Colossal Cave Adventure - The Granddaddy of Text Adventures! | Friday Night Arcade

XYZZY. Dwarves. Dragons. It's all here and it's awesome. Reliving the glory days of text adventures on my old Tandy computer.
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[@FridayNightArcade]

MORE COLOSSAL CAVE ► rickadams.org/adventure/ ► mattiasgustavsson.itch.io/dosbox-crt ► www.worldvideogamehalloffame.org/games/colossal-cave-adventure ► developers.redhat.com/articles/build-run-colossal-cave-adventure-game/ ► www.mobygames.com/game-group/adventure-versions ► advent.jenandcal.familyds.org/

[@jeenkzk5919]

Sometimes the best graphics and sound are a child’s imagination. Sure it seems dull by today’s standards until you get into it.

[@FridayNightArcade]

Amen!

[@redzgaming6880]

That's why I liked the "Choose Your Own Scare" Goosebumps books.

[@isabellam1936]

It’s so cool you can make up the world in your head that’s just what your imagination can create out of the scene like a book.

[@isabellam1936]

@@redzgaming6880 I remember those! So many beautiful memories.

[@retiredump7038]

Spent many an hour playing in the various computer labs at NCSU in the late 70's and early 80's. I had a printout of a complete 350 point game. I even wrote a rudimentary adventure game for my TI-59 Programmable Calculator.

[@LIVEONTAPES]

That’s hardcore

[@timothyernst8812]

I loved typing bad words into text adventures Eat me "Self cannibalism is not the answer!" F---- off "Language in such a high class establishment as this!" Also, a person who explores caves is called a "spelunker"

[@FridayNightArcade]

It's awesome because it means they had to anticipate the bad words someone might type in lol. Good stuff.

[@spidermcgavenport8767]

Lone Wolf series was my choose your own adventure books. This is very nostalgic thank you, sir.

[@mikeycourington2011]

Lone Wolf and Grey Star...they got me through several preteen and early teen years living in the country. I even had the Magnamund Companion and can still speak a little Giak! Dok ek ziran! Played them again on the Project Aon app...it might be worth a look for you.

[@rayh7105]

Lone wolf!!! Holy crap I miss that. Single player d&d in a book.

[@toasteee252]

Yes. They are online right now in project aon...so you get to read books that didn't come out in the state's. I still have mine. Sadly I think Joe dever passed away. But Steve Jackson and ian livingston I believe are still alive and they tried to prerelease some of their books (not as good as the original fighting fantasy books) You can go on Steam and a company is releasing the fighting fantasies as computer games. You can roll your dice on the computer..has music and sound and graphics but you still read and turn the pages like you are reading the book.

[@dorpth]

Ha ha, I remember my dad getting me a Grey Star book in 1988 when I was 8 years old. Little did they know the content within! My mom started flipping through the pages and found the part where a royal court of cannibals was feasting on a plate of severed limbs. Of course, she flipped out, some yelling was had, and she threw the book into the trash (which I then rescued the next night and kept hidden). I recommend checking out the "Adventure" game series by Kosmos. The Dungeon, Monochrome Inc, and The Abaddon Hotel are like board game recreations of Lone Wolf books. You can play them with a group, a narrator describes each section to you, and you do some light puzzle solving wondering around using items. Real good time.

[@garyaldridge5574]

It's pretty tough to explain the appeal of a text based adventure game to someone who never played one and has always had access to far more advanced games. But for those of us who were lucky enough to work our way through such games, we got to enjoy a kind of gaming satisfaction that probably doesn't exist anymore. Which isn't a bad thing, just different. I admit, when you looped in your fondness for Choose Your Own Adventure books, I began to be concerned we may have shared the same childhood brain for a time. Be afraid!

[@FridayNightArcade]

Ha! Sounds like you had a pretty good childhood then. Your description is 100% accurate though - it's just a different way of playing games and problem solving that doesn't really exist in games now. Which Choose Your Own Adventure books were you into?

