HDTenEightyP/NetNews huggingface dataset:
From: htc@dcl-nxt05 (htc)
Subject: Getting Old Adventure Games
Organization: University of Illinois at Urbana
Date: Wed, 30 Sep 1992 17:38:05 GMT

Howdy folks,

I just recently purchased the Lost Treasures of Infocom 1 and 2 and I
was wondering about some other old adventure games I remember from that
era.  I was wondering if you guys remember these games.  Maybe give me
some info on where I can buy some of them.  I'll take used ones.  

Game                         Computer                Company

Hacker I                     IBM                     Activision
Pawn                         IBM                     Mag. Scrolls/Rainbow Arts
Farenheit 451                IBM                     Telarium
Rendevous with Rama          IBM                     Telarium
Perry Mason (flat package)   any version             Telarium
Amazon                       IBM                     Telarium
ShadowKeep                   any version             Telarium
Dragonworld                  any version             Telarium
Scoop                        any version             Telarium
Starman Jones                any version             Telarium

Starman Jones is supposively a game based on a book by Robert Heinlein and
I think it was mentioned in CGW in the review of Gateway.

Telarium became a part of Spinnaker awhile ago.  Does Spinnaker still 
publish games?

Any information about the games would be great.  I've noticed recent talks
about Pawn and Magnetic Scrolls.  Wonderland is a great game.  I like the
interface a lot more than the Legend stuff.

Peace,
Hyung
htc@antietam.cso.uiuc.edu

Newsgroups: rec.games.int-fiction
From: gamble@owlnet.rice.edu (Ben Gamble)
Subject: Re: Lurking Horror
Organization: Tennessee Ernie Port Authority
Date: Wed, 30 Sep 1992 18:07:07 GMT

In article <mumble> friedman@gnu.ai.mit.edu (Noah Friedman) writes:
|Supposedly, Lurking Horror has a bunch of descriptions of places that are
|actually part of the MIT campus (for example, Vassar street is called Smith
|street in the game).  I haven't played it yet---I'm still stuck at the
|airport in Bureaucracy---but it'll probably be next on my list of games to
|try. 

Anyone told you about the class ring yet?  (-:

-- 
Ben Gamble                              B0 f- t+ w- g+ k- s- m- e r-v p
gamble@owlnet.rice.edu 
       Oh ye who go about saying unto each other:  "Hello sailor":
       Dost thou know the magnitude of thy sin before the gods?
From: linhart@romulus.rutgers.edu (Mike Threepoint)
Newsgroups: rec.games.int-fiction
Subject: Re: ballyhoo radio station
Date: 3 Oct 92 22:24:54 GMT
Distribution: usa
Organization: Frobozz Magic Amulet of Yendor Company

jojo@sandman.asd.sgi.com (Jojo Wesener) writes:
> So, I just got the LTOI last night and looked through it and sure
> enough, as someone had reported, the radio station you're supposed
> to tune into was supplied.  Did anyone ever post what the radio station
		  ^ not
> was supposed to be?

In the original documentation, the station is "WPDL, 1170 AM,
America's foremost classical AM radio station".  TUNE RADIO TO WPDL
will work.
From: dementia@cheshire.oxy.edu (Daniel Steven Reinker)
Subject: Starcross, Stationfall hints needed
Organization: Occidental College, Los Angeles, CA 90041 USA.
Date: Fri, 2 Oct 1992 00:40:06 GMT

I am stuck in both of these games, and could use some hints.

1) In Starcross, how do you get into the red airlock?
2) In Stationfall, I have the detonator, I have everything, I set up the
bomb in the safe....however, when I try to leave, the game informs me that
I can't leave until I've disarmed the explosive! What eventually happens is
that it blows up and takes me with it. What do I do?

