Remember adventure games?

[abazaba]

Och, I remember the end of LSL2. I knew what I needed to do. I knew the inventory items. I knew how to solve the game. But I could not for the life of me type in the exact verbs and nouns to have the game do it. I ended up not finishing the game...

Well that sucks. Officially.

Mostly MUCKs on my end, and almost the Battletech MUSE, but my university course load was way too high (alas).

What, you mean to say that you were not the one that installed (colossal cave) 'adventure' on the university mainframe ?

 

[dbolack]

Tex Murphy

 

[Ralif Redhammer]

Man, I loved "feelies." I'm not saying every video game should come with in-universe maps and notebooks and magazines and stuff to help you feel immersed but also I am.

It certainly would entice me to buy more physical copies of games, that's for sure. I did love when games came with little artifacts.

Questprobe... That brings back memories of seeing ads in (computer game) magazines for "Questprobe featuring The Hulk". It sounded amazing (I was a big fan of the Hulk), but unfortunately never got to play it. Until now, I never realized it was a series, with also 'featuring Spider-Man' (like you mentioned) and 'featuring Human Torch and Thing' (according to wikipedia).

Funny, I didn't realize it was a series either!

Oh how I pine for the days of feelies! I still have many of them from back in the day. It's something I have brought to my gaming tables too, I love making and giving out feelies to the players. (Even if it's only to make super thematic and evocative custom character sheets.)

Being able to hand out props is one thing I do miss about playing online. Even if I wasn't particularly good at it!

 

[Sossij]

Being able to hand out props is one thing I do miss about playing online. Even if I wasn't particularly good at it!

I've only done one so far, but I made them as PDFs and attached them in our Discord.

 

[Piperken]

Hum, two that come to mind that I liked overall were Syberia and The Longest Journey.

 

[abazaba]

Hum, two that come to mind that I liked overall were Syberia and The Longest Journey.

'Syberia' makes me think of artist 'Benoît Sokal', which makes me think of another one of his creations 'Inspector Canardo': not to be confused with Donald (or Howard) the Duck.

 

[MarkB]

Remember trying to figure out how to make progress by calling a hint line? Or trying to track down a guide in a video game magazine?

I remember when most walkthroughs you could find online were plaintext files with their titles rendered in elaborate ASCII art, often to be downloaded from Usenet filesharing groups.

 

[Kannik]

Well that sucks. Officially.

And I banged my head on the keyboard for a few hours trying to get it too. At least now I can probably go to Youtube and watch the end of the game. (And I'm realizing I haven't done that yet, so on the list for tonight.)

What, you mean to say that you were not the one that installed (colossal cave) 'adventure' on the university mainframe ?

Oh no, for sure, wasn't me, nope nope wasn't there and totally didn't have access to the system that way certainly not no.

 

[Kannik]

Being able to hand out props is one thing I do miss about playing online. Even if I wasn't particularly good at it!

Likewise. PDFs and images and pop ups are useful for sure, but not at all in the same way as a physical object that could be handled, unrolled, opened, unfolded, smelled, used, or the like.

Even reaching behind me to pull out a map that I had made and plotted on large format paper was in of itself a thrill. When one of those came out, the players knew something big was about to happen.

 

[MGibster]

Back when I was a youth I was introduced to the magical world of adventure games. My friend and I found a copy of his Father‘s Leisure Suit Larry game. Which is of course appropriate for two nine year olds to be playing. We didn‘t get far in the game, but nevertheless it got me hooked on adventure games. Soon I found games like Police Quest, Space Quest, Shadowgate, Uninvited, Star Trek, and others. Those were fun times.

I had a few of those games growing up. King's Quest V was the first one I bought for myself and had a good time with it. One of my favorites was the Star Trek 25th Anniversay computer game that was released in 1992. It had the CD-ROM version with the cool music and voice actors. And now we're 34 years beyond the 25th anniversary. Time flies.