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Every Month, the Editorial Page with one-quarter byte... May 2000's "Two Bits" are titled : The Current State Of Adventure Games, Part 1[subtitled: "I'm sorry, I don't understand command word '@#$%!!!'..."]Each year, I consider my choices for the best games of the year, in my two favorite genres: Action and Adventure. Last year, however, it became apparent how few decent adventure games came out at all(!); is adventure gaming, as many cynics claim, in a slump? That is the subject of my two-part editorial for the next two months. I think many multimedia fans will be intrigued at my "two bits" on the matter...
However, any game genre can be made great by looking only at the successes; there were bad text adventures as well. Infidel was the pioneer in bad game endings; "original vision" says the Infocom fanboy, although mistake is more on target. Seriously, what mutant imbecile pays $30 to play a game you cannot win? Other games had subject matter that was about as gripping as an old shoe; Ballyhoo had you visiting (wowsers!) the back lot of a circus. One of the final text games to be released in classic Infocom "book box" packaging -- Border Zone -- was easily completed in a mere weekend, at best. These are just examples of such games by Infocom; include the lackluster "text adventures" made by third-parties, and the list is several times longer.
However, I'm far from saying Steve Meretzky was the sole reason the text genre ended; the genre ended because of its flaws as a whole. Yes, this includes the "parsers" themselves; the command-prompt interfaces text gamers miss because "the games lasted longer when using them." Yeah, right. The truth is, those games lasted "longer" just because of limited parsers (i.e., which chosen text commands are permitted by the game designer). Games lasted months on end not because of entertainment level, though rather due to page after scrolling page of the reply, "I'm sorry, I don't understand [command word]." In time, programmers amused themselves (though not us) with a variety of random natty retorts, like "Sorry, no comprendo," or "Sorry, I'm just an underpaid parser.." Gosh, what fun. In worse cases, a cocky game designer would act as your English coach. "Light Fire" was often unacceptable, until you typed "IGNITE THE WOOD IN THE CAMPfire WITH THE MATCH." Even the slightest typo --as little as one wrong letter-- meant re-typing the entire command (Infocom attempted to remedy this with an "oops" command which rarely worked). Then you're told you must light the match first (ummm...DUH? even MS-DOS 3 did some things automatically!). Then, you must find someplace to strike the match to light it (how about the game designer's thick HEAD?). By the time you do all this, you find out the campfire can't be lit; it was just (heh-heh) a red herring puzzle. This was entertainment only to the cyber-masochist. As I already implied, however, text adventures had one trait modern games severely lack; story. As much as I loved Half-Life, if a game about a "lab experiment gone awry...government agents sent in to eliminate proof" is modern gamers' idea of the best story in years, you know that the game industry needs some new stories! So original were some classic Infocom games, it's surprising that none were ever updated to modern 3D interface games, so modern gamers can play them Seriously, how cool would a revamped version of Suspended be...? The problem is, as soon as you say "text adventure," you're barraged with memories of "I'm sorry, I don't understand your command..." ad nauseum. Sorry, I'll pass, thank you. Sure, text adventures were fun in their day, especially as the pioneers in computer entertainment. However, is the disappearance of text adventures the biggest reason for the decline in adventure gaming? No, I think not; this would be the same as saying modern movies do not compare to silent black and white films starring Charlie Chaplain. Both are equally classic entertainment, though both have run their course, and newer entertainment styles are desired. It's the flaws with such modern, multimedia adventures which are in question...a question best answered in "Part 2" of this editorial next month... Until then! Once again, I'm Techtite, and these are My Two Bits...
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Let's start at the
beginning; namely, fans of the way things were
in the beginning. The largest ill-feelers of modern adventures
are the text-adventurists, who feel that it all went downhill
when the text-adventures software company, Infocom, merged
with the video games company, Activision. You can see
why they herald classic Infocom games so wildly; there are dozens of text adventures that are worth
a look even to this very day! The entertainment value of 
Even masters of
the text-adventure genre could not resist the temptation of releasing
shoddier work. Take, for example, Steve "A Mind Forever
Voyaging" Meretzky, whose final text-adventure trilogy
--Spellcasting