[the_old_crowd] Re: Retro-game (OT)

[silmariel]

> Kneasy:
> Overcome with nostalgia, pining for the days of clunky, whirring drives
> and a screen slightly larger than a cigarette packet, the old fool scoured
> this web thingy. And joy of joys! The original (well, slightly tweaked)
> Adventure!
>
> '83 in Riyadh was the last time I let that little birdie out of his cage.
>
> Now I can get lost in those twisty tunnels again - and maybe this time
> I'll be able to get that damn dragon to shift off that oriental carpet.
>

I had decided to get rid off those old programs this year. They are packed in 
a closet (good chance they belong in a museum now).

I have the game in my hands right now, and it's a trip to the past. We (my 
father, that is, I was ten) used to record it with a set of distortions, 
obtaining once in n times, a stable version with freaked storyline or 
graphics. Very fun.

My other all times favourite was Boulder Dash, but I found it in linux distros 
(as Rocks 'n Diamons).

I see in the nethack site it is packaged for MacOSX, I discovered this one not 
so long ago.

I have the feeling that for anyone liking text adventures a trip to some MUDs 
is worth a try. The only graphics you risk to see are ASCII based. they are 
online games/communities, and as such, not a game with start and end, but 
they usually have minigames called quests, both general and coming with 
areas. I read that the discworld mud (nice web site) has a quest based on 
Cluedo, that restarts every given time so that the solution is aleatory.

The wikipedia has a lot of information on them. Just avoid the player killer 
ones. My mud is player killing, I wouldn't use it as example of adventure and 
rpg, even it is rpg-themed, is more oriented to achiever/killer/chatter 
players than to explorer/roleplayer ones. But there are hundreds of them (and 
I'd never paid for playing). 

I find that not having graphics is an advantage, once you cross the barrier of 
losing that beautiful graphics and overcome that problem that usually is the 
command line (get, look, wear, score...), is as with books, you get the 
reward of being inmersed in the words.

Silmariel