The Daily Ping

FROM: Robert
DATE: Saturday September 9, 2000 -- 1:53:47AM

My older brother passed down to me one of the Zork books. I must have played that one about 10 times, always taking the same path without even realizing it until I was done.

FROM: Rob
DATE: Saturday September 9, 2000 -- 7:19:04AM

I never played Zork (I know, I'm a blasphemer). But I remember playing two of them. The cool thing about Infocom games was, even though they were just text adventures, they came with cool stuff. :) One of the ones I played was called Wishbringer, I think. It came with a little plastic wish stone and some other cool stuff. I also played one that I thought was called Myst, but that just doesn't seem right. It was based on some Stephen King story with giant bugs and stuff like that. Oh... and I just remembered... I played Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy, too, but I never finished that one successfully... Fun games, though sometimes finding the right syntax and such would be extremely frustrating. Kinda like the early Sierra games. Honestly... I was a bit sad when Sierra switched to a point and click interface. I liked typing in all sorts of weird commands and discovering just what the programmers had thought of to put responses in for... Ah... the good old days...

FROM: Paul
DATE: Saturday September 9, 2000 -- 10:12:48AM

Infocom really was the king of text adventures, and that's an achievement. Some of my fondest computing memories are courtesy of Infocom.

When I first got my VIC-20 back in '83, one of the cartridges that my parents got for me was The Count, a text adventure by folks that were just forming Infocom at that time. It blended new technology with old-time style... it felt like being in a radio play, where your imagination drove the story. The Count also introduced me to the words "dumbwaiter" and "coat-of-arms" (you had to get in a dumbwaiter at one point to access a basement.)

I never played Zork but did play Suspended (you are in a spaceship in suspended animation and control six robots to repair the failing ship) and Nord and Bert, which is probably one of my favorite games ever.

Infocom games are just hard to find now, it seems. If anyone knows of those CD sets Ryan mentioned, pass it on.

And for the record, I think Myst would've made a better text adventure.

FROM: Robert
DATE: Saturday September 9, 2000 -- 2:18:25PM

Rob--Stephen King has a story called "The Mist" (often considered his finest literary achievement). Maybe they made a game out of it. I don't know.

FROM: TheComputerNews
DATE: Sunday January 21, 2001 -- 6:08:20PM

I'd love to see if anyone can find a working emulator that can run some of these old games... I solved Leather Goddess, Suspect, Witness, HHGTTG, Stationfall, and others... but I never got to play deadline and for some stupid reason I can't stop myself from wanting to play it now...

If you know where I can find a copy, e-mail me at webmaster@thecomputernews.com

Thanks

FROM: Alan M.
DATE: Sunday March 4, 2001 -- 11:37:44PM

I would like to find an old text game I played as a kid. I don't remember the name. All I can remember is there was a dragon that you had to kill with your bare hands.

FROM: Kitsune The Wanderer
DATE: Saturday March 10, 2001 -- 4:41:55PM

If anyone knows where I can get these games let me know alright please dude(tte)s.

FROM: Beto Escobar III
DATE: Thursday May 3, 2001 -- 6:52:27PM

Hey everyone:

I just purchased two copies of Infocom's games (05/03/2001). One copy was Lost Treasures of Infocom 2 and the other was a copy of Masterpieces of Infocom. Get this, "Both are new sets of the game"!!! The former is on 1.44 diskettes and the latter is on CD-ROM. Both are in MS-DOS format, but you can download a program entitled winfrotz which will allow you to play the Infocom games under windows 9x. Here are the links...

Infocom Text Adventure homepage
http://www.csd.uwo.ca/Infocom/

Winfrotz can be downloaded from
http://www.geocities.com/SiliconValley/Heights/3222/frotz.html

See ya Guys later--

Beto Escobar III, LMSW

FROM: Ryan
DATE: Thursday May 3, 2001 -- 10:52:34PM

Beto -- Thanks for the information!

FROM: Kimu
DATE: Friday August 30, 2002 -- 8:27:43 pm

i've got the infocom fantasy and adventure collections, from activision, but in the games it often tells me to refer to things from the game package that I didn't get. can anyone tell me where to get these, on the net or otherwise?

FROM: Ryan
DATE: Monday September 2, 2002 -- 2:15:18 pm

They should be in a PDF file on the disk itself.

FROM: Audi
DATE: Wednesday September 8, 2004 -- 10:43:52 pm

I had just learned how to read when I played my brother's Vic 20. No kidding about the vivid images! Long after the Vic 20 disappeared from our home, I wanted to return to the read-your-own-adventure game in which I needed to get into a dumbwaiter before midnight. How would I ever find it though? The internet of course! I did a search under, "dumbwaiter, vic20" and Paul helped me find the name: The Count. Thanks Paul!

FROM:
DATE: Saturday January 1, 2005 -- 2:45:30 pm

FROM: raphael
DATE: Tuesday April 5, 2005 -- 1:02:54 am

to this day every game i play is a painful reminder that infocom doesn't make games anymore. but i have a question i hope someone can help me with. i have the cd-rom for the lost treasures of infocom, but when i play it on windows 2000 it doesn't come out 100% right. some of it's fine, but other parts are just garbled characters. any ideas what i can look at to fix?

FROM: Kate
DATE: Tuesday April 5, 2005 -- 1:30:53 am

I was a few years too late to be around during the original craze, but I do have a CD called "The Lost Treasures of Infocom." I love the games, but I haven't beaten a single one of them. I get lost or freaked out or something. It'd be great if I could actually play them well.

Rob - You may be referring to MoonMyst. (MoonMist?)

FROM: Melissa
DATE: Monday April 25, 2005 -- 2:24:15 am

I had thought about those text games of old.... could not quite remember the names, and now....
Hitchhikers Guide and The Mist! Wow. Will look at the above mentioned infocom site, but if anyone has inside info, Please, Please share....!

FROM: william
DATE: Tuesday July 19, 2005 -- 10:11:54 am

You need winfrotz to play infocom without any garbled characters. Also have some Infocom originals foe amiga. They are Zork1, Enchanter, Beyond Zork. Still the best games to play.