Hiz Lord Dementia (dementia@cheshire.oxy.edu)
-- 
"You can't help that. We're all mad here."-The cheshire cat, Alice in WL

"A mass hysteria/a megalomania/reveal Dementia/reveal"-Metallica                
Newsgroups: rec.games.int-fiction
From: mbvg9741@uxa.cso.uiuc.edu (Hmmm. . .)
Subject: Re: FAQ Addition and Trends in Advtenure Games
Organization: University of Illinois at Urbana
Date: Mon, 28 Sep 1992 16:08:14 GMT

mechalas@gn.ecn.purdue.edu (John P. Mechalas) writes:


>   I think the creation of this news group will serve one main goal:  tie
>together those of us who still have a love or affection for the "old" but
>classic interactive fiction games.  And as such, I think we should make
>an addition to the FAQ to include the following:

>   1) FTP sites where Shareware Interactive Fiction is located.
>   2) FTP sites where TADS can be located, and what it is.

Amen!!!  These are exactly the types of questions I was going to ask,
and I expect many other new uers would want to know also.  Some of
these games I see mentioned sound very interesting, but I have no
idea where to get them!


>   Also, I think that upload announcements of new interactive fiction games
>have a rightful place here.  Any comments on this?  Additions or otherwise?

>-- 
>John Mechalas                                          "I'm not an actor, but
>mechalas@gn.ecn.purdue.edu                                 I play one on TV."
>Aero Engineering, Purdue University                     #include disclaimer.h
Newsgroups: rec.games.int-fiction
From: twpierce@unix.amherst.edu (Tim Pierce)
Subject: Re: The trend in adventure games
Organization: Amherst College, Amherst MA
Date: Thu, 1 Oct 1992 20:50:52 GMT

Finally, I've gotten around to addressing Jonathan's original post.

In article <Wcz-7m#@engin.umich.edu> positron@engin.umich.edu (Jonathan Scott Haas) writes:

>I'm starting this thread to talk about the type of game that seems
>to be the norm today. You know the type... big on graphics, big on
>disk space, short on puzzles, short on executable commands.

Thank God someone else sees it this way.  I had given up modern
adventure gaming for lost.

>The game that, to me, epitomizes the "modern" adventure game is
>Leisure Suit Larry V. I think I can say without fear of contradiction
>that it sucks. First off, it's horribly easy. Of course it is. What
>do you expect? What kind of complex, challenging, clever puzzles can
>exist when the only things you can do are "walk", "talk", and "use"?
>(oh yes... and let's not forget "unzip".) Secondly, the thing takes
>8 megs. 8 megs! What ever happened to the good ol' days, when fantastically
>complex, intricate adventures ran easily on the Commodore 64, with its
>feeble 40K (or so) of RAM and its 100K floppy disks?

Once upon a time, we could fit most of our Desert Island Games on a
single measly floppy disk.  The idea that I'd want to devote ten disks
to a single game is preposterous.  I was highly amused to note that I
"only" needed five 720K floppies for The Lost Treasures of Infocom I.

>An improvement? Well, I've heard that the puzzles and humor are
>better

I would be surprised.  The puzzles and concept in Monkey Island I were
head and shoulders above any other graphic adventure I'd seen to date
(Indiana Jones impressed me considerably), but the game's overall
enjoyability still doesn't hold a candle to Infocom.

>What's happening? Do we, the adventure gaming public, actually prefer
>these dinosaurs of graphical adventures to the enjoyable text-based
>adventures of our younger days?

Apparently so.  I hate to sound like the Grumpy Old Man, but I simply
do not accept the New World Order of adventure games.  Apparently
graphic adventures touched far more people than the original text
adventures did, and seeing a potential new market out there, software
companies jumped at the chance, leaving an empty market for text
adventures.  It's too bad.

-- 
____ Tim Pierce                / "You are just naive and repressed because
\  / twpierce@unix.amherst.edu /  penis envy is here and it's now and it's
 \/ (BITnet: TWPIERCE@AMHERST) /  all around you." -- Neal C. Wickham
From: ddj+@cs.cmu.edu (Doug DeJulio)
Newsgroups: rec.games.int-fiction
Subject: Re: Infocom Game Information File
Date: 29 Sep 92 18:43:28 GMT
Organization: School of Computer Science, Carnegie Mellon

Yow.  We've got two ZIL3 interpreters (zmachine and the InfoTaskForce
thing), but we NEED a ZIL4 interpreter.  A Mind Forever Voyaging,
Trinity and Bureaucracy would be playable.

