Good non-Infocom games from the 80's?

Toggle sidebar Toggle sidebar
G

Guest

Guest
Archived from groups: rec.games.int-fiction (More info?)

I've recently been playing through the Inform restoration of "Crobe",
a Phoenix game from the 1980's. I never expected to like it this much
-- the parser is outdated, rooms don't have short names, there are a
lot of "insta-death" moments just from movement, etc. That being
said... "Crobe" is A LOT of fun once you get used to the (somewhat
primitive) format.

This got me thinking about trying some other 80's games. My
experience is limited: played about half of the Infocom games, maybe a
third of the Scott Adams games, a few Penguin games (Quest I + II,
another one about a vampire) and a couple of others. No Magnetic
Scrolls, Level 9, Topologika, etc.

So I ask: what do you consider 80's text adventures that are still
worth playing? I'd appreciate any suggestions.


Jon
 
G

Guest

Guest
Archived from groups: rec.games.int-fiction (More info?)

jfry77@yahoo.com (Jonathan Fry) wrote in message news:<ecfc5976.0404260601.60ec61a1@posting.google.com>...
> I've recently been playing through the Inform restoration of "Crobe",
> a Phoenix game from the 1980's. I never expected to like it this much
> -- the parser is outdated, rooms don't have short names, there are a
> lot of "insta-death" moments just from movement, etc. That being
> said... "Crobe" is A LOT of fun once you get used to the (somewhat
> primitive) format.

(snip)

> So I ask: what do you consider 80's text adventures that are still
> worth playing? I'd appreciate any suggestions.

This may be an obvious one, considering you mentioned "Crobe", but I
enjoyed "Sangraal", another similar Inform-conversion. If you
Google-groups (okay, I officially want a verb for that now--can I use
"dejagoogle", or is that reference outdated?)... ahem. If you do that
thing, you will find some discussion of it on rgif.

--
Daphne
 
G

Guest

Guest
Archived from groups: rec.games.int-fiction (More info?)

> So I ask: what do you consider 80's text adventures that are still
> worth playing? I'd appreciate any suggestions.
>
>
> Jon

My 1980s gaming experience was limited to whatever was available for
the Acorn Electron, and later the BBC Master Compact, so my first
experiences of Infocom and Magnetic Scrolls weren't until very
recently. The Topologika games were a mixed bag; Peter Kilworth's Doom
trilogy were my favourites from that firm. There are rather too many
instant-death rooms, especially in the first one, but the puzzles,
involving time-travel and other dimensions, are often ingenious.
Robico's Saga of a Spy games were rather good, and are available from
the archive. One company that seems to have been forgotten is Epic,
who produced games such as Kingdom of Klein, Wheel of Fortune and
Quest for the Holy Grail*. They were considered to be among the best
available for the little Electron. I have fond memories of Kingdom of
Klein, a superior kind of cave crawl with puzzles involving voodoo
dolls and umbrellas.

*Not to be confused with The Quest for the Holy Grail by Epyx
software, for the C64, which I believe was based on the Monty Python
film.
 
G

Guest

Guest
Archived from groups: rec.games.int-fiction (More info?)

> So I ask: what do you consider 80's text adventures that are still
> worth playing? I'd appreciate any suggestions.

Of the Level 9 games, I'd recommend their earlier games, especially the
Middle Earth trilogy (Colossal Adventure, Adventure Quest and Dungeon
Adventure), Lords of Time, and perhaps their best, Snowball. Their later
games never seemed as good to me, though others might disagree: see
Robb Sherwin's page on Knight Orc, for example:
http://www.joltcountry.com/kohp/main.htm

From Magnetic Scrolls Guild of Thieves and Fish! are both still pretty
good puzzle games. Corruption is also well worth a look as an
interesting (if not entirely successful) attempt to try something
different with the detective genre.

If you haven't played it, I'd also recommend Infocom's Plundered Hearts:
sadly often over-looked and well worth playing.

David
 
P

PAX

Distinguished
May 22, 2001
35
0
18,530
Archived from groups: rec.games.int-fiction (More info?)

"Jonathan Fry" <jfry77@yahoo.com> wrote :

> So I ask: what do you consider 80's text adventures that are
> still worth playing? I'd appreciate any suggestions.

I'd suggest Frankenstein and Dracula by Rod Pike.

Since you haven't played any Level 9 and Magnetic Scrolls games
I recommend them all.
 
G

Guest

Guest
Archived from groups: rec.games.int-fiction (More info?)

jfry77@yahoo.com (Jonathan Fry) wrote in message news:<ecfc5976.0404260601.60ec61a1@posting.google.com>...
> So I ask: what do you consider 80's text adventures that are still
> worth playing? I'd appreciate any suggestions.

