# Typing in old school video games- why? **URL:** \ **Category:** Factual Questions\ **Created:** [June 8, 2003, 4:36pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/typing-in-old-school-video-games-why/180477 "2003-06-08T16:36:49Z")\ **Posts on this page:** 15\ **Page:** 3
**Author:** ![Cliffy](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/c/59ef9b/32.png) [@Cliffy](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Cliffy)\ **Post date:** [June 9, 2003, 6:19pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/typing-in-old-school-video-games-why/180477/41 "2003-06-09T18:19:34Z")
Leather Goddesses ended with an even more thinly-veiled plug, **kabbes** ; neither of them ever came out, not really. (Although once Activision bought the Infocom brand name, it released a graphical Leather Goddesses II, which I’ve never played, but I’ve heard poor things about.) –Cliffy ---
**Author:** ![Trigonal\_Planar](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/t/0ea827/32.png) [@Trigonal\_Planar](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Trigonal_Planar)\ **Post date:** [June 9, 2003, 6:41pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/typing-in-old-school-video-games-why/180477/42 "2003-06-09T18:41:56Z")
Anyone remember the old Commodore dial-up network? Using a 2400 baud modem! 🙂 I still have a brochure for that service around here somehwere. ---
**Author:** ![Larry\_Mudd](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/l/f14d63/32.png) [@Larry\_Mudd](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Larry_Mudd)\ **Post date:** [June 9, 2003, 7:16pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/typing-in-old-school-video-games-why/180477/43 "2003-06-09T19:16:41Z")
**commasense** , I was using CP/M at home starting in 1984. Remember AS/COM? (Popular terminal prog-- it was the first one I had that made use of that fancy-pants XMODEM file-transfer protocol.) I also remember ‘cheating’ at text adventures by using a hex editor to locate the glossary. Helped me out of a few jams. ---
**Author:** ![Lamia](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/l/8e7dd6/32.png) [@Lamia](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Lamia)\ **Post date:** [June 12, 2003, 3:46am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/typing-in-old-school-video-games-why/180477/44 "2003-06-12T03:46:30Z")
Count me as another twentysomething suddenly feeling very old. I still remember the first time I saw a mouse at a computer store. I was amazed that you could move the pointer around on the screen with a flick of the wrist! > [@](#): > > \*Originally posted by Nichol\_storm \* > \*\*When I was in elementary school, we played this great adventure game where you got to be a princess on a quest for various magical artifacts and such. We’d hang over each other’s shoulders and help the player direct the action. No one ever won this game, to my remembrance, but it was still fun. > \*\* Sounds like Sierra’s _King’s Quest IV: The Perils of Rosella_, an early favorite of mine and, if memory serves, the first color graphic game I ever played. Sure, it was only four or six colors on our CGA monitor, but I was impressed at the time. It was a great game though. I still have it in fact, but I dunno if it would run on my current machine. Oh, those of you who mentioned Scott Adams…is he the one who did “Adventureland” and…uh…the pirate game? If so, I used to play those games in my computer class at the gifted center when I was in elementary school. We had these little black and white computers with screens about the size of your hand. Good times. ---
**Author:** ![Larry\_Mudd](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/l/f14d63/32.png) [@Larry\_Mudd](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Larry_Mudd)\ **Post date:** [June 12, 2003, 4:06am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/typing-in-old-school-video-games-why/180477/45 "2003-06-12T04:06:28Z")
> [@](#): > > …only four or six colors on our CGA monitor… That’s pretty generous. It _was_ four colours-- if you count black and white. A CGA card expanded the pallete to include the mind-boggling additional choices of purple and pale blue. Oh yeah, those were the days. ---
**Author:** ![hammerbach](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/h/73ab20/32.png) [@hammerbach](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/hammerbach)\ **Post date:** [June 12, 2003, 4:40am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/typing-in-old-school-video-games-why/180477/46 "2003-06-12T04:40:47Z")
That would be “magenta” and “cyan”, actually… ---
**Author:** ![John\_T.Conklin](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/john_t.conklin/32/3307_2.png) [@John\_T.Conklin](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/John_T.Conklin)\ **Post date:** [June 12, 2003, 6:24am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/typing-in-old-school-video-games-why/180477/47 "2003-06-12T06:24:31Z")
> [@](#): > > \*Originally posted by jk1245 \* > \*\*“You are standing in front of a white house” > > The gaming world’s equivalent of “Let there be light” \*\* Actually, it’s: > [@](#): > > West of House > You are standing in an open field west of a white house, with a boarded front door. > There is a small mailbox here. > > \> The one thing I liked about Infocom games compared to much of the competition of the era (Scott Adams, etc.) was the richness of the text (which IMO described an environment that graphics based “adventures” have yet to match) and the parser allowed sentances far beyond the two word commands (go left, use match, etc.)For example: > [@](#): > > Endless Stair > You are at the bottom of a seemingly endless stair, winding its way upward beyond your vision. An eerie light, coming from all around you, casts strange shadows on the walls. To the south is a dark and winding trail. > Your old friend, the brass lantern, is at your feet. > > \>get lantern and turn it on > Taken. > > The lamp is now on. > > \> ---
