Archived comment by Garrett Klein:
Yes, Zork was a little bit before my time; I was born in 88. I'm a terrible puzzle solver, and need walkthroughs to solve text adventures (I think there's a logical part of my brain that's missing). After Infocom went belly-up in about 1990 or so, Activision (the company who bought them out) released Return to Zork (1993), Zork Nemesis (1993), and Zork: Grand Inquisitor (1997). These were all graphical, but Activision also released a prequel to ZGI in 1997 called Zork: the Undiscovered Underground.

Archived comment by AppleMan:
I'm going to start a new reality series. It's going to be about four people who get up, go to work for eight hours, come home, eat, veg out in front of their respective computers, and go to bed. It'll be called American Idol Reunions: Twelve Years Later. I think it'll be a hit.

Archived comment by Matt:
Even hearing about reality shows makes me sad.

Archived comment by Paul:
And at a guess I'd say that ZPHT (or his cousin) is really Gregg. (namelink work safe, I think)

Archived comment by Kris the Girl:
Ahh, Martina has a beau. I'm sure it wouldn't be a problem to email back the anonymous passerby.

Oh, speaking of which--last night on American Idol, the host (Ryan Seacrest) was asking a contestant's family if he was going to be the next AI, and they all of course agreed. Ryan looks back at the camera and says "Ok, it's anonymous!" HEeee! Oh, i laughed. I love that Ryan Seacrest, he's a goof.

Archived comment by ParU:
Hey Guys - ZPHT's back! Or at least his cousin.

Archived comment by Passerby:
HAVE YOU ALK TO MR GIRE ABOUT WHY YOU WAS AT SCHOOL TODAY. EMAIL ME BACK SOON AS YOU GET THIS LETTER.

Archived comment by Passerby:
I LOVE YOU MARTINA

Archived comment by DARRIS`:
I

Archived comment by Matt:
You mean there's a version of Zork with graphics?! My god, and nobody told me! Gack! That just seems... somehow... wrong.

Archived comment by peegee:
As a matter of fact the Zork games have been released to the public domain these days, and can be downloaded for free e.g. here.

Archived comment by Denise:
Yes! Yes! Zork!

When I played it... hmm.. musta been...'82 or so.. it was text only. No graphics. You typed in commands.

We used to type in cuss words just to laugh when it would reprimand us. I always remember the part of the game with the echo room with the big shiny mirror on the wall... ahh.. good times..

Archived comment by Jon:
Ah, Zork. I believe one of my favorite Zork series moments was killing my own Shadow.
Haven't looked at topiaries the same way since those games...

Archived comment by marined:
BB, yes you got the basic tetherball rules right. If the rope overlapped itself while coiling around the pole, you had to unwind it and try again. I was really good at it as a kid; the only hard thing was playing against someone tall! It was somehow much more fun than it sounds.

I think I sprained every finger in my right hand playing that game.

(let the innuendo begin!)

Archived comment by BB:
"Tried to kill myself again today. The rope broke. D*** eternal life spell."

Archived comment by Mia:
"Turn up the lights--I don't want to go home in the dark."

Archived comment by Joe Napalm:

"It's pitch dark. You are likely to be eaten by a grue."

-Jn-
Efreeti Sophist

Archived comment by Saint:
Heh. Third time's the charm right? After all this, I'm going to be really sad if she meant "Zelda."

Archived comment by Saint:
Oops.

The video game version of Zork would have been about in the right era, I think. I played Oregan Trail a lot when I was in late grade school/junior high, so that would be somewhere around 1985.

Archived comment by Saint:
Zork?

Archived comment by Denise:
Joe, I wouldn't pet a goon. That would encourage them...

I have no FREAKIN' clue what this Oregon Trail business is... I mean, did I leave the Earth for a few years and grow up in an alternate dimension? How do I not know of this???

I used to play... umm... it began with a "Z", I think. And you walked in the house and picked up the peppers and water off the table... and there was a troll that you had to kill with an axe... and a thief that would steal your stuff and a cyclops.. and when you went to Hades you had to ring a damn bell and light a candle.. and I always got stuck there. Man, I loved that game.

What was it?? I know someone knows...

What that of the same era/genre as Oregon Trail?

Archived comment by Matt:
I don't know tethercat, but I like pantscat.

Archived comment by Joe Napalm:

Weird. Hazel and I were just discussing tethercat.

Well, The Far Side, specifically tethercat.

So you PETA goons can back off, now...

...I mean it!

(*Grin*)

-Jn-
Efreeti Sophist

Archived comment by Cebu:
I always liked tethercat. :D

Archived comment by BB:
How do you play that? And was what I described even how you really play tetherball? I'm wondering if we kinda just made up our own rules, as I did alot of that in preschool.



And 100

Archived comment by Apple:
Well, Extreme Tetherball was a little more challenging.

*grin*

Archived comment by BB:
I never really figured out how to actually play tetherball... What's the point? How do you win? I remember playing where you just smack the ball as hard as you can, and the other person tries to hit it the other way, and whoever winds the ball all the way in "their direction" wins. I sure remember it getting hard when there was only a foot of slack though....

