Retrospective - Infocommercial 15/12/97

Ah yes. Who could forget the archetypical image of a computer gamer in mid-80s films. Hunched over a green text only display, typing in commands rapidly. Obviously, he was trying to take over the world using only a phone line and a dodgy speech synthesizer.

Obviously.

But consider. This was the early-to-mid 80s. Large, evil telephone companies still had a monopoly and phone bills were truly bigger than many of our houses today. Were they really trying to start a nuclear war? I doubt it. They'd have needed Fort Knox to be next door with a handy tunnel leading into it and oddly lacking security systems. And no guards. Unless they were in America of course, with their free local phone calls. But for the sake of argument, assume that they were not.

So, what were they doing? I shall tell you. They were playing text adventures. Games such as Zork, The Pawn, or perhaps even Bored of the Rings. (But only if they had a Spectrum, of course.) They would read the flickering writing, and then input a sequence of commands. They would then curse loudly after plummeting down a hidden pit marked by some obscure clue that you didn't understand even after reading the hint books.

Such games had atmosphere by the bucket load. (An inevitable consequence of putting buckets within a planet's atmosphere and not filling them with something else.) They had tense situations. ("There is a hoard of rampaging monsters right behind you! What will you do now?") They had original plots. ("Only you, with the aid of the magical sword Ploughshare, can outwit the evil Humptydumpty and his hoard of rampaging monsters. Will you be brave enough to follow in the footsteps of such legendary heroes such as Bosco, Jennings and some girl?") The even had jokes. ("You pull the lever marked "Win Game". The cave collapses. You die. Ha! Ha! Ha!")

True, so most of them were awful. For hours you would be stuck at a stupidly obvious puzzle, just because you didn't know the right verb. So, in the old tradition of mercilessly transplanting ideas from games into totally different genres, let us now look at the hit new film - Adventure Quest for Magic III - Quazgor the Dragon Returns to Revenge Himself Upon Flimbo Bigaxe and Dwarfwiv Beard!

Scene 27: A dragon has just escaped with the princess.

Flimbo: Oh no! The princess! Quick Dwarfwiv, give me your axe!
Dwarfwiv: I do not know the word axe
(Flimbo stares at the axe Dwarfwiv holds conspicuously in his right hand. He suddenly remembers that this is an American film.)
Flimbo: Dwarfwiv, give me your axe!
(Dwarfwiv hands Flimbo his axe)
Flimbo: Now to put my cunning plan into action!
(Flimbo tries to pull off a glove. He finds that to do so he must first drop everything he is holding rather than, for example, tuck it under his shoulder.)
Flimbo: Damn!
(Flimbo tries again. This time he realises that he has to take off his watch first.)
Flimbo: Damn!
(Once more, Flimbo tries to remove the glove. He is suddenly hit by indecision - the right glove or the left one?)
Flimbo: Damn!
(Flimbo pulls off the glove.)
Flimbo: Finally!
(Flimbo picks up the rope that he has just dropped. he attempts to tie it around his now bare wrist. But which end?)
Flimbo: Damn!
(Finally, Flimbo succeeds in attaching the rope to his wrist. He grabs the axe from the floor and tries to tie the rope to it, only to become confused due to the rope already being tied to him.)
Flimbo: Damn!
(After great effort, Flimbo now holds an axe attached to him by a length of rope. With a mighty swing, he throws it towards the escaping dragon. Except that, for some reason, he drops it instead.)
Flimbo: Damn!
(Retrieving the axe, Flimbo instead decides to try killing the dragon with it, only to suddenly discover that violence isn't the answer.)
Flimbo: Damn!
(Picking the axe up again, Flimbo is disconcerted to find that the dragon has vanished. He goes to kick a rock, then remembers that violence isn't the answer.)
Flimbo: Damn!
(Flimbo tries to kiss Dwarfwiv. Dwarfwiv promptly kills Flimbo with the axe that is still firmly attached to Flimbo's wrist yet has magically appeared in Dwarfwiv's hand.)
Flimbo: Damn!

Not a stunningly good example of a playable game. The worst example in existence, however, is Dan Barrett's Detective. Featuring no plot! Guest appearance by ultra-linear gameplay! Also starring rooms-o'- instant-death, one-way doors and wooden wood!

But despite this, there are many good ones. Witness, for example, sets you as a detective who has just witnessed an apparently obvious murder. Or was it? Or WAS it? OR was it? Or was IT? OR was IT? OR WAS it? Or WAS IT? OR WAS IT? (That's enough indecision - Ed.) You must earn the trust of the oriental butler, resist the wiles of the dead man's daughter and solve the crime before 8 AM. It features characters who behave in the way that you would expect them to. There are twists to the plot as you confront suspects with evidence. Somehow you must combine all the clues you find into a single unified mass-o'-uncontestable-evidence. Against the clock.

Witness, and many of the other good games of the genre, was written by Infocom. After being subsumed by the sinister Activision, Infocom vanished. Yet, amazingly, they live on. Almost every game Infocom ever released can be found on a single CD, priced at a very reasonable $17. From America. And not only that. New games are being written, at this very instant! Yes, you can download megabytes of poorly written pretentious twaddle from ftp.gmd.de/if-archive , along with the odd morsel of genuine originality and good taste. You can even download programs that allow you to write your own. Or, if you want to, you can join in on arguments over whether style is better than content, or if it matters that a game has sentences 15 lines long. Go on. Enjoy yourselves. Load up your Spectrum and Amiga emulators and play those old games, or even run them under Windows 95. Should you want to. But try them. Please. Matthew Garrett