After a brief and humorous back-and-forth with Colette Bennett from Tomopop which involved geeksterly ironic tees and sicking a grue on someone for trying to open her mailbox, I went on a mission to find an online version of Zork! Did I ever find it indeed! If your fingers are now just itching to go east, go north, go west, go south, and open window, then scroll down to the treasure-trove of Infocom adventure games online. One caveat: there is no save here, so I hope you don’t get eaten by a grue when the lights go out.
If you were not privy enough to have experienced the old text and language-based games before the First Person Shooters, MMORPGs, and real-time strategy games became all the rage; then you can now relive my youth by typing in vulgar commands to these adventure games. Any bona fide (self proclaimed) OG (Original Gamer) has to experience these games to really be on the cool (geek) kids’ side of the inside jokes.
All the great adventure game titles are represented: Zork I, Sorcerer, Wishbringer, Planetfall, and (drumroll please…) Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy! Part of the thrill in these games is trying to figure out what, exactly, you can type to make the scene change, use some item, check your inventory, pick up something, or just turn on the lights (Grues only lurk in the dark apparently). Before you dismiss these text-only games as drole, give one of them a shot, they’re strangely addictive. Oh, and break out a pencil and paper. You might need to make a chicken-scratch map or note an action.
All kinds of text-based adventure games from Infocom here:
http://www.xs4all.nl/~pot/infocom/
…side-note for you Douglas Adams fans who can’t deal without pretty pictures…
There exists a version hosted by BBC Radio 4 with scene pictures (by Rod Lord, Nolan Worthington, and others) which still requires text entry, but some clickety-click stuff is available. Side-side note: if someone knows if this online game has been ported to Android… let. me. know. Side-side-side note: yes, it works on Android through the web, but it’s rather clunky to navigate.
Here’s BBC’s version of Infocom’s Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy Game by Infocom and Douglas Adams himself:
http://www.bbc.co.uk/radio4/hitchhikers/game_new.shtml
Side-side-side-last-side-I-swear note: try not to use the cheats and walk-throughs which you will undoubtedly find online, especially for the Hitchhiker’s Guide game. Some of the funniest parts of the game are the outcomes of your wrong moves and follies narrated by Douglas Adams’ swanky wit.