[@garyaldridge5574]

@@FridayNightArcade oh man, the Bantam Books ones, but choosing a favorite? Cave of Time? Forbidden Castle? Knights of the Round Table? Tough call. But yes, my childhood was a pretty sweet gig. Maybe not Friday nights with Dad, frozen pizza and Atari, but few of us fly so close to the sun :-)

[@marcingardyjan6680]

But how do you know what to write? I would stuck on the first text when he type "enter building" - I would type "OK" and the game would answer "I don't understand that" and It will be end of my game :). How do I know that I should type "enter building"? Is there any command list or something?

[@supermalavox]

I like text adventure games and MUDs because they are blind-friendly, since screen readers, well, read text that is written on the screen. So they end up being a mixture of audiobooks and games! Now there are some games like these even for virtual assistants! Anyway, great video about Colossal Cave Adventure!

[@kccountrykid]

When this game first came out, I spent many of my college hours in the computer lab playing this game on an Apple IIe. We had mapped out the entire cave, and eventually came within one point of a perfect score. Any game that involves your imagination is always a level above others.

[@DrRockso79]

I wish these types of games would make a comeback.

[@classicmikecade]

Woah very risky doing a review of a text adventure but damn you make it work Aaron. Thank you so much for the hard work here. Never heard of it. No one in my family liked computers or gaming so I never knew 75% of games until later in life. The choose your own adventures were awesome! Thanks man and have a great weekend good sir!

[@FridayNightArcade]

Thanks, Mike!

[@fisheyeguy]

Being born and raised in Ky, I spend a lot of time hiking and camping in Mammoth Cave National Park. I’ve even got a Mammoth Cave tour video on my KZbin channel.

[@sonofradium4835]

Nice Shadowgate music!

[@CBaskins420]

I used to love exploring computer operating systems because I found stuff like this all of the time. Now I am an operating system horror LOL.

[@ClassicChristianVinyl]

nice summary, thanks. I worked in R&D for a company in 1981 with this game on their DEC PDP-10 mainframe computer. I took home a teletype machine with thermal paper. We played hundreds of hours and I still have my hand drawn maps (and all revisions). I never got out of the repository. I spoke to a co-worker in 1984. He did the cave in 6 months, then was stuck for 2 years in the repository. He got an idea watching a western movie; Rusty Star is a type of dynamite. You could not save your progress; you got 3 lives, then had to start over from the beginning. Once in the repository, there was no way back to the cave, and if you died once you had to start over. I think you could only carry 4 items and use 1 or 2 word commands.

[@grahams1939]

My dad played zork 1 and 2 growing up, and when I was younger he introduced me to text adventures. Now we’re replaying Zork 2 and having a bunch of fun mapping out the caves, solving the riddles and finding treasure!

[@alanbenson3104]

Good stuff! I played these text games on the Vic 20, the Commodore 64, etc. I recall playing The Hitchhikers Guide to the Galaxy text game, too. Great games from a simpler time.

[@mikeycourington2011]

I had The Count and Voodoo Castle on cartridge for my Vic-20...never did complete them, though. But those two games will always have a special place in my heart. Which ones did you have?

[@dorpth]

There was nothing simple about trying to solve The Hitchhiker's Guide text game :(

[@2112dorf]

I played almost all of the Infocom adventures growing up. I’m 48 now, and still play them on my old XP machine, and an old iphone (no update yet to make them work on modern phones). I used to teach High School English, and some of the kids really enjoyed playing the adventures and making their own maps. Check out the documentary film “Get Lamp” on KZbin to get some more information regarding these lost gems. Also, Zork 1 can be played on a modern phone in an app called Frotz. As far as choose your own adventure books go, try Fighting Fantasy books. They are great fun!

[@BananaTV1978]

We have a ZIL group on Facebook and it has some of the original MIT and Infocom people in the group!

[@pauljackson3491]

I think there is some website that lets you play at least Zork 1.

[@MotherKojiro]

I once found a Lord of the Rings text adventure for my old Apple II CE, and I got super excited, just having watched that cheesy Hobbit animated movie with the inexplicably blue elves. Madly drunk on the thought of exploring a world of high fantasy, I booted it up, and... it didn't work. It was weird; instead of just waiting for me to enter a command, it kept throwing line after line at me: Sam waits. Frodo waits. Merry waits. Pippin waits. Sam wa- CAN I HAVE A TURN!? I've never seen a text adventure do that before.

