Kids today will never know the difficulty of 80s text adventure games where you had to figure out exactly what stupid combination of words was in the programmer’s head, and then dying miserably for something you couldn’t possibly have had any warning for.
You are in an empty room. You see a door.
OPEN DOOR
You can’t open the door. Try using the doorknob?
USE DOORKNOB
I don’t see a doorknob here.
USE HANDLE
I don’t see a handle here.
USE KNOB
You can’t use the doorknob.
TURN KNOB
You can’t turn the doorknob.
TWIST KNOB
I don’t know how to twist the doorknob.
OPEN DOOR WITH DOORKNOB
I don’t see a doorknob here.
OPEN THE DOOR YOU FUCKFACE
Would your mother appreciate that language?
USE KNOB ON DOOR
The doorknob is locked.
INVENTORY
You have: a key.
UNLOCK KNOB WITH KEY
I don’t know how to unlock the knob.
PUT KEY IN KNOB
You can’t put the key on the knob.
I SAID IN KNOB YOU TWATWAFFLE
What?
INSERT KEY IN KNOB
The key doesn’t fit in the doorknob. You see a window beside the door.
WHY DIDN’T YOU SAY THAT EARLIER
What?
OPEN WINDOW
The window slides open easily. A buzzard flies through the window and hits you in the head, killing you instantly.
Restart, Restore, Quit?
omg i think i played this game once.
ZORK
Adventure was the first I think. “You are in a maze of twisty little passages all alike.” I was playing it in college back around 1975 or 1976. You didn’t buy it, nobody had personal computers in those days. But in colleges or big IT companies, if you knew someone who knew someone who could hook you up, you could get access to the secret corners of the system where a copy was that you could play. You can still play it on-line. Zork was a few years later, around 1979 or 1980, when people started to have their own computers, and it was Infocom’s first game, I think. It also can still be played on-line.
playing zork without a manual or reference is the ultimate test of human endurance
