# In which I awaken an ancient evil
**URL:** https://boards.straightdope.com/t/in-which-i-awaken-an-ancient-evil/542604
**Category:** The Game Room
**Created:** [June 10, 2010, 1:36am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/in-which-i-awaken-an-ancient-evil/542604 "2010-06-10T01:36:16Z")
**Posts on this page:** 20
**Page:** 1
### Author:  [@Projammer](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Projammer)
#### Post date: [June 10, 2010, 1:36am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/in-which-i-awaken-an-ancient-evil/542604/1 "2010-06-10T01:36:16Z")
I would love to weave a Sampiro worthy narrative around this, but it’s just not in my skillset. So you get the tech journal version. Sorry.
My 14yo son and 11yo daughter and I were discussing video games earlier and the evolution thereof.
Think back. No, further than that.
Further still.
That’s the best you can do?
Get off my lawn!
Yep. [Zork](http://www.infocom-if.org/downloads/downloads.html).
All three are now available as a free download from the above link.
So two innocents who were born into the age of games distributed on 4.7 gig DVDs are now enthralled by games that average 80k to install complete.
Seemed mundane to me, but if a mod thinks it better suited to the Gameroom, 'ware the grue and throw it over the fence.
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### Author:  [@Sue\_Duhnym](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Sue_Duhnym)
#### Post date: [June 10, 2010, 3:11am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/in-which-i-awaken-an-ancient-evil/542604/2 "2010-06-10T03:11:28Z")
Oh please. I had to try to explain Pong to my 11 year old.
“Well, it was bigger than the cable box and you had dials that moved a bar up and down on either side of the screen. And a pixellated square that bounced back and forth, so it was like playing ping pong.”
“What else did it do?”
“That was it.”
“Whatever. Can we play Super Smash Brothers on the Wii now?”
Don’t even get me started on explaining to her why floppy disks are called floppy. My husband actually went further back and explained to her how he used to carry a deck of cards around while she got that glazed-over look in her eyes and fired up her DS. Freaking kids these days.
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### Author:  [@Ferret\_Herder](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Ferret_Herder)
#### Post date: [June 10, 2010, 3:15am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/in-which-i-awaken-an-ancient-evil/542604/3 "2010-06-10T03:15:52Z")
Whew, here I thought you opened an old cooler or something!
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### Author:  [@Toxgoddess](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Toxgoddess)
#### Post date: [June 10, 2010, 3:22am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/in-which-i-awaken-an-ancient-evil/542604/4 "2010-06-10T03:22:55Z")
My daugher too was amazed and intrigued when I explained that you can play solitaire with an actual deck of cards. Not only that, but there are so many more variations with a real deck than on a screen. She tried it…then decided it was too much work, and went back to the computer version.
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### Author:  [@Princhester](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Princhester)
#### Post date: [June 10, 2010, 3:22am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/in-which-i-awaken-an-ancient-evil/542604/5 "2010-06-10T03:22:55Z")
I tried to get my 7 year old playing Zork.
He likes puzzles and consequently did enjoy it a bit, but he finds the possibility of grues a bit nervewracking. The funny thing is, he’d happily play some modern game with fully animated 'orrible monsters that come down and kill his character, no problem. 7 year old imagination is a powerful thing though: the mere words on the screen leave much more room for fear than actual pictures.
I’ll try to get him interested again when he’s a bit older. For a start, forcing him to spell and type are worthwhile skills that he doesn’t develop just pointing and clicking.
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### Author:  [@OpalCat](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/OpalCat)
#### Post date: [June 10, 2010, 3:24am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/in-which-i-awaken-an-ancient-evil/542604/6 "2010-06-10T03:24:54Z")
I remember painstakingly mapping out so much of Zork…
now I just HAVE to go play it!
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### Author:  [@AClockworkMelon](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/AClockworkMelon)
#### Post date: [June 10, 2010, 3:25am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/in-which-i-awaken-an-ancient-evil/542604/7 "2010-06-10T03:25:33Z")
You guys have it easy. My little sister doesn’t know what a VHS is.
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### Author:  [@Sunspace](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Sunspace)
#### Post date: [June 10, 2010, 3:43am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/in-which-i-awaken-an-ancient-evil/542604/8 "2010-06-10T03:43:03Z")
I have a quad-core i7 iMac with 8 gigabytes of RAM and a display resolution of 2560 x 1440… and I’m playing [Larn](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Larn_%28computer_game%29) on it. In the character terminal.
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### Author:  [@Balance](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Balance)
#### Post date: [June 10, 2010, 3:44am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/in-which-i-awaken-an-ancient-evil/542604/9 "2010-06-10T03:44:18Z")
I don’t have kids, but I’m happy to say my nephew knows enough to understand the profound difficulty of ascending a foodless monk. Of course, he’s even more game-obsessed than I am.
That said–as much as I love the old text adventures, Zork: Grand Inquisitor is my favorite Zork game.
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### Author:  [@Johnny\_L.A](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Johnny_L.A)
#### Post date: [June 10, 2010, 4:09am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/in-which-i-awaken-an-ancient-evil/542604/10 "2010-06-10T04:09:18Z")
I clicked on the Mac download and got this:
> [@](#):
>
> (This file must be converted with BinHex 4.0)
>
> :"9T28NY\*!%&38%a\*6PSa)!!!8`!!!""UM(k!`!!@%ih6`8l)3+`)R%Z8`!!1$3
Followed by thousands of similar lines. I don’t know what BinHex 4.0 is.