[@fracturedkoi1]

“West of House. You are standing in an open field west of a white house, with a boarded front door. There is a small mailbox here.”

[@GreyFromSpace]

"Kick the Bucket"

[@toasteee252]

We th out for grues! The final zork game which was not text was just as fun and funny. Magic is forbidden!! I think Tim curry was in it.

[@raziyatheseeker]

Shadowgate music was a good choice. I've always wanted to make a text-only RPG, though text adventures by themselves are good fun! For a kid in the 80s, even with graphical games existing, a big text adventure like this would feel like a huge world with infinite possibilities.

[@train.sleep.eat.repeat5278]

Just subbed! Brilliant childhood memories

[@ericmnemonicable]

Dunno about this game, but I never thought I'd be made nostalgic for my MUD days...

[@mikeycourington2011]

I used to run a small BBS that had some door games, among them dndmud...it was simple compared to a real MUD, but man was it fun. Our BBS had two lines too, so you could actually get two players at a time on it. With a telnet client like PuTTY, you can still access several MUDs around the internet. A Google or DuckDuckGo search did me a lot of good in this. :)

[@isabellam1936]

This is so fascinating! I was born in 1984 and thought the first video games were Pong and things like that. This game looks so cool like you are inside of a book but able to control things. I love how when you read a sentence you can see where you are in your mind.

[@JohnHoldwayartist]

I played it in the late 70s on an Apple II. I loved that game.

[@davidgpeterson]

Literally spent hours on this, mapping it with my brother. We got most, but not all of the way through it.

[@Sinn0100]

This right here is why I enjoy your channel so much. How many other gaming channels talk about text adventures? Further, your channel is real you talk about growing up with these games and how you experienced them. These are just two of the reasons I really took a shine to your channel. Further, you don't mince words...if a game has issues you tell us without talking in circles for 30 minutes before saying...the game isn't good. Further, hearing your stories about being a kid and rental stores really takes me back. Just like you, going to the rental store was like some sweet adventure and you always found something cool to rent (well most times). I too have also been known to rent games over and over without realizing that I rented it before. I can't tell you how many times I stupidly rented Bayou Billy thinking...."I never played this before!" Get omit home, turn on my Nes only to be greated by the title screen....noooooooo! I hated that game so much when I was a kid. It had beat em' stages, driving stages, and shooting stages. Unfortunately, you had to be good enough to pass the first level in order to experience that. Addendum- I've been binge watching your show today. This post is kind of a catch all for the last 4 or 5 episodes I watched. What else am I going to do....we're working but everything is at a standstill so I got paid to watch your channel all day from my home. ;)

[@necron99.aka-sammyboy92]

Cool stuff. I’ll have to fire up the Pi and see what’s out there in “text adventure “ land?!

[@jondeere5638]

This game was played on Digital Equipment Corporation Systems (DEC), before there was even a PC and cute graphics. That would make it peoples first experience with game play on computers. If you were lucky enough to have access to a DEC RT11 system (GT40) with graphics (early 1970s) you could try to land a space shuttle on the moon. That's black and white 'stick' graphics which were state of the art at the time.

[@robertsaurer6431]

I loved the Choose your own Adventure book series! I must have had over 100 of them as a kid! Every time a new book came out I’d grab it from the local bookstore! They came to mind before you mentioned them in the video!

[@FridayNightArcade]

:)

[@dfortaeGameReviews]

Thanks for the review/info sir! I really enjoyed it!

[@makotroid108]

Shoutout to colossal cave, without which, we'd have had no telnet MUDs. I slept 5 hours total one week in the 90s because of MUDs.

[@ChibiKami]

played Colossal Cave Adventure on my dad's 486 in the 90s. Didn't get very far years later, my brother played an online version with a leaderboard and got the objective high score (all points, least moves possible) thanks to thorough documentation of the cave's features also loved the Zork games

[@ME-kr7sm]

Great video, love those games. Especially shadowgate!!

