Yeah, the section was called “Enter” and you can find it online. Archive.org also has the original (separate) magazine Enter online in its archives to peruse. I don’t remember there being a lot of text games, though. Most of the BASIC programs were really short bits of code and not something as extensive as even a rudimentary text adventure. But I haven’t seen all the issues. I do remember, though, that the whole of Scott Adams’ Adventureland was printed as a type-in BASIC program in some magazine, but I can’t remember which.
Same here. I was pleasantly surprised overall, but after a while it felt endless and kind of frustrating.
I guess the concept is not new to gamers but I have never been exposed to the whole interactive / choose your own ending thing so on that score I thought it was fascinating. Has any other show used this format?
“Enter” Magazine. Some (if not all) the issues are on archive.org:
Enter Magazine : Free Texts : Free Download, Borrow and Streaming : Internet Archive
Netflix has done interactive episodes of a couple of their kids shows - The Adventures of Puss in Boots and Buddy Thunderstruck - although the interactive elements were incorporated differently - the story pauses during the countdown, and the characters discuss the choices.
(Also, of course, the major unique aspect of these is not the interactive element, but calling them ‘interactive movies/episodes’, rather than games or visual novels.)
I’m not really a fan of this kind of fiction. I prefer to be more passive and get lost in the story. One problem I had was that the segments were long enough that I would be lost in the story and then have to snap back to reality to make a choice. And then everyone in the room is giving their input on which choice to pick. I almost think it would have been better to have more frequent choices so we all stay in the ‘choose’ mode rather than ‘watch’ mode.
This mirrors (ha!) my impression. I found reaching for the remote and having to make a choice jarring after watching the lengthy segments of more traditional narrative. I did think it was neat that my control was reflected in the protagonist’s freak-outs. But I’ve enjoyed equally cerebral thought experiments in the “standard” Black Mirror episodes too. The cost didn’t cover the benefits in my opinion.
Another interesting Easter egg I read about today - in the ending where Stefan listens to his Bandersnatch demo on the bus, the sound that plays is actual ZX Spectrum code which, if you isolate it and plug it into an emulator, launches as a playable version of “Nohzdyve”.
I thought it was brilliant. I was shocked to see this had a rating of 7.6 on IMDB. Because it was ambitious, smart, interesting, and engaging. They could’ve simply done a normalish black mirror episode with a few choose your own story elements, and it would’ve been fine, but they really made it mentally engaging by examining concepts of an unreliable narrator (mentally ill), making the perception of reality complex, dealing with multiple levels of recursiveness (the book, the game, the meta-aspect of questioning free will and determination).
In particular, the LSD scene was one of the most well-shot, compelling scenes I’ve ever seen.
It’s hard to say this without sounding like an asshole, but I have to guess a decent fraction of the audience weren’t really willing to invest the mental effort into being engrossed in it and thought it to be a confusing mess. Which isn’t to say that a savvy person couldn’t find it flawed, but the average reaction to it seems (unfairly) underwhelmed to me.
It doesn’t feel like a pioneering test run into a new way of storytelling, it seems like a deep dive would after we’ve already examined less complex versions of the choose your own adventure movie. But that’s exactly what it was. And so it may stifle the potential of the choose your own adventure genre simply by already being so ambitious and executing so well. Less ambitious attempts at this method of storytelling wouldn’t compare favorably to it.
I would agree with this. It’s a storytelling genre which I don’t generally enjoy, so I’m not surprised I didn’t find it all that great. It might be like taking someone to the opera who doesn’t like opera. For the people who like this kind of genre, I can see why you would like it.