Has anyone played a ZIL5 or ZIL6 game with the datafiles from one
machine but the interpreter from another?  This would tell us if it's
worth even CONSIDERING an interpreter -- I'm worried because of the
intense graphics.  It'd be cool to play Zork Zero under Unix.
-- 
Doug DeJulio
ddj+@cmu.edu
From: ddj+@cs.cmu.edu (Doug DeJulio)
Newsgroups: rec.games.int-fiction
Subject: Re: Interactive Fiction and TinyGames
Date: 29 Sep 92 18:21:00 GMT
Distribution: rec.games.int-fiction
Organization: School of Computer Science, Carnegie Mellon

In article <1992Sep28.055255.15902@husc3.harvard.edu> goodridg@husc8.harvard.edu (Andrew Goodridge) writes:
>I'm not asking for an indepth discussion on MUSH or MUCK or MUSE programming
>code, but of the IDEAS and CONCEPTS one comes up with when one has the 
>ability to have several people play a game at once, and maybe some discussion
>of what sort of puzzles/adventures would be things to add to a game. I've
>made it a goal to design and build a reasonably difficult and challenging
>game on TinyTIM; but I'd like to be doing it with forethought.

The most fun I had with an Infocom game was Suspended, in which one
controlls multiple actors.  They had to work together to solve the
problems.  One might be monitoring the visual output at the control
center, while another might be mending a broken pipe somewhere.  You
could also give a robot orders, and it'd get back to you when it
finished its task (like "floyd, go to the reactor room").

Perhaps this same idea, where the players are cooperating but aren't
*DIRECTLY* affecting each other, would solve some of the problems of
having multiple players in an adventure.  Examples: one player is a
pilot, another is an air traffic controller.  One player is a
MechWarrior, another is a foot soldier, a third is a tactician back at
the home base, and a fourth is the sentient computer on board a spy
satalite.

For fewer-than-max player modes, some of these roles could be taken
over by NPCs.  The players could create situations for each other,
communicate with each other, but not hit each other in the head and
stuff like that.  You could even have some roles that were more
video-gamish and some that were more role-playing, so both sorts of
players could share in a game (a sentient spy satalite and a mech
gunman for example).  With an assign-task-and-wait-for-interrutps
character, you could also make roles for folks who want to dabble in a
game while doing something else.

This bears thinking about.
-- 
Doug DeJulio
ddj+@cmu.edu
Newsgroups: rec.games.int-fiction
From: xeno@iastate.edu (Gary L Snethen)
Subject: Re: The trend in adventure games
Organization: Iowa State University, Ames IA
Date: Thu, 1 Oct 1992 08:57:52 GMT

In <14626@chalmers.se> d8andjo@dtek.chalmers.se (Johan Andersson) writes:

>In article <12631@sail.LABS.TEK.COM> toma@sail.LABS.TEK.COM (Tom Almy) writes:

>> Why suffer and type when you can just push a button?

>Because a GUI gives you all your options up front. This is great in normal
>software but utterly boring in an IF game. Natural language at least gives
>you an illusion of an unlimited interface.

>/Johan

Perfect... bless you!

That is exactly what I've been trying to put my finger on...  The graphical
interfaces restrict you to 'act' on 'object' with 'object'...  The generic
verb is what I hate most...  There is an implied 'do something with this'
when you click on a character with an object...

If I want to throw a trumpet at a tiger, for example...  Instead, you may end
up playing it (but only if that is the 'right' thing to do...)  So the game
becomes a "Where's Waldo" adventure where you try to find all the objects
on your current graphic screen and click on them with each of the objects in
your inventory.  If you do this on every screen, you are almost guaranteed
to solve the adventure (unless timing is involved).