Tass Times in Tonetown was a lot of fun. The graphics will of
course look rather outdated today, and I guess it's a matter of
taste if you like the 8-bit music, but I still think it's a really
good game.

/Fredrik
 
G

Guest

Guest
Archived from groups: rec.games.int-fiction (More info?)

Daphne Brinkerhoff wrote:
> If you
> Google-groups (okay, I officially want a verb for that now--can I use
> "dejagoogle", or is that reference outdated?)... ahem.

Grouple?

-- Gunther
 
G

Guest

Guest
Archived from groups: rec.games.int-fiction (More info?)

J. J. Guest wrote:
>>So I ask: what do you consider 80's text adventures that are still
>>worth playing? I'd appreciate any suggestions.
>>
>>
>>Jon
>
>
> My 1980s gaming experience was limited to whatever was available for
> the Acorn Electron, and later the BBC Master Compact, so my first
> experiences of Infocom and Magnetic Scrolls weren't until very
> recently. The Topologika games were a mixed bag; Peter Kilworth's Doom
> trilogy were my favourites from that firm. There are rather too many
> instant-death rooms, especially in the first one, but the puzzles,
> involving time-travel and other dimensions, are often ingenious.

Well, thank you! There are inform versions of the Doom games which
I converted a few years back the hard way (with, it
has to be said, undo working, and usually a query about whether you want
to enter the instant death room!!) in the usual places... CtDoom.z5,
RtDoom.z5,
LDoDoom.z5 IIRC.

Peter K.
--
-----------------------------------------------------------------------
Prof. Peter D. Killworth, James Rennell Division for Ocean Circulation
and Climate, Southampton Oceanography Centre, Empress Dock, Southampton
SO14 3ZH, England.
Tel: +44 (0)23-80596202 Fax: +44 (0)23-80596204
Email: P.Killworth@soc.soton.ac.uk
Web: http://www.soc.soton.ac.uk/JRD/PROC/people/pki/
Editor, Ocean Modelling: http://www.elsevier.com/locate/ocemod/
-----------------------------------------------------------------------
 
G

Guest

Guest
Archived from groups: rec.games.int-fiction (More info?)

Snowball by Level 9 is one of my favorite games, and I loved the Inform port of
Sangraal as well. If you like that style, Kingdom of Hamil is a very good
choice. Others that come to mind are The Guild of Thieves, Lancelot,
Mindshadow, Oo-Topos... You can't go wrong with anything by Level 9 or Magnetic
Scrolls.


- Guido

On Mon, 26 Apr 2004, Jonathan Fry wrote:

> I've recently been playing through the Inform restoration of "Crobe",
> a Phoenix game from the 1980's. I never expected to like it this much
> -- the parser is outdated, rooms don't have short names, there are a
> lot of "insta-death" moments just from movement, etc. That being
> said... "Crobe" is A LOT of fun once you get used to the (somewhat
> primitive) format.
>
> This got me thinking about trying some other 80's games. My
> experience is limited: played about half of the Infocom games, maybe a
> third of the Scott Adams games, a few Penguin games (Quest I + II,
> another one about a vampire) and a couple of others. No Magnetic
> Scrolls, Level 9, Topologika, etc.
>
> So I ask: what do you consider 80's text adventures that are still
> worth playing? I'd appreciate any suggestions.
>
>
> Jon
>
 
G

Guest

Guest
Archived from groups: rec.games.int-fiction (More info?)

Hi,
Are the games by Magnetic Scrolls available to download somewhere?
Thanks.

Kelly
 
G

Guest

Guest
Archived from groups: rec.games.int-fiction (More info?)

DI Gunther Schmidl wrote:
> Daphne Brinkerhoff wrote:
>
>>If you
>>Google-groups (okay, I officially want a verb for that now--can I use
>>"dejagoogle", or is that reference outdated?)... ahem.
>
>
> Grouple?
>
Grope?
 
G

Guest

Guest
Archived from groups: rec.games.int-fiction (More info?)

