But a static script is not a playable game. There was way too much of Disch’s prose to fit in the two-disk budget the game had been allocated; the programming language he’d been asked to work in was a cut-down version of Forth, not well-suited for text adventures; the original publisher and then the author himself had pulled out of the project; and now Bentley had been shipped to the other side of the country so the game’s new publisher, Electronic Arts, could keep an eye on him and make sure their game got finished. EA had never published a text adventure, and they never would again. Despite this, they had opinions….

Read the full article on the 50 Years of Text Games Substack!

(* My take on the map is based on an uncredited vintage plotter print; I’ve redone the labelling, normalized and corrected many small details, and did some serious alternations to reconstruct the Crowther version. The asterisk is because I haven’t yet been able to track down the original creator of this map: if you know who made it, please get in touch!)

The extent of Woods’ contributions is hard to appreciate in the abstract. Here’s the two maps side by side, a fascinating look at how the game evolved when it passed into new hands:

In the book, these will be on two adjacent pages, with rooms lining up; you’ll be able to flip back and forth to see exactly how Woods extended the game’s geography and tweaked what was already there.

This is still a work-in-progress: note that some duplicate connections & exact maze details are omitted. If you see any errors otherwise please let me know!

If you’re interested in computer gaming history, check out my new book 50 Years of Text Games: From Oregon Trail to A.I. Dungeon which has tons more great content like this!

(Addendum: Jason Dyer has noted that the original version of this map was based on a slightly different version of the game, known as Adventure 375: GIBI0375 in the Adventure Family Tree. I believe all the differences between that version and the canonical 350-point version have been corrected in Photoshop for this presentation.)

This is a big community with lots of general-interest games folks, so I’m a little nervous about what the reception to a book about (gasp) games without graphics might be over there. Would love for some IF fans to drop by and ask a question or hang out in the comments!

In other news, the crowdfunding campaign for the book has had a remarkable first two days, raising $125,000 in pledges and over 1200 backers in its first 48 hours. You can still back now to reserve a copy of this book about the history of interactive fiction!

Find out how to reserve your copy now!

The book features

• 650 pages and over 200,000 words of text game history
• Extensively researched in a multi-year project
• Professionally offset printed with quality paper and ink
• For the hardback, a beautiful faux-leather and foil-stamped cover
• A lengthy introduction on the pre-history of digital text games, including fascinating early experiments from the 1950s and 60s
• An introduction to each decade capturing larger trends and movements
• Custom maps and diagrams to reveal each game’s structure
• Extensive version and release histories for each game
• A full index and research bibliography
• Backer reward tiers with some awesome exclusive perks

If you’re planning to back, it would be AMAZING if you could make a pledge by end of day TODAY, of ANY amount. Projects with early backers get boosted in the Kickstarter system.

There are tons more specifics on the project on the crowdfunding page, including on the really cool backer rewards available. Thanks, and I hope you’ll consider joining me on this next phase of the journey!

— Aaron

In 1947, British inventors Freddie Williams and Tom Kilburn were playing around with newly invented CRTs (cathode ray tubes) which could use a scanning electron gun to light up individual phosphor dots. The technology would later become ubiquitous as the basis of the television set, but Williams and Kilburn had visions of using it to solve a problem with the earliest computers: how to store data. They thought if they used the electron gun to light up a grid of dots, then clamped a second device to the screen to read which of those dots were lit and unlit, they could make a self-perpetuating loop that would effectively be random-access memory stored in light: to know whether a particular bit was on or off, you just had to check whether the sensor at a particular x,y coordinate was detecting light.

At some point the pair realized the 32x32 grid of phosphor dots in their prototype (aiming to create 1024 bits of memory) could also be used to draw pictures, or spell words. There’s a low-res photograph online of the first known text they wrote for their device, spelling out its name (C.R.T. STORE).

For the 50 Years of Text Games book, I recreated this image of the earliest known screen text by redoing the grid of pixels as a vector graphic for hi-res output, then distorting and coloring it to approximate how it would have appeared on the round 4-inch prototype Williams-Kilburn tube — which is on display at the Computer History Museum in Mountain View, California:

Here’s the new image. A sidenote: the faint reflections on the glass below are actually taken from a different photograph I took of the real tube’s screen, so this is about as O.G. as you can get for a mockup:

Text had been stored digitally before this on ENIAC; text had been printed on teletypes by the earliest computers; but this might be the first time digital text was output to a screen. Is this the original pixel font? (The word “pixel,” by the way, descends from Williams & Kilburn’s referring to the individual dots they could light up as “picture elements.” Pretty cool!)

This story and lots more tidbits on the history of text on computers and interactive fiction can be found in my forthcoming book 50 Years of Text Games: From Oregon Trail to A.I. Dungeon — if you’re interested in this fascinating corner of digital history, please check it out!

A collectible book about the first half-century of interactive fiction. Deep dives into fifty text games from Zork to Trade Wars to Fallen London to Lifeline. Sign up to be notified on launch & join the adventure!

(You can also find out more details about the project on my Substack.)

It has come to my attention that a young woman claiming to be the author of my being has been making appearances under the name of Shelley Jackson. It seems you have even invited her to speak tonight, under the misapprehension that she exists, that she is something besides a parasite… May I say that I find this an extraordinary impertinence, and that if she would like to come forward, we shall soon see who is the author of whom.

Well? Well?

Very well.

I expect there are some of you who still think I am Shelley Jackson, author of a hypertext about an imaginary monster, the patchwork girl Mary Shelley made after her first-born ran amok. No, I am the monster herself, and it is Shelley Jackson who is imaginary…

Continue reading at the home of my new blog series, “50 Years of Text Games.”

Continue reading at the home of my new blog series, “50 Years of Text Games.”

Continue reading at the home of my new blog series, “50 Years of Text Games.”

the famous school where grown-up girls are transformed into schoolgirls. …Now you can find out for yourself as you guide Trixie Trinian through the classrooms, corridors and secret places of the strangest school ever — to uncover

THE SECRET OF ST. BRIDE’S

“Not so much a programme more a way of life,” the text below helpfully clarified. While not entirely apparent, this was an ad for an adventure game. Sending £5.95 to “St. Bride’s School, Burtonport, County Donegal, Ireland” would get you a cassette tape for your Spectrum 48K containing a text adventure written, according to its label, by “the Games Mistresses.”

Continue reading at the home of my new blog series, “50 Years of Text Games.”