**Author:** ![Derleth](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/d/b9e5f3/32.png) [@Derleth](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Derleth)\ **Post date:** [June 12, 2003, 6:51am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/typing-in-old-school-video-games-why/180477/48 "2003-06-12T06:51:03Z")
> [@](#): > > \*Originally posted by Mahaloth \* > \*\*Well, Xerox invented them in the '70’s, but they weren’t used widely until the Macintosh computer in 1984. \*\* And I believe the Apple Lisa actually had it earlier, but only by a year. By the way, what OS did the PARC use to develop its first GUIs? 'Cause _that_ would, by definition, be the first mouse-capable OS. ---
**Author:** ![Walloon](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/w/fbc32d/32.png) [@Walloon](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Walloon)\ **Post date:** [June 12, 2003, 7:34am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/typing-in-old-school-video-games-why/180477/49 "2003-06-12T07:34:35Z")
**Derleth** , you may want to read my previous post above. ---
**Author:** ![Lamia](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/l/8e7dd6/32.png) [@Lamia](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Lamia)\ **Post date:** [June 12, 2003, 3:49pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/typing-in-old-school-video-games-why/180477/50 "2003-06-12T15:49:26Z")
> [@](#): > > \*Originally posted by Larry Mudd \* > \*\*That’s pretty generous. It _was_ four colours-- if you count black and white. A CGA card expanded the pallete to include the mind-boggling additional choices of purple and pale blue. > \*\* Ah, that’s right, black, white, magenta, and cyan. My memory was confused by the way computer artists of the day could create the _illusion_ of far more colors by skillfully placing (enormous) pixels of one color alongside another. Black and cyan – why it’s almost green! White and magenta – clearly meant to be yellow! Or possibly pink, or pale brown! ---
**Author:** ![Terminus\_Est](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/terminus_est/32/3087_2.png) [@Terminus\_Est](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Terminus_Est)\ **Post date:** [June 12, 2003, 4:11pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/typing-in-old-school-video-games-why/180477/51 "2003-06-12T16:11:54Z")
CGA allowed you to switch the palette between white/magenta/cyan and red/green/blue. Additionally, black was simply the default background color. You could switch the background to any one of sixteen (count 'em!) different colors. ---
**Author:** ![Padeye](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/p/a9a28c/32.png) [@Padeye](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Padeye)\ **Post date:** [June 12, 2003, 5:17pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/typing-in-old-school-video-games-why/180477/52 "2003-06-12T17:17:42Z")
Kids these days. Harumph. I’ve accepted my geezerdom and actually embrace it. Back in the pliocene days when massive Chryslers roamed the earth no one had ever heard of a graphical user interface or a mouse. The first really useful home computers were CP/M machines with Intel 8080 processors and Motorila 6502 boxes like the Apple II and Commodore 64. They have very simple processors with total memory limts of 64 and 128k. Kilobytes, not megabytes. Not a lot of memory to handle complex things like graphics. The early Apple II computers didn’t even have lower case text. EVERYTHING LOOKED LKE A CHAT ROOM NEWBIE SCREAMING! The IBM PC had the potential for ten times the memory of the 8080 boxes but all the early software was waremed over CP/M stuff that ran in the 64k memory limit like WordStar. Games didn’t give up such limitations until PCs started being shipped with 640k memory standard. ---
**Author:** ![NE\_Texan](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/n/e99b99/32.png) [@NE\_Texan](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/NE_Texan)\ **Post date:** [June 12, 2003, 7:04pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/typing-in-old-school-video-games-why/180477/53 "2003-06-12T19:04:59Z")
I think that a lot of people have pointed out the limited computer capability of the time as one of the reasons. Here’s a different reason to add: At the time, a certain amount of people working on text adventure games (particularly those from Infocom) were interested in the more general area of text parsers. (As one of the many investigations into AI, although as the bar keeps changing for what we call “AI”, it can be harder to see that now). It was considered cutting edge and sophisticated to have a game that could understand english commands, and furthermore, accept more and more complexity in the commands. The first games (especially the Scott Adams ones) might accept “Verb Noun”, or, if you were lucky, “Verb [Adj] Noun”. Later, it would understand compound sentences (“and”), questions (“What is…”), and prepositional phrases (“Take the cat of tongues out of the old bag”). It was only later, after the graphics improved on the machines, that the “cutting edge” games started going the other way, with graphical interfaces being the latest and greatest in games. (Sniff. I miss those games. Time to look for my Infocom collection CD.) ---
**Author:** ![Max\_Torque](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/m/e9bcb4/32.png) [@Max\_Torque](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Max_Torque)\ **Post date:** [June 12, 2003, 8:38pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/typing-in-old-school-video-games-why/180477/54 "2003-06-12T20:38:27Z")
\> get no tea no tea: Taken. ---
**Author:** ![lno](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/l/a8b319/32.png) [@lno](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/lno)\ **Post date:** [June 12, 2003, 9:59pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/typing-in-old-school-video-games-why/180477/55 "2003-06-12T21:59:59Z")
And if people are interested in modern-day interactive fiction, the [Ninth Annual Interactive Fiction Competition](http://www.ifcomp.org/) is taking place later this year. There’s a broad spectrum of great to absolutely horrid games that are released completely free by the authors (including me. Does anyone else write IF here?). In my opinion, some of the games that have come out of the IFComp are superior to many of Infocom’s offerings. [Previous page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/typing-in-old-school-video-games-why/180477.md?page=2)