A new form of entertainment

[dimidimidimi]

I suppose that most of you enjoy movies, books and comics. Well I don't know if you have heard of this before, but there is a form of games called adventures. They are unlike the rest of the computer games that do not allow so much growth for story-telling.

 

In adventures you take control of a certain character and you have to talk to other characters, find and collect items, and use them in the right way in order to proceed through the story. There have been a lot of science fiction and fantasy stories told through adventures, and some of them would even make 12 monkeys look pale in comparison.

 

I write a magazine about adventure games, called The Inventory. You can see more information about that in http://www.geocities.com/theinventory

 

If you think the information sounds interesting you can download it from the front page of Just Adventure (http://www.justadventure.com). The magazine is in PDF format and you can download it for free.

 

Believe me, adventures are a whole new experience because you are not just watching the story, you are living it yourself in the most immersive way imaginable.

 

Best regards,

Dimitris Manos

[deamonstar]

yeah, I remember a little game called D&D. played it for a few years... back in the day...

me and my friends evolved from the dice and manuals to a faster-paced form of basically interactive story-telling.

[dgeake]

I remember playing text-based adventure games in the late 1970's. No graphics just text descriptions. "Your are standing on a beach. To your left is a path leading to the top of a cliff. Behind you is the hull of a shipwreck." You would respond with something like "Go path". These were more like puzzles to be solved and were very linear. They did not allow much variation from the predetermined path you were to follow, but I found them very addictive. The original game which I remember appears to be available on the 'net for playing at:

http://games.igateway.net/adventure/pirateadventure.html

 

I doubt you will even get an inkling of how fun this was when computers ran at 1 mhz and had 48 k of memory (including display memory) total.

 

The only thing close to them now, which I am aware of, are some games by Red Orb, called Myst, Riven and Myst II. I suspect the parody on these called Pyst is similar. They are not quite so linear in their play, much more intricate with their puzzles, and I find the graphics and sounds amazing. Of course I still enjoy the "if it moves, shoot it!" type of games too.

[Tormod]

My first venture into computing was the ZX-81, which I can't remember playing adventure games on. But in 1983 or so I got a Sinclair ZX Spectrum (48K) and played The Hobbit, which I still remember as one of the most memorable games I've ever played. I really miss the good old days of combined text/graphic adventures...

 

That said, I think "Day of the Tentacle" (think it was LucasArts) for the PC was truly hilarious.

 

I've never been into role playing games, so I am not the right person to comment on dimitris magazine. Anyone else?

 

Tormod