[@Duke_Togo_G13]

Zork was my jam back in the day.

[@zachmcclintock7431]

Good stuff there......never heard of this one but looks like I could really get into it, good job FNA!!

[@FridayNightArcade]

Thanks, Zach!

[@zachmcclintock7431]

Your welcome, always enjoy your episodes

[@jasonpaulelder]

I can very much relate to you having an original Atari console (I had the Tele-Games version), and broadening the enjoyment when finding out about the text adventures through an early home computer (for me, it was with the Ti-99 4/A - which I actually programed a couple of little games through myself, and soon thereafter, with the Atari 800xl. I played Moonmist, too, along many other incredible Infocom games, as well as the fantastic graphic adventure, Transylvania). Also, it was especially exciting for me, in relation to your experience, because I had many of the Choose Your Own Adventure series along with Dungeons & Dragons Endless Quest books. Those were wonderful Christmas and birthday presents for that time which I've since preserved in storage. It was a great time to be a child and have all of these (dare I say, "intellectual") games to work with through the imagination, and I'm grateful to have the memories which you brought forth in sentiment. Great work on this presentation, as always!

[@ryanyoder7573]

My brother and I would ride our bikes to the library and schedule an hour on the Apple IIE to play Zork. We never got very far but it was so cool. I graduated to Space Quest 2 and was hooked on Sierra games with my Tandy 1000 HX. I still have a HX and TL today.

[@neuromancer9k]

I can't recall if I ever played this one or not, but I probably played something similar prior to the Zork Games. I think games like Telengard were more my thing at the time. Great video. Cheers, Aaron!

[@dorpth]

Have you tried Stories Untold? It's a 2017 text adventure release that doesn't try to emulate a text adventure so much as it emulates the *experience* of one. It has you sit down at a desk full of late 70s/early 80s electronics and decor. You play the game off a tape drive, off of a TV monitor hooked up to your RF modulator. You're playing it at night, and spooky things start happening because that's how these games felt to a kid back then: spooky and alive. I'd recommend at least watching a video on it. Really takes you back to that time.

[@FridayNightArcade]

This sounds awesome - will have to check it out.. Thanks for the tip!

[@BilalHeuser1]

I remember playing on my Tandy Model I computer, except I had to load it from cassette tape and that took about 10 minutes to load. Radio Shack sold the game under name of 'Pyramid 2000'. There was also the Scott Adams adventure games sold by Adventure International.

[@sirkeithvincent3574]

Organ Trail is what I remembered back in my school days.

[@FridayNightArcade]

That's some high quality edu-tainment right there.

[@Dorelaxen]

We used to play this on the Apple IIe systems in my school's computer lab. Our teacher was cool as hell, and every week we took some time to play games like this, as she figured that things that made you use your brain disguised as a game were good for us. Stuff like this, the MacVenture games, and Infocom games were huge influences on me as a kid, and shaped my love of adventure games.

[@FridayNightArcade]

That's fantastic. Thanks for sharing - it sounds like we had a similar route. Yeah, I feel like stuff like this, Infocom and Macventure games only helps accelerate problem solving skills 100%. I don't know about you but that problem solving mindset has totally spilled over into my work and life over the years.

[@fensoxx]

My first game was similiar. I believe it was called Spellbreaker, a text adventure, and we had it as a kid for my Amiga 500. I remember it being tough as nails but the box came with cool cloth maps and solid cast metal trinkets. I am going to have to find it again. Thanks!

[@fensoxx]

.....Well I went down that rabbit hole of my past thanks to your video and wiki tells me Spellbreaker was Infocom and the 3rd game in a series. Also told me it was "a toughie" per the developer. Now I know why I didn't make it very far..evil parents getting me a game in the middle of the series like that...

[@FridayNightArcade]

That's awesome - I'll have to look for that one - can't say as I played it.

