The only Infocom game I remember that had this “problem” was The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy - if you left your toothbrush back on Earth, you couldn’t possibly win as you would need it to fix the Heart of Gold near the end of the game. (No, it wasn’t always the toothbrush that you needed - unless you left it back on Earth.)
Then again, that game had other problems, mainly involving the interface - for example, you had to try and enter a room something like three times and then try to pick up an item twice before it finally let you.
My favorite line from an Infocom game (in Sorceror, I think, when you tried to cast an “animate” spell on a pile of bones):
“The results are too hideous to describe.”
It may not have been as much a problem in the text adventures, but certainly the early graphical Lucasfilms and especially Sierra-On-Line games had that issue. Half of playing Sierra-On-Line games was saving your game ever other step so that no horrific fate that you were not fairly clued-in-to befell you. I suppose in some sense, there’s a charm to that in that if you do something stupid, the game lets you and “screw you!” or if a wrong turn led to a arbitrary and unforeseen death, so be it. Perhaps a bit more true to life.
The Quest for Glory games were one of the few exceptions to Sierra style dead ends. Maybe the second game had some, it’s been awhile? The only way your could really screw up is if you dallied too long during a not-obviously timed part (games 2 and 4 as I recall).
The first version of SimCity I purchased was in 1991, so that was almost certainly the PC-DOS version and not the Commodore 64 version. (It came with a code sheet printed on red paper and you had to enter codes from the sheet to launch the game, as a type of copy protection.) I then bought every subsequent version of the game and it consumed many, many hours of my time. I never got into any game as much as I did SimCity. I pointed out to friends that it was odd that I was basically playing the role of urban planner as a video game and I recognized that was weird but I loved that game. I was really disappointed with the last release, though. I think the last good version was SimCity 2000.
Edited to add that it’s unfortunate that your parents wouldn’t let you order it, because it’s probably the most innocuous, nerdy video game ever. The only violence is when you inflict a disaster on your own city.
SimCity had a scrolling news zipper in the game that displayed feedback from the virtual “sim citizens”. This would have messages to advise you what to do to develop the city, like adding residential development, or whatever.
At one point there was an official SimCity message board run by Maxis and someone complained that one of the feedback comments was “taxes suck”. His point was that suck in that context was slightly off-color, and the game has always been really family-friendly. It was really the tamest of video games.
I probably put the most hours into SC2k, though I liked SC3k ok and I thought SC4 was very good. I didn’t play the recent version at all but from all accounts it was terrible.
I agree that it was pretty much the most unobjectionable game ever. Either my parents misunderstood young me (wouldn’t be the first time) or they didn’t think they could vet computer games the way they could Legos or whatever. Oh well–I got my own PC not too long after and got SimCity as well. Including the red paper with the weird square codes.
Incidentally, Cities: Skylines is the game that the new SimCity should have been. It’s excellent.
On the table is an elongated brown sack, smelling of hot peppers.
>get sack
Taken
>Throw sack at me
A terrific throw! The brown sack hits you squarely in the head. Normally, this wouldn’t do much damage, but by incredible mischance, you fall over backwards trying to duck, and break your neck, justice being swift and merciful in the Great Underground Empire.
When I was about 6 or 7, my parents got a **Pong **game for the TV set. It also had a **Skeet **game where you shot at a white box that floated around the TV screen. The game came with some sort of gun thing for the **Skeet **game, but I seem to recall it didn’t work very well unless the room was very dark.
My first home console was the Atari 2600. It came with a **Combat **game cartridge. I also got **Breakout **(with the paddle controllers). Some of the earlier games were so bad. I was big into sports, so I got the Basketball, Baseball, and **Football **(I think you had like three players?). Over the next few years I must have bought 30-40 cartridges. I can’t recall all of them but I certainly remember **Turbo **(you had to buy a separate steering wheel control), and of course Adventure. **Defender **and Missile Command were tons of fun also.
I got a **ColecoVision **for my 15th birthday. That would have been 1983. I LOVED my ColecoVision! So many good games. I had a ton of fun with **Mousetrap **and Burger Time, and Donkey Kong. And the best thing was that it had an adapter to play all those Atari cartridges as well.
Computers never really entered the picture for me and my friends. I know some kids had a TRS-80, or a VIC 20 or a Commodore 64, but I don’t recall ever seeing one or wanting one. I didn’t get my first computer until I was in grad school, if you can believe that. Just wasn’t a thing for me.
First electronic game: Pong (mentioned above)
First console game: Atari 2600, Combat
First computer game: Atari 400, Star Raiders
First arcade game: Breakout
First PC game*: (3 of them, bought on the same day) A-Train, Might & Magic: Clouds of Xeen, and Civilization. Oh, happy day!
First phone game: Angry Birds
The first 4 were all Atari products.
*I made the distinction because the PC is still a viable platform whereas the Atari 400/800 platform was dead by 1988 or so.
There is a documentary about text games called Get Lamp, which covers the origins as well as more modern examples. It can be viewed here: https://youtu.be/LRhbcDzbGSU
It is shown in the context of the director’s Google Tech Talk, but you can skip the lecture parts.
Also available on YouTube are numerous “postmortems” given at GDC (Game Developers Conference) on old and new games. Some old games I remember being discussed include Zork, Yar’s Revenge, Pitfall, Ms. Pac-Man. I found these very interesting, even though I am not a programmer.
I was under the impression that engaging the Improbability Drive would give you a chance to go back to any earlier point in the game temporarily. Does not apply for this?
Though, really, why would you not take every item? It’s an adventure game!
Nope. The drive just allows you to jump into different points in space and time in the game and as one of the main characters of Arthur, Ford, Zaphod, and Trillian, but the scenarios are all preset.
When you return to Earth as Ford, you are in the same scene as the beginning of the game. However, you cannot enter Arthur’s house–where the toothbrush is.
Maybe the player missed it? And the real problem is not just the toothbrush, it’s all 12 tools. If you have not gathered all twelve tools and have them accessible when you find out which tool Marvin will ask you for in the future, the game is programmed to always go with a tool you don’t have access to. If you can access all twelve tools, the game will pick at random. And the whole “give the tool to Marvin” thing is pretty much that last puzzle to solve in the game. The reason the toothbrush generally gets cited here is you must pick it up in the beginning as Arthur before you head off to the pub with Ford. Or you have lost the game already.
Another annoying tool is the one you get in the Blugblatter Beast scene (another fairly early puzzle). After solving the main puzzle, you have a limited amount of moves to pick up the rasp before the portable Improbability drive dumps you back in the heart of gold. If you, miss the rasp there, you screw yourself once again.
Douglas Adams was a great author, but he was also a lousy puzzle writer.
Oh, I should say “thanks.” I watched this a couple days ago, and it was enjoyable. Also branched out and watched his Infocom-specific documentary. I never was SUPER huge into interactive fiction, but I did play through the (very primitive by Infocom standards) Scott Adams games and then The Pawn by Magnetic Scrolls (which I finished, but with constantly mailing the company for hints, which they would reply to one by one, and finally, after maybe my sixth letter, they just sent me a damned walkthrough [but at least it was all given in a letter substitution cipher, so you had to work for it a little, and you couldn’t accidentally spoil the game for yourself. Now why they didn’t just send that to me in the first place, I don’t know.]) Ah, yes, the old days of hint lines and actually snail mailing the software company for hints. I remember doing the same for Ultima 3 when I couldn’t figure out the damned moon gates, or whatever it was that had me stuck.
