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Or is it the dorkiest? However you want to label it, the ability to play Infocom text adventures like Zork and The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy with a typewriter is without a doubt neat.
In 1998, Stanford University’s Henry Lowood began preserving video games and video game artifacts, reports the New York Times. Lowood, along with a four member committee, has announced a game canon, for the Library of Congress. Japan begs to differ.
Guitar Hero’s been played out. Colours pass in front of you, you mash a button, music plays, life goes on. If only there was a way to take the core mechanics and make them fresh.
The classic adventure game Zork is back, this time in the form of a browser-based casual MMO Legends of Zork, published by Ireland-based Jolt Online Gaming.
Jason Scott, connoisseur of all things old-timey, knows (and loves) his gaming history. His Flickr gallery shows this. It also shows, remarkably, that he’s got a copy of the lifetime sales figures of a bunch of Infocom games. Infocom being the developers of games like Zork and Hitchhiker’s Guide To The Galaxy. It’s fascinating stuff, especially when you consider that shifting 380,000 units of Zork between 1981 and 1986 is, relatively, shifting a lotta units.
Great Scott: Infocom’s All-Time Sales Numbers Revealed [GameSetWatch]
iPhone gaming just got a shot in the arm with the release of Frotz, an interactive fiction (aka text adventure) app that’s free to download. With it, iPhone owners can while away the hours with dozens of text-only games, getting lamps, facing north, being frozen by wizards… all that fun stuff! That means you have another opportunity to play Zork, Trinity or The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy should the only high-def visuals you require be ultra smooth fonts.
Frotz, available via the App Store right now, comes with “several” built-in, public domain games. It also provides easy access to the Interactive Fiction Database, giving you nearly endless options for replayability. Get on it!
‘Frotz’: Interactive Fiction Comes to the iPhone [TouchArcade]