[@ronmadsen1321]

It was a trilogy: Enchanter, Sorcerer, Spellbreaker. They are my personal favorites of all text adventures

[@4Legacy]

I had one choose your own adventure book from when I was a kid. I ended up lending it to my friend's son, and never got it back. I'm glad it got passed on for a new generation to love, but now I want to search out another copy for myself and my kids lol. I think it was called The Forbidden Tower

[@GraemeCree]

The new 3D version of Colossal Cave has censored the name of the Oriental Room, changing it to "Orient Room". Even though the dictionary said that usage was perfectly appropriate, they changed it anyway, just in case someone mistakenly thought it wasn't. Developer Roberta Williams was against the change but was overruled.

[@delboy3k1]

I played loads of text adventures in the 80s mostly scott Adam's and infocom and even bought a text adventure creator called the quill. Happy days.

[@CAPHOTO1961]

Great review. I was in college when I found this game on a Sperry Univac 1100 mainframe. I played via a decwriter terminal and wasted reems of paper doing so. I eventually got a Ti 99 4a and bought Scott Adams text games for it like Voodoo Castle, Pirate Adventure, the Count, and Pyramid of Doom. The load times were over 25 minutes if everything went well. Kids nowadays have no idea. They definitely had a sense of humor, during Voodoo Castle there was a witch's pot over a fire and if you typed smoke pot, the game would reply: That's Illegal! :D Steam now has a 3d version and it's pretty faithful to the game I played. The one I played had 351 points, and the elusive 1 point was you needed to return the caving magazine addressed to Witt to Witt's End. LOL

[@theusher2893]

Damn those twisty little passages. Looks like we discovered the Cave at around the same age. I never was any good at it, I never got very far, but it fascinated me endlessly ans was one of the few games on our Atari computer that I loved. The other was a game called Ninja Mission that was a great action adventure game.

[@Coyotek4]

If you've never read the 'Fighting Fantasy' series of choose-your-own-adventure books (these required dice and you had the traits 'Skill', 'Stamina', and 'Luck'), do yourself a favor and find a way to get a hold of them; they're incredible (and incredibly difficult if you haven't read through them a dozen times). Of particular note: the 'Sorcery' books that also involved memorizing and casting spells. That one was a 4-part epic adventure.

[@FridayNightArcade]

Whoa... that sounds really cool. Never heard of those! Will have to look into that - might make for an interesting video at some point too... thanks for sharing.

[@noahschwadron3596]

I first heard of this game from the book "Soul of a New Machine" and I wanted to see more. Great video!

[@hlygrail]

Tracy Kidder - one of the best books of all time - a totally captivating look at the frontier days of computer development

[@wiredtvcraze]

I remember playing this game (ADVENT) years ago during the 80s on a DEC PFP 11/44 minicomputer in college. I also played Super Star Trek (SST) as well.

[@kevinfukthezetamale4298]

The grandfather of open world games.

[@7thangelad586]

Oh my! I’ve been waiting for a video about text adventure games! A large part of the fun was finding out which verbs were actually legitimate commands. I was seven or eight when I played similar games on an IBM-PC. There’s a certain magnetism in these even now! Two of them that I enjoyed were on an IBM. I think one title was Mission to Mars, and I recall it being unique in that the text was green! I always felt unsettled playing it because the descriptions were so realistic: made it feel like something was following me or just ONE STEP ahead.....*shiver* The other one was a Wild West adventure, and your character was searching for buried gold. The two pieces I remember are being “in a box canyon” and-when you dug for treasure and found nothing-you would get the message “Dagnabit! There’s nothing here!” 😆 Do either of those seem familiar?? Thanks for sharing the memories! Hope you’re safe during this coronavirus!

[@FridayNightArcade]

Someone else mentioned Mission to Mars and I think I've heard of that one ... the wild west adventure sounds interesting but I hadn't heard of it. You're right though - sometimes just figuring out the right verb or noun was half the challenge and it was cool when you got it right. That's awesome - thanks for sharing. We're doing all right here - hope you're staying safe as well.

[@JanPeterson]

I did play Adventure back in the early 1980s on a Honeywell CP6 mainframe computer. Yeah, I wasted my precious terminal time exploring Colossal Cave. I found that if you went to the terminal room at three in the morning, you could usually get a terminal for a few hours. No wonder so many of us CS students turned out to be creatures of the night. If you use a Mac, you can install the 1995 430-point version by running "brew install open-adventure". On debian-based Linux, "apt install colossal-cave-adventure" will install the original 350-point version, ported from the original source code (or so they say). I have no idea where to find a Windows version of the game, though, but I'm sure it's out there somewhere.