Is there a version where you can just click ‘Download for Macs’ and it will… you know, download?
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### Author:  [@Sunspace](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Sunspace)
#### Post date: [June 10, 2010, 5:47am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/in-which-i-awaken-an-ancient-evil/542604/11 "2010-06-10T05:47:10Z")
I installed my Larn through MacPorts. I think that download file is for people who want to… compile it themselves. _twitch_
HQX files generally predate OS X.
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### Author:  [@Johnny\_L.A](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Johnny_L.A)
#### Post date: [June 10, 2010, 5:53am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/in-which-i-awaken-an-ancient-evil/542604/12 "2010-06-10T05:53:26Z")
Heh. You’re still using words I don’t know. Larn? MacPorts?
I clicked on the image of the game, and it did download a folder. Setup.inf doesn’t work. Maybe it’s a Windows file?
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### Author:  [@Lynn\_Bodoni](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Lynn_Bodoni)
#### Post date: [June 10, 2010, 11:21am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/in-which-i-awaken-an-ancient-evil/542604/13 "2010-06-10T11:21:18Z")
> [@Toxgoddess](#):
>
> My daugher too was amazed and intrigued when I explained that you can play solitaire with an actual deck of cards. Not only that, but there are so many more variations with a real deck than on a screen. She tried it…then decided it was too much work, and went back to the computer version.
I like [Pretty Good Solitaire](http://www.goodsol.com/) and I buy my father a new edition every now and then. It has HUNDREDS of solitaire games, with a 30 day free trial.
And I remember Pong. I was fascinated with it when it first appeared at the pinball arcades.
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### Author:  [@VunderBob](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/VunderBob)
#### Post date: [June 10, 2010, 11:43am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/in-which-i-awaken-an-ancient-evil/542604/14 "2010-06-10T11:43:06Z")
My 22 year old son still does not understand why I like pinball games that have actual steel balls in them.
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### Author:  [@Crowbar\_of\_Irony\_3](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Crowbar_of_Irony_3)
#### Post date: [June 10, 2010, 12:03pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/in-which-i-awaken-an-ancient-evil/542604/15 "2010-06-10T12:03:08Z")
My friends were horrified when I was suggesting hooking up my Intel Quad Core 2.66GHZ PC with GTS 250 FX graphics card to a HDMI TV, all for playing Nethack ASCII.
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### Author:  [@UncleRojelio](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/UncleRojelio)
#### Post date: [June 10, 2010, 1:22pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/in-which-i-awaken-an-ancient-evil/542604/16 "2010-06-10T13:22:04Z")
> [@Johnny\_L.A](#):
>
> I clicked on the Mac download and got this:
>
> Followed by thousands of similar lines. I don’t know what BinHex 4.0 is.
>
> Is there a version where you can just click ‘Download for Macs’ and it will… you know, download?
There are installation instructions at that site. Apparently Stuffit Expander will work on binhex files now. Whodathunkit? You could probably use the Unix utility ‘unbinhex’ or ‘xbin’ as well.
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### Author:  [@Sunspace](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Sunspace)
#### Post date: [June 10, 2010, 2:03pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/in-which-i-awaken-an-ancient-evil/542604/17 "2010-06-10T14:03:03Z")
> [@Johnny\_L.A](#):
>
> Heh. You’re still using words I don’t know. Larn? MacPorts?
>
> I clicked on the image of the game, and it did download a folder. Setup.inf doesn’t work. Maybe it’s a Windows file?
[MacPorts](http://www.macports.org/) is a utility for installing open-source programs that have been ported to Darwin, the core of Mac OS X. You install it on OS X and run it at the command line. It connects to a server and allows you to select, download, compile, and install programs. One of those programs is Larn.
[Installing MacPorts](http://www.macports.org/install.php).
[Using MacPorts](http://guide.macports.org/).
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### Author:  [@Ellen\_Cherry](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Ellen_Cherry)
#### Post date: [June 10, 2010, 2:07pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/in-which-i-awaken-an-ancient-evil/542604/18 "2010-06-10T14:07:43Z")
Moving to the Game Room from MPSIMS.
**Ellen Cherry
Fun Moderator**
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### Author:  [@PoorYorick](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/PoorYorick)
#### Post date: [June 10, 2010, 2:11pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/in-which-i-awaken-an-ancient-evil/542604/19 "2010-06-10T14:11:00Z")
Whenever I tell whippersnappers about Pong and Zork, and how cool they were, I remember how I glazed over every time my grandfather talked about playing with a stick in the yard. And how ecstatic he was when, one wonderful Christmas, he got the put-the-ball-on-a-string-in-the-cup game.
God, I’ve turned into my grandfather. And Zork is my put-the-ball-on-a-string-in-the-cup game.
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### Author:  [@Drain\_Bead](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Drain_Bead)
#### Post date: [June 10, 2010, 5:01pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/in-which-i-awaken-an-ancient-evil/542604/20 "2010-06-10T17:01:09Z")
[It is pitch black. You are likely to be eaten by a grue.](http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4nigRT2KmCE)
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