191–200 of 241 posts
No license anywhere. These games are still valuable IP aren't they?
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The original King's Quest had a puzzle which required writing down the alphabet forwards and backwards to encode Rumplestitskin as the secret word needed to get the magic beans. (You could "win" the game without the beans but you'd miss out on a really cool portion of the game and your score was far from the max.) The in-game puzzle hint was far from helpful. I played the game for a year before getting a hint book. R…
Kings Quest V had TONS of instances where if you didn't react to a situation immediately, you'd lose an item that would be required later and you wouldn't realize it until you got stuck. (Throwing the fish at the bear or that shiny thing in the nest before the bird picks you up). KQ6 and 7 were setup so it was impossible to get stuck, but 5 was not. KQ3 had that annoying path you had to transverse and time limits unt…
- Going into the catacombs on Isle of sacred mountain (specifically the hole in the wall is what killed 10 year old me) - going to the land of the dead (funny enough with coins that you need to get from the catacombs) - going into the castle (short or long ending) - telling the druids you're selling these fine leather jackets
Hitchhikers Guide was one of the first PC games I ever got. I had no idea it was a “text adventure.” Nor did I understand it was based on a book. My dad got it for me used from The Computer Club in downtown Lake Oswego, Oregon. I picked it out largely due to the green guy on the front of the box. I remember being delighted by all the weird stuff it came with, including a small packet of fuzz, and other artifacts from…
These were called "Feelies", and they were there as an awesome form of copy protection. They provided hints that were necessary to win the game. Often the hints were subtle (what exactly was that fuzz for?) and were puzzles in themselves. Sometimes they were completely obvious (a paper map revealing the room with a secret door, a translation guide). You'd usually realize when you needed them.
This was an awesome and creative way to copy-protect the games. Many people who pirated them found the games impossible to complete, and it was often because they didn't have the feelies to provide critical clues. Even with them, most of the games were very hard.
Infocom games are timeless. The writing is better than anything today. They're creative and challenging. How many companies today would release a game that most of the purchasers would be unable to complete?
So, are these playable online over gh-pages? It would be so cool if the gh-pages contained an interpreter that loaded the source from github.
The compiler for these source files has been lost. You can play the zip files that were released commercially with Parchment, but because the copyright on those has not expired you wont be able to do so legally on the public internet I believe.
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not likely to be taken down as the CEO tweeted about it: https://twitter.com/natfriedman/status/1118057606159798274
I love how a tongue-in-cheek reply about the lack of syntax highlighting for ZIL files drew the attention of someone who actually implemented syntax highlighting for it. https://twitter.com/taradinoc/status/1118181848494985216
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+1 - Another great example of difficult games as parody is I Wanna Be The Guy ( https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/I_Wanna_Be_the_Guy ). Take all the existing conventions and stereotypes of difficult platform games and exaggerate them to the extreme.
IWBTG is another great example, definitely. And almost the exact same type of classic-NES parody, where Mario:Syobon::Metroid:IWBTG. Thinking about it a little more, this pattern seems to describe an entire class of games, including non-parodies. Dark Souls is famously hard because of sheer mechanical difficulty, certainly. But it's also rife with learnable, low-threat moments like "when you walk up this staircase, a…
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-- https://github.com/historicalsource/zork1/blob/master/gverbs... The SPRAYED? global wasn't used in Zork I, but showed up in Zork II as the Frobozz Magic Grue Repellent.
Just another reminder that the Zork trilogy started as a single PDP game, I guess :) It's remarkable how they were able to cut it up almost without breaking a sweat.
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Note that this is probably based on the the sequel[1] to H2G2 given that H2G2 was completed as game. [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Restaurant_at_the_End_of_t...
You can find a somewhat playable early "prototype" linked from here: https://waxy.org/2008/04/milliways_infocoms_unreleased_seque...
Also... am I the only one who finds it amusing that essentially 'Bureaucracy' led to the demise of the Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy sequel? Makes me wonder if Douglas Adams specifically avoided working on the sequel just so that could be the case...
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I think the best of the Sierra games was the original Kings Quest, as all the puzzles were based on various fairy tales. Also, some display glitches helped such as items that you could move would be drawn on the screen last. The worst section of a Sierra game was in Leisure Suit Larry, where the official way of getting money is to save the game state every time you win at the casino. If you lose a round, then restore…
Jade Empire had a gambling minigame you could save-scum like that. Except if you won 20 times in a row, the NPC that ran the game would explode on you: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=26DsrylKKl8