A Blast from the Past

Sometimes, you just have to jump into the DeLorean and go back to the past. Last night, I was idly looking at some old computer games sites. You know, the 'abandonware' stuff that nobody plays anymore because the games are so old you can't even find computers that run them? I was interested in some old Sid Meier games (Civ, Pirates), and there was a category about 'adventure' games. Many of the games in that category were the old Infocom text-adventure games. And that reminded me of one of the games I played on my dad's old Osborne computer, the original 'portable' computer. You needed to have Stallone or Schwarzenegger arms to move the thing, but it was 'portable,' at least.

Yes, that's the monitor in the middle. My phone is bigger than that today, but back then, this was state-of-the-art.

Anyway, the game I was thinking about was called 'Adventure.' It's the original text-based adventure game, the one that inspired the founders of Infocom (Zork, Planetfall, Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy, etc.). And lo and behold, not only is it still around, but it's actually playable online in your browser. Incredible. This game is from 1976, and is so influential that it's in the Video Games Hall of Fame. This despite not having a single graphic image; it's entirely written. Which, of course, is too boring for kids today, including my son. I let him try out the online version (which hews quite closely to the version I played as a kid), and he got frustrated just trying to get into the dungeon. He couldn't get past the grate.

"Did you try unlocking it with the keys?" I asked.

He glared at me, then laboriously typed in, 'unlock grate with keys'. It worked, but he ended up giving up soon afterward. It's just not his thing.

Too bad, because I remember these games as being incredible brain-trainers. Solving those puzzles and being rewarded with something like a few coins was thrilling. Throwing an axe at a dwarf and watching him dissipate into a puff of smoke was exciting. And while I never did finish the adventure when I first played it (I couldn't figure out the plover room), it was a fantastic experience, and one I was very happy to try again.

I still haven't finished the game, of course, but it's a ton of fun, just as I remember it. I wish my son could get the same fun out of it, but I suppose that puzzle-solving adventures can't compete with Fortnite.

Those old games, though. They were very, very imaginative and very tightly-paced. They had to be, since computer memory back then was measured in kilobytes, not gigabytes. And a lot of those programs were written in BASIC, a language I still remember with fondness. There was something really cool about getting a computer magazine or book and finding a dozen programs, most of them games, that you could just type in yourself and play. They didn't always work, since most computers had different versions of BASIC, but you could work around them if you understood the language.

Today, of course, nobody uses BASIC. Not like we did. And the games are way more sophisticated, graphically astounding and full of music and all that stuff. But they don't compare to the first time you finished typing in that program and typed 'RUN,' and watched as your computer transformed into a wonder-world of the imagination.

Now, if you'll excuse me, I just heard a voice murmur, 'Plugh.'

If you're interested in seeing this seminal game yourself, here's a link to the online version:

https://iplayif.com/?story=https%3A%2F%2Fifarchive.org%2Fif-archive%2Fgames%2Fzcode%2FAdvent.z5