return to Zork one day. And upon my first sight of the white house and the old man saying, "Want some rye? 'Course ya do!" I clicked to my heart's content and ended up dying from diseased mice I should have put in a box.
It wasn't until Zork Nemesis, a much harder game, came out that I popped in the disc that came with it, the Zork Collection.
My mind was blown. I had know about the famous text adventures, but I had never played them. I knew the terminology, the secret words, the history of Frobozz, but hadn't played the game. Unfortunately, only Zork Zero and Beyond Zork were games I could accomplish anything in. I never did get to scare the cyclops away in the original Zork.
But text adventures were more than just another game. They are still played today not out of nostalgia, but out of difficulty. Ignoring conversation and command line problems, and the act of description through word over pictures, the puzzles just were that much more harder. Come on, who could figure out that a clay brick and a peice of string were a peice of C4 plastic explosives and a fuse? A picture game would just make it obviously apparent. And in the same game (I think this was in Zork II) a room where you got spun into a random chamber just with a description of the room being disorienting. I can imagine how that would be done in a 3D platformer, but it wouldn't work out quite the same. Game developers today would try to make an algorithm for the player to crack to get to the right room.
So what is the point of this entry? The subculture of gaming that is more ignored is something I was glad to see in class.
Posted by TimothyTraini at October 15, 2004 12:53 AM