Last month I mentioned the roleplaying resources which were available out on the net. This month, I thought I'd turn my attention to the computer itself. It's been brought to my attention that it's possible to play games directly on the computer itself -- who would have thought?
Since we already have several pages devoted to reviews of commercial products, I thought I'd mention a couple of my personal favorites which meet three important criteria:
- They're widely available, i.e., most online services and FTP sites have them.
- They're not platform specific -- while I am a big Macintosh fanatic, I realize that the odds are about eight or nine to one against me.
- They're free.
With those three restrictions in mind, here are a couple of oldies-but-goodies, holdovers from the Mainframe Era when dinosaurs walked the earth, which are nonetheless still intriguing enough to hold your interest.
Zork Adventure Game
Yes, that Zork. This is the original version of the classic text adventure, ported from MDL to DEC FORTRAN to Unix f77 to C to your Macintosh or PC. This is the text adventure which (split into three parts and somewhat expanded) launched Infocom, lo, these many years ago. It's still free.
There isn't much I can say about this game that everybody doesn't already know. It's the second oldest import ant text adventure (ADVENT begat Zork, nee Dungeon, which begat a bunch of other adventure games down to the present-day Myst and Leisure Suit Larry XLII). You start up the game, and, there you are outside the big white house next to the leaflet-bearing mailbox.
All of the standard adventure-game suggestions apply: Map obsessively. Try everything, especially silly things. Don't ask for help until you are absolutely out of ideas. Oh, and of course, watch out for grues.
Angband Dungeon Crawl
Angband is the latest in a long and honorable line of Tolkien-inspired, ASCII-based adventure games. It is directly descended from Moria, and related by blood to Nethack, Larn, Omega, and Rogue. For those who don't recognize any of these names, here's a short summary of all of them: you're represented onscreen by a unique ASCII graphic (in Angband, for instance, you look like this: Q). You move yourself around with various one- and two-keystroke commands, and with other keystrokes you haggle with shopkeepeers in the town to outfit yourself with armor, weapons, and a vast array of magical toys. You then descend into a dungeon to commit mayhem upon its denizens and loot their bodies. Yes, it's just like roleplaying used to be, only one-on-one with the computer.
If you've never played any of these games, there is a fairly steep learning curve which the manual alleviates but does not eliminate. Angband is best learned with an experienced person around to teach you how to get started and answer questions. However, once you're into it, it becomes easily as addictive as Tetris, or caffeine, or tradingcard games. (It was, for instance, a root cause of several flunk-outs at my alma mater. A word to the wise.)
These days, Angband does have an FTP site (ftp://export.andrew.cmu.edu/angband), a Web page (hnp://www.voicenet.com/~benh/Angband), and a Usenet newsgroup (rec.games.roguelike.angband) in case you get stuck, need advice, or just want to marvel at the huge number of different computers this thing will run on.
There is a huge amount of free and inexpensive software available on the net, and with America Online scattering free-startup disks like dandelion seeds, it's easier than ever to get at it. Just don't be surprised when you hear yourself say "OK, it's four A.M., but I can make thirty-fifth level if I just take out one more Ancient Multi- Hued Dragon...."
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© Copyright 1996 by Alderac Entertainment Group
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