What happened in 1984
by Harris Conger (2013)
Genres: Science Fiction

A short science fiction game that focuses on story. (The author intends for the finished version of the game to be three times as long.)

action: %
response: It's finished! Hayashi corporation has finally finished the first time machine, and you have been chosen to use it for the first time! You begin to wonder what you should use it for. You could prevent world war I, go forward into the future, or anything else. Then, like a bullet from a high calibur rifle, it hits you! You're going to prevent Activision from buying Infocom!
You fire up the time machine, set your destination, and step on it! The experience of driving a time machine reminds you of that old movie they call "Back to the Future."
Then, the time machine grinds to a hault.
It disappears, and a hollow voice says, When you're ready to return to the present, say plugh."

A Time Travelers Tale - Introcomp version by Harris Conger

This is the infamous Infocom shrine, a basement of sorts in MIT. Not much to see here, except for the famous Infocom Mural (Why it's painted in this time period, you don't know).

Marc Blank, one of the first 4 Imps is here.
action: Inventory
response: You are carrying nothing.

Marc whistles a toon.
action: Hello
response: There is no reply.

Marc twittles his thumbs and hums a toon.
action: You look at Mural
response: The mural consists of the Infocom logo and a passage of text below it. The passage reads: "Oh ye who go about saying unto each other: "Hello sailor": Dost thou know the magnitude of thy sin before the gods? Yea, verily, thou shalt be ground between two stones. Shall the angry gods cast thy body into the whirlpool? Surely, thy eye shall be put out with a sharp stick! Even unto the ends of the earth shalt thou wander and unto the land of the dead shalt thou be sent at last. Surely thou shalt repent of thy cunning."

Marc twittles his thumbs and hums a toon.
action: You ask the mark about the Cornerstone
response: "Yep. We were supposed to work on a database program called Cornerstone. The business for databases is booming, you know."

Marc twittles his thumbs and hums a toon.
action: You ask the mark about the meretzky
response: There is no reply.

Marc paces around the room nurvously.
action: You ask Marc about Marc
response: There is no reply.

Marc looks at you with a surprised look on his face.
action: You ask the mark about Infocom
response: There is no reply.

Marc whistles a toon.
action: You examine Marc
response: He's wearing 80's white clothes.

Marc whistles a toon.
action: You ask Marc about the zork
response: There is no reply.

Marc paces around the room nurvously.
action: Up
response: This is one of many stairwells in MIT. This one leads up to a room with a bunch of workstations.
action: Up
response: This is the room where the Unix workstations usually go. Oddly enough, not a single workstation remains.

A scruffy-looking Hacker is here, looking rather befuzzled.
action: You ask the hacker about the unix
response: Unix? It's an ok OS. It's just not... Free. I mean free speech, not free beer. I plan to make a replacement for it, and I'll call it... GNU. GNU's not UNIX.
action: You examine the hacker
response: Your typical hacker: sleep deprived, fidgety, and all that. In fact, you're pretty sure you've seen him somewhere before.
action: You go to the south
response: This room is used for storing an array of things.

The room is dominated by junk: Old tapes and punchcards, programming manuals, broken terminals, cables and the like.
action: You search the junk
response: You rummage around in the junk, eventually coming up with  a dusty book.
action: Examine book
response: [Please read the Dusty-Book.txt file which should've came with the game to find out what is in the book.]
action: You get all
response: junk: Taken.
action: You drop the junk
response: Dropped.
action: Go downwards
response: This is the infamous Infocom shrine, a basement of sorts in MIT. Not much to see here, except for the famous Infocom Mural (Why it's painted in this time period, you don't know).

Marc Blank, one of the first 4 Imps is here.

Marc paces around the room nurvously.
action: You show the book to mark
response: Marc is unimpressed.

Marc twittles his thumbs and hums a toon.
action: You give the book to the mark
response: Marc doesn't seem interested.

Marc looks at you with a surprised look on his face.
action: Sing
response: Your singing is abominable.

Marc twittles his thumbs and hums a toon.
action: Up
response: Marc has better things to do.

Marc whistles a toon.
action: You tell the mark about the cornerstone
response: This provokes no reaction.

Marc paces around the room nurvously.
action: Plugh
response: The time machine reappears, and you drive away from the past and towards the present. When the time machine disappears again, you find yourself in...

This is the Labratory for the Hayashi corporation, where they moniter the TRS.

Shishi Hayashi, the head of all lab affairs, is here.
action: You show the book to Shishi
response: Shishi is unimpressed.
action: You check your inventory
response: You are carrying:
a dusty book
action: You take the book
response: Taken.
action: You think
response: What a good idea.
action: You ask Shishi about the outcome
response: "Look kid, I hate to tell yuh, but by preventing Cornerstone, you have destroyed the computer all together! It started in 1985. Infocom released Milliways. At this time, Microsoft was supposed to release Windows 1.0, but they didn't! Eventually, people got sick of MS DOS, Apple DOS, Linux and UNIX. And that scruffy hacker? That was richard Stallman! He ended up creating everything he needed, and Linus Torvalds supplied the Linux colonel. However, People were too sick of computers to care! Now, this is critical. You have to return to the past, convince Infocom to create cornerstone, and convince Richard Stallman to go forward with GNU, or else we'll be living in a low-tech world! To go back to the past, say Plover."
action: Plover
response: The time machine appears, you jump in, and  speed off towards 1984! Two minutes later, the time machine stops, but you discover you have been sent to 1985, and worse yet, The time machine has short circuited!