Archived comment by BB:
I never really figured out how to actually play tetherball... What's the point? How do you win? I remember playing where you just smack the ball as hard as you can, and the other person tries to hit it the other way, and whoever winds the ball all the way in "their direction" wins. I sure remember it getting hard when there was only a foot of slack though....

Archived comment by Bryan:
I loved 4-squares

Archived comment by marinerd:
Gee, Joe, I wasn't thinking of that long ago. Just your post-atomic, pre-PC days. When we had to play four-square, 7-Up, and tether ball, instead of computer games.

Anybody here play Jardinains? It's addictive, and you don't have to LEARN anything while you're playing it! *g*

Archived comment by Joe Napalm:
My friends and I have contests like that all the time...

*blinks*

Oh. Right...Oregon Trail.

Nevermind.

*Grin*

-Jn-
Efreeti Sophist

Archived comment by penguinchick:
I loved Oregon Trail. Still have it somewhere. My friends and I used to have contests to see who could be the first to kill everyone off. Good times. *giggle*

Archived comment by Joe Napalm:
Yes, but you had Go.

That's something, at least.

*Grin*

-Jn-
Efreeti Sophist

Archived comment by marinerd:
Unfortunately, I'm way too old to have played Oregon Trail in school. My kids played it, though, and were always complaining about not being able to make it across the river! Not that that was the only way they died, of course.

I always thought it sounded like a cool game. We never had anything like that when I was little. I'm so jealous!

Archived comment by Cebu:
I never played Oregan Trail. :( I don't think I even knew about it.

Archived comment by Saint:
I loved Oregan Trail. I could almost always make it, but only with the one head-of-family dude. All the rest would die on the trail. Which suited me cause then they weren't around to eat all that buffalo I went out and shot.

Archived comment by Jon:
Yes, I do fondly remember Oregon Trail. Actually, the hunting part is what I mostly remember... one of the first examples of the "mini game".

Archived comment by umrguy:
Oregon Trail, classic, that :) We sort of did an RPG version in 8th grade history - the class was broken into groups of like six or so, and we had to decide what was in our "wagons", and make decisions about things. It was kind of fun, but I don't think very many, if any, of the class "survived" the trip (although part of that was due to running out of real time, we had to decide things by like tossing a coin into something, or some such stupid method of determining it).

Archived comment by Bryan:
Oregan Trail was cool...especially if you drove everyone too hard and they all got sick. I tended to go after the antelope/deer when hunting. A nice week's supply of meat if you ate right. Remember the advice they always gave?

Speaking of school computer nostalgia, anyone remember "The Party." Basically you put in a name, weight and gender and sent to this party with 3 other ppl/ Each hour you were given the choice to gulp/sip as much beer/wine/liquor/soda/water/juice and eat as much pizza as you wanted. The party lastd from 8pm to 1am I believe and if you weren't sent home early by the hostess or passed out or comatose, you had the option of driving home, calling a cab or having someone else take you. If you were drunk or your buddy drunk, the chances of a fatal accident were dranatically increased.


Hell of a game for middle school kids.

Archived comment by ParU:
And of course, buffalo wings.

Archived comment by hypoxic:
What you mean there's no chipped buffalo? what about buffalo gumbo? buffalo burgers? What do you mean there's no more buffalo?

Archived comment by Matt:
Of course, KtG. And I played it on the same computer you did, back in the day. It was the first successful execution of the "edutainment software" idea. I dug that game. I thought it was way cool. But man, shooting the buffalo was so easy!

For me, at least, working in the luxury goods business, the dot-com bust didn't happen until about March 2001. Up until then, we had people in the mid- or even early 20s dropping 10, 15 grand, no problem. Ah, those were the days...

Archived comment by Kris the Girl:
Yes, but who remembers playing Oregon Trail on an Apple 2E in the computer lab in elementary school?
Even at that age, I thought "man, this thing is a piece."

Archived comment by Apple Man:
Actually, I hate to burst the bubble, but dotcoms went under in mass numbers in the pre 1999's. (would that be the 1998's?).

And who could froget Oregon Trail when they won't stop making sequels?

Archived comment by FishInABarrel:
I think 1999 refers to the Age of the Dot Com, when web development and e-commerce were so much in demand that every monkey with a book on HTML could earn mad dollarz. Flash people could afford to consider themselves �ber1337, until about 2001, when they all got laid off.

Archived comment by Joe Napalm:

Indeed.

-Jn-
City of Brass Expatriate

Archived comment by Mia:
Speaking of games...does anyone remember Oregon Trail?

Archived comment by Apple Man:
I actually have one of those old interfaces where one would carefully write the program, get out the old punch card, punch the said card, and

voila!!

you have the fantastic game that swept early entertainmnet....

Super Breakout!

Archived comment by Jon:
Heh, silly flasher.

Gah. A flasher is also a type of sword, similar to a scimitar, but I can't find any good links to that on Google.

Archived comment by Apple:
You asked for it.


*grin*