[@billschlafly4107]

When I was a cub scout we went to Monsanto's HQ for some reason. I'm guessing one of the dad's worked there. All I remember from the day was playing Adventure on the computer. I was fascinated by it. While I was in college I programmed a similar game in my TI-85. I was constantly adding to it to balance the game and make it more interesting.

[@FridayNightArcade]

That sounds like the best field trip ever.

[@rayh7105]

My first was a text adventure called Oubliette. You got to create your own character and send him into the maze to do battle. I always lost on the first battle.

[@FridayNightArcade]

Whoa, never heard of that one. Will have to check it out - thanks for sharing!

[@fastrun14]

I'm 25 and I can say that this was pretty advanced back then. To today's standards, its not much different other than better graphics and reaction time. Or just having graphics. Action adventure games wasn't long after this. Very nice concept for its time

[@draketungsten74]

This game was one of my first computer game memories too.

[@cosmicrdt]

Great video as always. I owned a Tandy 1000 hx and Space Quest 3 which came on low density diskettes I believe. Are you sure you weren't mistaking it for space quest 4? Unless it was one of the much later releases (when they stopped using a photo of the sierra mountain on the disk and the labels were bright white)? Keep up the great work!

[@FridayNightArcade]

You know... I'm not 100% sure. I think we tried to buy Space Quest IV first, after playing III at my cousin's house. And I know for sure SQ4 didn't work on our Tandy for that very reason. But then I remember exchanging it for the Space Quest I-II-III box set (with Roger sticking his tongue out on the cover). We couldn't get that to work either and I remember it being an ordeal. My Dad took the Tandy into the computer place and they messed with it and said the disk drive wasn't compatible with any of those games. Granted, I was like 10. I'm not denying that mid 30s Friday Night Arcade could have figured out a way to make SQIII work on that machine lol. Thanks for watching - glad you enjoyed this one!

[@GreyFromSpace]

I kinda got into these old text adventure games as a teenager in 2011. I liked the idea of a story that I could read and influence. I feel like these kinds of games go unappreciated. I tried to program my own too. It sucked. But hey I mean Infocom and the IF Archive is always there for those who want to experience a different kind of reading.

[@heavysystemsinc.]

My favorite text adventure game was Suspect, where you're a detective attending a Halloween party and someone dies. I think it had multiple scenarios in it as I seem to remember each game I played would have the same people in different costumes and also the person murdered would be sometimes different. I thought it was really neat because people moved about the party at various times and you felt like you could sorta hang back and follow them around, seeing if they did anything suspicious.

[@FridayNightArcade]

That sounds really cool! Moonmist was sorta like that - depending on how you answered certain questions at the beginning, there would be multiple scenarios. And you could follow people around the house and interrogate them. Thank you for sharing I'll have to find that one.

[@yovtobe]

Back in the early 90s I opened mosaic on win3.1 on our 486/66 with a 14.4kbps modem, went on Yahoo search, and typed the word adventure. I don't even know why. I used to type random words into yahoo from time to time I found a website that let you play it online. I was like 8? So I wasn't too good at it, but I still remember the site. It even showed your inventory and had shortcut arrow buttons to go in different directions. I have never forgotten my experiences and have even come back to other versions of the game. I remember figuring out how to cross the fissure, and best the snake. I got so annoyed when I got stuck with the gold nugget. Oh good times

[@FridayNightArcade]

That's the good stuff.

[@michaelturner4457]

I first came across and played Colossal Cave Adventure(ADVENT) in Autumn 1980 at Bristol Polytechnic, running on a Prime 750 minicomputer, accessed by Televideo VDUs. I'm pretty sure it was the original version written in Fortran.

