The Rise of Computer Games, Part I: Adventure

For a fascinating insight into "The Colossal Cave Adventure" see the Literate Program version of the source:

http://literateprogramming.com/adventure.pdf

There was a Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy text adventure, with writing from Douglas Adams. It's entertaining, but insane what you have to figure out to get the babel fish...

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Hitchhiker%27s_Guide_to_th...

One of my dream games is a truly open world text adventure. I got a glimpse of it by having ChatGPT run this game, but it started hallucinating and misremembering after a few rounds. It has to be perfect to avoid breaking the immersion, but I'd pay $100 for such a game even without graphics.

Some fantastic text adventures can still be had online. There are MUDs (my favorite), Roguelikes, Sims, and even cyberpunk adventures. A half dozen Star Wars ones as well.

This was peak 1986. A few years later and we’d be jumping a little pixel plumber on cathode ray tubes.

Can’t wait for the next part…

I wonder how a book of type-in AI prompts would do…

Text adventures whilst sometimes infuriating, if played as they are meant to be back when released with a piece of graph paper to help map out where you have been and where you go, there is still some magic about them that isn't had with graphical games. Every room becomes exciting which just isn't the case even in my favourite games such as Fallout New Vegas. Oh more bottle caps again in a drawer but I can begin to tell what rooms will be essential to look in and which won't buy the middle of the game. There is none of that in text games, you just have to explore and get truly lost, another thing that is much harder to do nowadays.