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Man do I get nostalgic for Alternate Reality: The Dungeon and Zork (not exclusive to C64 owners I know). And making Basic sprites flutter across the screen... c

Man do I get nostalgic for Alternate Reality: The Dungeon and Zork (not exclusive to C64 owners I know). And making Basic sprites flutter across the screen... copying programs out of the thick user manual that came with it.

jerf 8y ago
If you want to go the legal route, you can still buy Zork: https://www.gog.com/game/the_zork_anthology https://www.gog.com/game/the_zork_anthology Usually with infocom collections you can find the Zork game file pretty easily and run it on any Z-machine interpreter you like, meaning it's incredibly cross-platform nowadays. If you want to go the, ah, "less legal" route, it's pretty easy to find copies of the game file if you search properly. In some ways, the text adventure games of that era have survived better than anything else. You can get a modern interpreter and play it on a modern display, with the computer responding as quickly as you can type, with nice modern fonts, on any system you like (mac windows linux android ios random assortment of other platforms), and at the same time, there's basically no compromise of the original experience. (Unless you absolutely insist that it's vital that you have to wait a second or two for the computer to respond to your input, and sluggishly stream the text out.) It's not a "remastering" or a reimplementation, it's still the original thing, just brought forward in time.
- deleted 8y ago
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- crooked-v 8y ago
  Also, for other IF games, see this page for a list of interpreters - http://inform7.com/if/interpreters/ http://inform7.com/if/interpreters/ - and the IFDB for various freely available games - http://ifdb.tads.org http://ifdb.tads.org I particularly like Lost Pig, a short but clever game that runs with the conceit that the reason the parser is limited is that your character is a dumb-as-bricks orc looking for (obviously) a lost pig. http://ifdb.tads.org/viewgame?id=mohwfk47yjzii14w http://ifdb.tads.org/viewgame?id=mohwfk47yjzii14w

jerf 8y ago

If you want to go the legal route, you can still buy Zork: https://www.gog.com/game/the_zork_anthology https://www.gog.com/game/the_zork_anthology Usually with infocom collections you can find the Zork game file pretty easily and run it on any Z-machine interpreter you like, meaning it's incredibly cross-platform nowadays. If you want to go the, ah, "less legal" route, it's pretty easy to find copies of the game file if you search properly. In some ways, the text adventure games of that era have survived better than anything else. You can get a modern interpreter and play it on a modern display, with the computer responding as quickly as you can type, with nice modern fonts, on any system you like (mac windows linux android ios random assortment of other platforms), and at the same time, there's basically no compromise of the original experience. (Unless you absolutely insist that it's vital that you have to wait a second or two for the computer to respond to your input, and sluggishly stream the text out.) It's not a "remastering" or a reimplementation, it's still the original thing, just brought forward in time.

deleted 8y ago
[deleted]
crooked-v 8y ago
Also, for other IF games, see this page for a list of interpreters - http://inform7.com/if/interpreters/ http://inform7.com/if/interpreters/ - and the IFDB for various freely available games - http://ifdb.tads.org http://ifdb.tads.org I particularly like Lost Pig, a short but clever game that runs with the conceit that the reason the parser is limited is that your character is a dumb-as-bricks orc looking for (obviously) a lost pig. http://ifdb.tads.org/viewgame?id=mohwfk47yjzii14w http://ifdb.tads.org/viewgame?id=mohwfk47yjzii14w