[@Fairview104]

I also played this game on a Prime computer but I think it was an even earlier model the 550. Fun times. 🙂

[@vryusvin3905]

Wow, OK, so I played this on a Tandy 1000EX, then I got a TX a few years later. I got this game bundled with two other text adventures that "continued the story", I can't remember the names. The difference was there were 4 color CGI drawings of each room above the text in the versions I played. Want to know how it affected me? I went on to make and sell very basic 2d games back in the early 90s! Then I spent all my free time coding or building for MUDs (mostly DIKU or ROM). I still think about putting effort into a good text-based game or MUD server to this day even though I could make something 3D. Thanks for the video and the memories!

[@jasonz7788]

Awesome thanks 👍

[@josuehernandez648]

I had almost the same experience, when i was 9 years old, but we had a 386 and the game i found was called "Beyond the Titanic", I didn't know english, i learned playing that game.

[@plinkitee]

Gotta love a game with attitude

[@INFINITESYKOSIS]

Killing dragons wit your bare hands....by the GODs 😱

[@NiiKEMAN]

Never saw this game coming. Interesting

[@mr.k3329]

Ya'll should try Gemstone IV. Longest running game of it's kind.

[@cameron398]

I didnt play many text adventures, but to this day I remember Ulysses and the Golden Fleece. It has been 30+ years but I remember enjoying it a lot. Maybe you can take a look at it.

[@FridayNightArcade]

Totally never heard of that ... will look into it. Thanks for sharing!

[@benjamintchang3923]

Cool video :)

[@Shory22]

I would have loved this

[@TheBlueGirl18]

reading tomorrow tomorrow tomorrow and totally had to find a video abt this game!

[@LeroySanchezHub]

Ready Player One (Book) brought me here haha I’m amazed

[@BananaTV1978]

The text adventure games by Infocom (coining the phrase "interactive fiction") were created using ZIL. There's a little group on Facebook with people who still use ZIL to make games today (2020) and one of the original Infocom team is in the group!

[@FridayNightArcade]

Whoa, that's awesome. Thanks for sharing!

[@seandavis7218]

I never got to play computer games I didnt have a computer in my house until 2004 as crazy as that is.....

[@fahhhque2255]

It's 2020. I still don't have one. Never have. 🤷🏻‍♂️

[@jeffdavis6657]

I think I did play it, on Commadore 64. never beat it, but my first Graphic Adventure was Kings Quest II. Sierra Quest games nearly broke me, then I discovered Monkey Island.

[@CanadianRetroThings]

My first text adventure game was Raaka-Tu on my TRS-80 Coco2. I played it for untold hours but never won (I was about 11 at the time)

[@LandBeyond]

This is the same game as Pyramid 2000 on the TRS-80. Verbiage just change to support Pyramid. But it is identical.

[@JGreen-le8xx]

I never played either Zork or CCA , All of my text adventuring was on a Commodore VIC 20 with the Scott Adams games. And they ran on the most powerful graphics card, a child's imagination... Back when kids still had those.. 😐

[@Kenbomp]

Interesting that the 3d version didn't really work as well. Shows that the imagination is powerful tool of the user and is integral to the game

[@TheGreatPaulG]

When I was a kid I had Twin Kingdom Valley for the Commodore 64. It was text adventure but had very simple graphics. The graphics were drawn out on screen and it took several seconds to do so. It was kind of annoying to always have to wait for the graphics to be drawn out. It took maybe 5 seconds for each screen. I don’t believe you could type anything while the graphics were drawn out either. I never did get very far in the game.

[@JLAvey]

Message from three years in the future. I saw something that looks like a remake of Colossal Cave on GOG. Haven't played it so I can't say if it's any good.

[@ffmax55]

Créé par des passionés de jeux de rôle papier tels Dungeons and Dragons, Colossal Cave Adventure propose de l’exploration de grottes souterraines dans lesquels se trouvent des créatures du domaine du fantastique. Plusieurs jeux vont s’en inspirer par la suite, et cela donnera des bases aux jeus d’aventure, aux survival horror, aux rogue like et aux jeux de rôles.

[@Vichedges]

I used to love text games, I had a C64 before my NES and I mostly played them before Nintendo but my friends and I swapped C64 in the late 80s too. I loved the Marvel ones, I think they were called Questprobe, there were 3 I think, Hulk, Spider-Man, Fantastic 4. I had the Spider-Man and Hulk Games I think. The only problem with text games is they were really vague and you had to be very specific. But fun games.