---Xeno

Newsgroups: rec.games.int-fiction
From: ocooper@malloco.ing.puc.cl (ocooper)
Subject: hgttg, how do i get the pot?
Organization: Pontificia Universidad Catolica de Chile
X-Newsreader: Tin 1.1 PL5
Date: Mon, 28 Sep 1992 17:53:19 GMT

i'm about to finish the game (i hope)
i have 350?400 points.. but i can't get the pot to solve hatch puzzle.
i've tried using the driver, but it only leads me to the bugblaster,
trillian,ford,zaphod,space fleet puzzles

(now sometimes i get into the vogon ship and in my own head, a nasty experience)
but i can't get to any place to get the pot...

is something i'm missing?

btw i opened marvin's door, and landed in magrathea...

there's another thing i have never solved: what's the thing your aunt gave
you don't know what it is for? (once in a dumbness luck i tried to open it
and found it was open..it can hold tons of stuff, and follow you (you can't get
rid of it))but, is it anything important in the game?

ocooper@malloco.ing.puc.cl
From: uerics@mcl.ucsb.edu (Eric D. Shepherd)
Newsgroups: rec.games.int-fiction
Subject: Re: Stumped on Enchanter....
Date: 28 Sep 92 23:48:55 GMT

You need to have the right spells memorized.  Basically, everything
he throws at you has a counter-spell which you need to use.  Just read
the descriptions carefully and you should be able to figure it out.

- Eric S.

--
Eric Shepherd  |  Internet: uerics@mcl.mcl.ucsb.edu  |  AOL: Sheppy
-------- ACM Member ----- Apple II Alliance Charter Member --------
Erroneous statements and inappropriate opinions stated herein are
caused by network glitches and are not attributable to the author.
From: brl@kopasker.is (Bjorgvin Runar Leifsson)
Newsgroups: rec.games.int-fiction
Subject: Purpose of this newsgroup?
Date: 3 Oct 92 14:39:07 GMT
Reply-To: brl@kopasker.is (Bjorgvin Runar Leifsson)
Organization: Kopasker Primary, Iceland

Hi, boys and girls adventuring around the world.

I just discovered this newsgroup and am very pleased with it.  However, I
find it very text adventure oriented, especially on Infocom.  Now I am a
text adventure and a Infocom fan but I also like to play frp games like
AD&D, M&M and so on.  Is this group not also for those kind of games?

Bjorgvin R. Leifsson
brl@kopasker.is
Newsgroups: rec.games.int-fiction
From: mechalas@gn.ecn.purdue.edu (John P. Mechalas)
Subject: Re: Leather Goddesses of Phobos II
Organization: Purdue University Engineering Computer Network
Date: Wed, 30 Sep 92 23:40:18 GMT

In article <5073@daily-planet.concordia.ca> david@donald.concordia.ca (David Gaudine) writes:
>This group just showed up on my news server today.  None of the 58 articles
>say much about Leather Goddesses of Phobos II.  It's a little pricey.
>Is it worth my hard-earned money?
>-- 

You must have just missed all the discussion.  :)  A lot of people commented
on LGOP II, and the OVERWHELMING consensus (or shouli I say UNANIMOUS) was
that it is reall bad, and you should not, under any circumstances, waste
your money.

-- 
John Mechalas                                          "I'm not an actor, but
mechalas@gn.ecn.purdue.edu                                 I play one on TV."
Aero Engineering, Purdue University                     #include disclaimer.h
Newsgroups: rec.games.int-fiction
From: cshadow@iastate.edu (Charles S Shorb)
Subject: Re: Asylum (was Re: Top 10 Adventures)
Organization: Iowa State University, Ames, IA
Date: Sat, 3 Oct 1992 03:16:41 GMT

I had almost forgotton about the ole' Asylum game!  That was indeed one of
the best adventure games I can remember.  My friend and I spent
many an hour trying to solve the damned thing!  As I recall, we never did
we dead-ended at the point where the car kept running us over, I remember
we had an old railroad lantern, the kind to signal a train to stop (I think)
but we could never get the thing lit?  Since I have extremely limited access
to the ole' trash-80 (I say this with the dearest of affection, remember
when 48k via the expansion interface was 'it'?), how DID you get past this
part?