Peter Killworth <P.Killworth@soc.soton.ac.uk> wrote in message news:<408E17BD.5050609@soc.soton.ac.uk>...
> J. J. Guest wrote:
> >>So I ask: what do you consider 80's text adventures that are still
> >>worth playing? I'd appreciate any suggestions.
> >>
> >>
> >>Jon
> >
> >
> > My 1980s gaming experience was limited to whatever was available for
> > the Acorn Electron, and later the BBC Master Compact, so my first
> > experiences of Infocom and Magnetic Scrolls weren't until very
> > recently. The Topologika games were a mixed bag; Peter Kilworth's Doom
> > trilogy were my favourites from that firm. There are rather too many
> > instant-death rooms, especially in the first one, but the puzzles,
> > involving time-travel and other dimensions, are often ingenious.
>
> Well, thank you! There are inform versions of the Doom games which
> I converted a few years back the hard way (with, it
> has to be said, undo working, and usually a query about whether you want
> to enter the instant death room!!) in the usual places... CtDoom.z5,
> RtDoom.z5,
> LDoDoom.z5 IIRC.
>
> Peter K.
> --

Excellent! I never did finish Last Days of Doom (my A-Levels got in
the way) so I will enjoy revisiting Doomawangara!

Jason Guest
 
G

Guest

Guest
Archived from groups: rec.games.int-fiction (More info?)

Try http://www.if-legends.org/~msmemorial/,
download the Magnetic interpreter & the game files,
have fun!!


"Kelly Sapergia" <ksapergia@nospam.sasktel.net> ha scritto nel messaggio
news:v97t80t4d2dss2g14q90pq3603d7pjl22u@4ax.com...
> Hi,
> Are the games by Magnetic Scrolls available to download somewhere?
> Thanks.
>
> Kelly
>
>
 
G

Guest

Guest
Archived from groups: rec.games.int-fiction (More info?)

You have to play all of the Magnetic Scrolls, Level9 and the Tolkien games
from Beam Software, definitely. And the Legend Entertainment games, of
course.
I'd add Mindshadow, Borrowed Time, Tass Times in Tonetown (quite funny and
wrote by Mike Berlyn), Dream Zone, Demon's Tomb, Demoniak, Mindfighter,
Legend of the Sword, Twilight Zone.


"Jonathan Fry" <jfry77@yahoo.com> ha scritto nel messaggio
news:ecfc5976.0404260601.60ec61a1@posting.google.com...
> I've recently been playing through the Inform restoration of "Crobe",
> a Phoenix game from the 1980's. I never expected to like it this much
> -- the parser is outdated, rooms don't have short names, there are a
> lot of "insta-death" moments just from movement, etc. That being
> said... "Crobe" is A LOT of fun once you get used to the (somewhat
> primitive) format.
>
> This got me thinking about trying some other 80's games. My
> experience is limited: played about half of the Infocom games, maybe a
> third of the Scott Adams games, a few Penguin games (Quest I + II,
> another one about a vampire) and a couple of others. No Magnetic
> Scrolls, Level 9, Topologika, etc.
>
> So I ask: what do you consider 80's text adventures that are still
> worth playing? I'd appreciate any suggestions.
>
>
> Jon
>
 
G

Guest

Guest
Archived from groups: rec.games.int-fiction (More info?)

In article <cuWkc.164405$Kc3.5178320@twister2.libero.it>, lolinho@libero.it
says...
> You have to play all of the Magnetic Scrolls, Level9 and the Tolkien games
> from Beam Software, definitely. And the Legend Entertainment games, of
> course.
> I'd add Mindshadow, Borrowed Time, Tass Times in Tonetown (quite funny and
> wrote by Mike Berlyn), Dream Zone, Demon's Tomb, Demoniak, Mindfighter,
> Legend of the Sword, Twilight Zone.
>

Demoniak!? Is that really recommendable? Has anybody solved the infernal
thing? (If yes, is there a solve?)

-- Darius



>
> "Jonathan Fry" <jfry77@yahoo.com> ha scritto nel messaggio
> news:ecfc5976.0404260601.60ec61a1@posting.google.com...
> > I've recently been playing through the Inform restoration of "Crobe",
> > a Phoenix game from the 1980's. I never expected to like it this much
> > -- the parser is outdated, rooms don't have short names, there are a
> > lot of "insta-death" moments just from movement, etc. That being
> > said... "Crobe" is A LOT of fun once you get used to the (somewhat
> > primitive) format.
> >
> > This got me thinking about trying some other 80's games. My
> > experience is limited: played about half of the Infocom games, maybe a
> > third of the Scott Adams games, a few Penguin games (Quest I + II,
> > another one about a vampire) and a couple of others. No Magnetic
> > Scrolls, Level 9, Topologika, etc.
> >
> > So I ask: what do you consider 80's text adventures that are still
> > worth playing? I'd appreciate any suggestions.
> >
> >
> > Jon
> >
>
>
>
 
You must log in or register to reply here.

TRENDING THREADS

Latest posts

Moderators online

Share this page

COMPANY
RESOURCES
FOLLOW
Top Bottom