Adventure - Gaming for Old Folks

>look

In A Valley
You are in a valley in the forest beside a stream tumbling along a rocky bed.

>north

At End Of Road

>look

At End Of Road
You are standing at the end of a road before a small brick building. Around you is a forest. A small stream flows out of the building and down a gully.


Back in the good old days there were countless hours wasted as people typed in quaint text commands to their computer. In this way, they played a game. Really, they were living a story. Making their way through a hand-crafted, fictional game universe designed by gamers for gamers. Imagination was key to these games, and they were the precursor to the MUD games that rules the online world of the eighties and early nineties.

There was something magical about typing text at your computer and having it seemingly understand you. The mini-game of just figuring out exaclty how you could convince the game to let you perform the action you had in mind was often a joy in and of itself. When you finally figured out a way to tell the game to let you take a drink from the stream in Adventure there was trickle of excitement that ran up your spine. That small thrill that worked its way to your cerebral cortex and convinced you that, somehow, this was more than just a game. You were having a conversation with your computer -- no... you were having an adventure with it. :)

Ah, the good old days.

Now you can't seem to have any fun unless the graphics on your screen are so realistic that you are dazzled. Even the more retro-games still require a graphical representation to give us the visual feedback our over-stimulated and under-nourished minds have come to expect to derive maximum enjoyment from our "games".


All the text adventure fun you can shake a stick at.

Then I wondered just hwat that xyzzy referred to... so here ya go:

http://www.rickadams.org/adventure/c_xyzzy.html

Everything you ever wanted to know about the magic word xyzzy... in the words of the author of the page.

its from the Adventure game... which I was referencing in an earlier blog.