                                                 The shadow
-----------------------------------------------------------------------------
'Concerns for man and his fate must always form the chief interest of all
   technical endeavors.  Never forget this in the midst of your diagrams
     and equations.'  ALBERT EINSTEIN
-----------------------------------------------------------------------------


Newsgroups: rec.games.int-fiction
From: fxmlk@acad3.alaska.edu (KIENENBERGER MIKE L)
Subject: LTOI Lurking Horror Userid
News-Software: VAX/VMS VNEWS 1.41.UAC
Organization: University of Alaska - Fairbanks
Date: Fri, 2 Oct 1992 10:29:00 GMT

 Am I just stupid, or did Activision forget to suppy the Login userid for
Lurking Horror?  It's the first thing you need (the password is supplied in
the docs), and the clues say that the userid is supplied in the docs as well.
Could someone either tell me what it is or tell me where it's at in the LTOI
manual?

As for you Unnkulian Unventure I folks asking about the guardian,
try "(a) an alternative light source somewhere."

=============================================================================
-Mike Kienenberger                       FXMLK@ALASKA           (BITNet)
 Academic Computing                      FXMLK@acad3.alaska.edu (Internet)
 University of Alaska-Fairbanks
 "I'm a computer programmer....<link><link><kludge><kludge> say-no-more!"
From: galley@think.com (Stu Galley)
Newsgroups: rec.games.int-fiction
Subject: Re: zzmgck
Date: 2 Oct 1992 22:09:04 GMT
Organization: Thinking Machines Corp., Cambridge, Mass., USA
NNTP-Posting-Host: django.think.com

In article <FRIEDMAN.92Sep30124241@nutrimat.gnu.ai.mit.edu> friedman@gnu.ai.mit.edu (Noah Friedman) writes:
>Does anyone have any idea what the word `zzmgck' is for?  I've noticed it
>from the vocabulary dump of several (but not all) infocom games.  I've
>never been able to figure out how to use it, assuming it serves any purpose
>at all.



ZZMGCK was used as a junk word at the end of the sorted dictionary,
because a bug in some ZIP interpreters prevented them from finding
that last word.                    -- Stu Galley <Galley@think.com>
Newsgroups: rec.games.int-fiction
From: David.White@bbs.oit.unc.edu (David White)
Subject: Re: Spellbreaker - the 12 cubes puzzle
Organization: Extended Bulletin Board Service
Date: Wed, 30 Sep 1992 17:22:59 GMT


Hmmm, not sure if my messages are getting out or not. I'll try again.  Was
anyone clever enough to solve the puzzle of the 12 cubes in the vault in
Spellbreaker?  If so, my hat's off to you; I STILL need the hint book to
solve it every time I play.  Unfortunately, the InvisiClues have faded
back into invisibility.  Could someone be so kind as to repost the
solution (giving the necessary statements like "if the first pile is
glowing more brightly than the second pile, move cubes x1, x3, x4 to the
other pile," etc.) or tell me where I can get the solution?  Thanks, All! 
(and hopefully this message will get out this time - still learning
Usenet.) 
 
=-=-= David =-=-=
--
   The opinions expressed are not necessarily those of the University of
     North Carolina at Chapel Hill, the Campus Office for Information
        Technology, or the Experimental Bulletin Board Service.
           internet:  bbs.oit.unc.edu or 152.2.22.80
Newsgroups: rec.games.int-fiction
From: ins750t@aurora.cc.monash.edu.au (Jim Giannakis)
Subject: Re: Guild of Theives
Organization: Monash University
X-Newsreader: TIN [version 1.1 PL6]
Date: Mon, 28 Sep 1992 02:23:41 GMT

: Yes, it is one of the oldies!  I can't agree with you about the
: text though -- I thought it had some of the best text descriptions
: ever!  I will never forget the Room of the Mists... And the puzzles
: were great too.  But the parser was pretty simple, and after enjoying
: the smart parsers in the later-Infocom games I wouldnt want to go
: back to two-word commands...
:

Well , Guild Of Thieves (and all Magnetic Scrolls Adventures) had quite an 
advanced parser. They were definetly NOT two word commands. I remember playing
the Pawn (all those years ago) and you could input complex commands. I recall
typing PLANT POT PLANT WITH PLANT POT! (here the word PLANT has been used
as a noun , verb and adjective!). You , also , could type many commands on 
the same input , ie OPEN THE SWAG BAG AND GET THE LAMP AND LIGHT IT AND GO
SOUTH. OK , so the later infocom game parsers were a joy, but some of the older
ones were very limited (compared to Rainbirds) and I got bogged down in trying
to execute an action. 

Guild Of Thieves , was probably , my all time favorite adventure game. The
text decriptions were BRILLIANT. You could just about EXAMINE anything in 
sight. It really blew me away. Some of those puzzles were unbelievable.




Jim
Newsgroups: rec.games.int-fiction
From: David.White@bbs.oit.unc.edu (David White)
Subject: Bureaucracy - computer
Organization: Extended Bulletin Board Service
Date: Thu, 1 Oct 1992 19:42:23 GMT



This question will give away where I was in the game (which is near the
end, so abort now or forever hold your peace!

 


How in the WORLD was I supposed to solve the puzzle of all those identical
rooms just before I entered the hacker's lair?  I noticed that each of the
different files on my unlabeled cartridge cleared a different "quadrant 
of my screen, and I eventually just divided my monitor into four segments
using Scotch tape then copied all the letters in file  (then read them
vertically)!!!  There's GOT to be a better way than that - what was it?

----- David ------
--
   The opinions expressed are not necessarily those of the University of
     North Carolina at Chapel Hill, the Campus Office for Information
        Technology, or the Experimental Bulletin Board Service.
           internet:  bbs.oit.unc.edu or 152.2.22.80
Newsgroups: rec.games.int-fiction
From: ddj+@cs.cmu.edu (Doug DeJulio)
Subject: Re: The trend in adventure games
Organization: School of Computer Science, Carnegie Mellon
Date: Tue, 29 Sep 1992 16:59:53 GMT

In article <Wcz-7m#@engin.umich.edu> positron@engin.umich.edu (Jonathan Scott Haas) writes:
>I'm starting this thread to talk about the type of game that seems
>to be the norm today. You know the type... big on graphics, big on
>disk space, short on puzzles, short on executable commands.

Fortunately, it's not ALL this way.  Have you heard of a company
called Legend?  They make true interactive fiction.  I have solved two
of their games (Spellcasting 101 and TimeQuest) and played a third
(Spellcasting 201), and from my experience I plan to buy everything
they put out.

The games are billed as graphical text adventures.  You get multiple
windows on screen.  One has a bunch of icons, one has a map or context
sensitive picture, and one has a series of descriptions and prompts
just like the old Infocoms.  There's also digitized sound.  The icons
and graphics can be fun, but they're not required to play the game!
Neither are the sounds.  In fact, you can from the command line start
up the games so that the "infocom" window takes up the whole screen,
giving a pure text adventure.  You can also hit a key to throw the
game into this mode, which I often did when the text descriptions were
big and I didn't want to scroll.

These games are also very long and involved compared to what normally
comes out these days.  I would say I had more fun playing "TimeQuest"
than I did playing many original Infocom games.  It's a difficult,
involved, historical game with a couple of puzzles so convoluted they
still dazzle me (and I'm still surprised I solved some of them).  S101
& S201 are more whimsical, in the nature of Leather Goddesses of
Phobos, but they're also wonderful.

The downside -- as far as I know, the games are only out for the PC at
the moment.  They'll run on an 8088 with a CGA card, playing digitized
sounds through the normal PC speaker, but you still need PC
compatibility to run them.  If many more of these games come out
though, it may be worth getting a cheapo XT clone to play 'em.
-- 
Doug DeJulio
ddj+@cmu.edu
Newsgroups: rec.games.int-fiction