With the discussion of Planetfall in the GalCiv thread, I find myself reminiscing about the glory days of Infocom. The great infocom games are a weird anachronism - we’d turn our noses in the air at a pure text game nowadays, but in their day, Infocom games were just about the most compelling gaming experience going.
So which games linger in your memory as the all time greats of Infocom? And why?
For myself, it all starts with the original Zork. As lame and weirdly inconsistent (and immersion-breaking) as that game was, it had a potent compulsion on me: I spent MONTHS beating that sucker. I got deep into both Zork 2 and Zork 3 but never quite beat either one.
Next up is Planetfall, which, well, was just cool. Damn that Lloyd anyhow. In a way, this had the toughest, most logical puzzles, without resorting to bizarro-puzzles (see babel fish, below) or weird guessing games.
Probably the most intense experience I had with an Infocom game was Hitchhiker’s Guide. Like all sane humans, I had massive trouble with the Babel Fish puzzle, but when I finally got passed that thing, it was like a dam breaking. I don’t remember the finale well but I do remember a great run of cool stuff in that game: the endless party, the monster/towel thing, etc.
I was on a paperboy budget back then and I didn’t have a modem or piratey friends, so I haven’t played all of them. Even though I technically could now that I have Lost Treasures.
Planetfall was my favorite, then Hitchhiker’s. I liked Nord and Bert, but I don’t know if that really counts as an adventure. After that, I’d say Suspended. I actually didn’t like the Zork’s very much, rather I liked the manuals better than the game. Suspect, that wasn’t a very good one because you had to be in the right place at the right time to collect some pieces of evidence. I didn’t have any of the others.
I knew all about them though, because I was subscribed to The New Zork Times / The Status Line.
The best Infocom game is generally considered by text adventure connoisseurs to be Trinity, followed by A Mind Forever Voyaging. I pretty much agree with that assessment, but I also have a couple of personal favorites in Spellbreaker and Beyond Zork. I’ve played every Infocom game ever released, but those are the ones that have a special place in my heart. I never really went for Planetfall for some reason…don’t know why. Likewise, Hitchhiker’s Guide was ok, but I was never into Douglas Adams that much so it didn’t “stick.”
Btw, in case you guys don’t know it, there’s a thriving text adventure community that releases dozens of games every year–most of them quite good and many equalling or surpassing the quality of the classics. We programmer/authors hang out at rec.arts.int-fiction and the file archive is located at ftp.gmd.de in case you want to take a peek.
Fooblitzky was just an attempt at a more traditional strategy game. (I guess that means you don’t know about Cornerstone, either, which was the business database product Infocom sunk all their resources into, finally bankrupting themselves…?)
Wishbringer: Short, and fairly easy, but still one of my favorite Infocom games.
No doubt because it was written by Brian Moriarty, the first true game god. :)
Suspect: A damn tough game, but also very good. Makes you wonder why there aren’t more mystery-themed adventure games. Seems like an obvious pairing.
Deadline, Suspect, and Sherlock: The Riddle of the Crown Jewels are the three other Infocom mystery games more or less in the mold of Witness. There are some others that might qualify as well, depending on how elastic your definition of “mystery” is: Moonmist, The Lurking Horror, Ballyhoo, etc.
For a rather exhaustive history/case-study of Infocom that was done a couple years ago by some MIT students.
When I was much younger, during a visit to Boston with my family I had a chance to tour the offices. It was in 1988, shortly before Activision axed the company. Not quite sure how many geek points that gets me.
My brothers and I bought a lot of Infocom games back in the early ‘80s, and I played several of them quite eagerly, but I just couldn’t get anywhere in them. I’m no good at solving puzzles. I probably spent the most time with the Zork trilogy. I remember my brothers agonizing over a zero-G puzzle in Starcross. Years later I diddled with a Java version of Hitchhiker’s Guide on the lamented Douglas Adams’ website. I got up to the Babelfish puzzle, got a little ways into it, and then just threw my hands up in frustration.
I like the idea of Infocom games, and I’m glad that I was there in their halcyon days, but having said that, I can’t say I actually got much enjoyment out of them. Adventures have long been my least favorite genre, if you want to know the truth. (I think my genre hierarchy would go something like: RPG > Action > RTS > Turn Based Strategy > Sim > Adventure.) Some people can solve puzzles, and some can’t, I guess.
Planetfall was, in my opinion, easily the best Infocom game. I also liked Trinity and Wishbringer a lot, and Witness (I also played Suspect and Deadline, but neither one was nearly as good as Witness).
A Mind Forever Voyaging, no question. Fantastic concept, great writing, decent puzzles and no magical mushroom worlds. Always thought that Hitchhiker’s was utterly overrated.
Fooblitzky was just an attempt at a more traditional strategy game. (I guess that means you don’t know about Cornerstone, either, which was the business database product Infocom sunk all their resources into, finally bankrupting themselves…?)
Wishbringer: Short, and fairly easy, but still one of my favorite Infocom games.
No doubt because it was written by Brian Moriarty, the first true game god. :)
Suspect: A damn tough game, but also very good. Makes you wonder why there aren’t more mystery-themed adventure games. Seems like an obvious pairing.
Deadline, Suspect, and Sherlock: The Riddle of the Crown Jewels are the three other Infocom mystery games more or less in the mold of Witness. There are some others that might qualify as well, depending on how elastic your definition of “mystery” is: Moonmist, The Lurking Horror, Ballyhoo, etc.[/quote]
It was also a board-style game. :)
Another goodie is Bureaucracy–an infuriating and funny collaboration with Douglas Adams with no relation to the Hitchhiker saga.
That’s a fascinating read, not just for Infocom fans but also about the game industry in its infancy. Ah, the days when computers had 32 KB RAM, full-page ads would mock people who wanted graphics rather than pure text, and a game was a “hit” with 6,000 copies sold!