[@FridayNightArcade]

Agreed - sometimes you had to know the exact verb or noun the game was looking for which could be frustrating. I had no idea Marvel had text games... will have to check those out. Thanks for sharing!

[@diebesgrab]

I played Zork in college. In a browser.

[@seethransom]

XYZZY! Back type back! As soon as you get in the maze.

[@CanadianFabe]

Ken and Roberta Williams are remaking this for VR.

[@FridayNightArcade]

I heard about that.... Will there be a non-VR playable version?

[@jesskcanada]

@@FridayNightArcade yes, it will be on many platforms. Comes out next month on the top-of-the-line consoles and PC, and a few months later on the older consoles kzbin.info/www/bejne/ap65Y5x4n7ifars

[@lsgreger2645]

I remember playing on an apple IIc+ in school and I played games like this all the time before school started. That and several edutainment games. Until the teachers deemed them too popular with the kids so they would take them away!

[@FridayNightArcade]

Ugh, yes. Whenever we had "computer time" in grade school you wanted to be one of the first kids in the room so you could get Oregon Trail... otherwise you were stuck playing some math game... I think it was called Paws?

[@rayh7105]

So by the time we got to having computers in school (apple 2e) I was already on my second pc. I got permission to take my old pc into school and use it instead of the apples, just because I found it much easier to use. Yeah...i was that kinda nerd.

[@dschult3]

@@FridayNightArcade Ugh! That and Word/Number Munchers...

[@user-zu1ix3yq2w]

It's all about online multiplayer text games.

[@FridayNightArcade]

lol now that would be funny...

[@user-zu1ix3yq2w]

@@FridayNightArcade dot dot dot

[@lawandorder7777]

I tried Shadowgate when it was still pretty new and couldn't get into it. It was my first text game and I just preferred action games at that point I guess, even though I read a lot of books, too. Maybe it was to hard I borrowed the game and didn't have a manual and really didn't know how to play. I eventually bought Loom, a Lucas Arts game, for the TurboGrafx 16 Super CD and loved that game. The cool thing about the Turbo CD games were that some games were ports of computer games, like Might and Magic 3 and Shadow of the Beast, which I also liked. Might and Magic 3 was different from other RPGs and had a really funky soundtrack that I really liked that I believe was exclusive to the TG CD. I didn't get a computer until way later and didn't realize that these games were ported from computer games until even more years later. They were different and that is probably why I liked them. I beat Loom and was saddened with the ending. I just didn't expect it to end that way. I'm not sure if there was a better ending or not, but I felt like I failed.

[@iansmith8783]

For me it was Zork 1 and thence to the world of rogue likes.

[@devilspeakrc4422]

ZORK WAS THE BEST. Was my first love before space quest 3.

[@Samambeolus]

I love that kind of game. You should bring others. They're very common to be found by KZbin. I recently played a text based game, called Red Suitcase, for Android. It's about a serial killer investigation. You should take a look :)

[@FridayNightArcade]

Great suggestion - that sounds cool! Thanks!!

[@Rorschachqp]

I played adventure and Zork I on the IBM PC, 8086

[@lupker]

Well let's try the new version 😉

[@marcingardyjan6680]

How do you know what to write? I would stuck on the first text when you typed "enter building" - I would type "OK" and the game would answer "I don't understand that" and It will be end of my game :). How do you know that you should type "enter building"? Is there any command list or something?

[@FridayNightArcade]

If you type in HELP or INFO, I believe, it gives you a list of the basic commands. Other than that it is trial and error. ENTER, GO NORTH, GO SOUTH, ETC, TAKE, USE, THROW, DRINK, etc.... pretty generic one or two word commands at the most.

[@abandonedmuse]

I played Adventure. I couldn’t get past the stupid snake! 🐍 ahhhhh I remember I would throw an axe at it and it would kill me!

[@1daddy57]

There are 69,105 leaves here.

[@mikeycourington2011]

I think I just heard a hollow-sounding voice say "plugh"...