What Is A Grue?

After having caught up on film news last night I settled in for a nice game of Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy. You see, the Douglas Adams site has a Java version (I love it that a programming language is named after coffee. And I love how the automatic Java updater on this computer sits in the system tray whose icon is a cup of piping hot coffee. Mmm...coffee...) of the old Infocom text adventure. I just love this game! Anyone here have a computer back in the 80s and have any Infocom games? Planetfall and the Zorks were other faves. ("What is a grue?") For you folks who are not familiar with such games, they are all text. You are presented with a description of a locale and you type in what you want to do. "n" to move north or "get toothbrush". No graphics at all, not even cheesy ASCII graphics. Fucking brilliant! When I was 7th or 8th grade (1985-6), we were allowed to use the computers during our lunch hour for recreation. The room had about 20 Apple IIe's and it got to the point where most, if not all of them, were used to play Hitchhiker's. So instead of being able to zip over to the teachers' lounge and enjoying adult company, my teacher was stuck supervising a roomful of Straight Dope-reading, progressive rock listening, Hitchhiker's playing kids. I bet he rued the day he decided to let us them. When one of us would solve a puzzle, he'd announce it to the rest of the group. "Hey you guys! To get past the Ravenous Bug Blatter Beast of Traal, you've gotta..." Good times.

Anyway, so I'm playing last night and I get as far as the Vogon ship. I recalled that you had to enjoy the Captain's poetry but failed to figure out how to type on the keyboard of the case to get the atomic vector plotter. So Ford and I got thrown out the airlock and died. And you can't save your position in the game either.

I'm glad no one saw me playing either because it seems weird that I have a computer that has a 2GHz processor and 256MB of RAM while my Commodore 64 had a, what?, 5Mhz processor and 64Kb of RAM and I prefer games from 1985. There just haven't been any games the last few years that have caught my interest. The last game that really sucked me in was The Last Express. (And before that, the Blade Runner game.) I loved The Last Express so much, I wrote the software company to tell them. You play this American spy in 1917 and you're on the last voyage of the Orient Express before World War I breaks out. Getting on board the train by hopping onto it from a motorcycle, you go to your compartment to meet your friend only to find that he's dead. From there, it's all mystery and intrigue. Passengers from various countries ride the train and some don't speak English so you'll be eavesdropping and not understand everything. Plus I really dig the graphics. The makers videotaped live action and then rotoscoped it like in Waking Life It gives the game a really cool look. Plus they found an old car from the Orient Express so the detail of interior of the train is fantastic and genuine. You've gotta plan subterfuges so you can sneak into the rooms of other passengers and be nosey. Unfortunately, I was in the minority and didn't sell very well. And it cost a lot to make so there will never be anything similar. A shame.

One game I've tried to get into but have failed in Baldur's Gate. It's basically Dungeons & Dragons so you'd think I'd be on it like a fly on shit. But, for some reason, I just can't. (Oddly enough, our real life D&D campaign occurs a bit north of where the video game takes place. "Hi ho, hi ho, it's off to Waterdeep we go!") And I'm not a first-person shooter kinda guy. Well, Redneck Rampage was fun but I never got into Half-Life. I am, however, looking forward to the Call of Cthulhu game that has been delayed for months. The only games I play nowadays are ones originally for the Intellivision or Commodore 64 that have been ported over to the PC. I guess I'm just retro. But isn't retro in nowadays?