Hi folks,
did any of you see the last episode of “Halt and catch fire”. It was named “Adventure” and had a lot of references to the original game by Will Crowther (including famous words like (Xyzzy, Plugh, Plover or Fee Fie Foe Foo). Very funny watching and even more funny when you know all the insider jokes.
Jens
I stopped watching after the first episode. Wasn’t 80’s enough for me.
I enjoyed the Adventure reference, but I must admit, this show continues to fall further and further below my expectations. The characters are all dislikable, the drama is convoluted and there’s not enough '80s in it! But otherwise, it’s great. 
So I am now several episodes behind in my viewing and I’m not sure I’m gonna catch up.
They actually released a version of the text game on their website.
Hm. Direct port of the Fortran version, not Inform. Running server-side?
It looks like it. I’m surprised they didn’t go with Inform/Parchment, but I suppose this one is more faithful to the original in some respects (e.g. you can use XYZZY before going to the Debris Room).
I like the integrated hints. Maybe this makes it the right time for me to finally really try out this old classic.
They didn’t just make reference to ‘Adventure’ on Halt and Catch Fire. They went much, much further than that…
[spoiler]In an episode focusing on the game basically taking over the office and destroying productivity (which may count as the only accurate part of this portrayal), they use the game as the inspiration for their most ‘brilliant’ programmer to come up with an idea for an entire operating system based on the command line interface. Not only do they (1) completely ignore that this is exactly what computer interfaces of the era already did, but they (2) talk about the idea as if it were a stroke of genius unglimpsed by anyone else around, (3) make it sound like the computer would actually be holding a text-based conversation with you ‘just like’ in Adventure, which no one who ever actually tried to solve it would ever describe that way, (4) make a ‘brilliant’ programmer be the one to describe Adventure this way, (5) (and most unforgivably) act as if simply stating your desires to a computer in plain English and having it answer intelligently, has not been the explicit central unattainable Holy Grail of computer interface design ever since even before Star Trek made it the default fantasy regarding computer interfaces in 1966.
The ignorance it took to write this stuff is astounding, and preposterous. But hey I’m enjoying the hell out of it anyway. The show is not that bad. The female lead seems a bit too socially superfluent and sexually uninhibited to have plausibly spent 95% of her free time cloistered in a room attaining the topmost levels of nerd brilliance in coding (no I’m not saying it’s impossible - just not the usual relatively introverted coder type), but y’know… what else is new? It’s Hollywood.[/spoiler]
Edited to Add: Spoiler tag
Note: Subsequent episodes of Halt and Catch Fire have had them not completely ignoring the pre-existence of the command-line interface the way they did in the first half. There is an attempt to give the character Gordon the perspective of engineering reality (and actual awareness of history), but there is also an attempt to balance that by making the idea of a question-and-answer text interface in 1984 seem like a brilliant idea glimpsed before its time and ignored by lost-in-the-trees hardware engineers, which, as I explained in the more spoiler-heavy section above, is simply ludicrous. The question-and-answer interface idea proposed is just plain stupid for 1984 (heck it’s not even a particularly great idea, today, when we can do it ‘right’), as everyone with any knowledge whatsoever back then would have clearly perceived.
I separate all this however from my appreciation of the drama, which has been great. I really do enjoy this show despite having been quite technically fluent in every device I could get my hands on throughout the '80s and thus being able to detect every iota of bullshit being disseminated. I also love Breaking Bad despite having read a rant by a real drug dealer of its complete confabulated mythology regarding behind-the-scenes drug culture.
All fiction is woefully inaccurate to someone who approaches expertise. One needs to separate the having of knowledge superior to that of narrative artists in a field, from the act of enjoying a piece of entertainment. If possible. As long as the story achieves some kind of suspense. I do not forgive writerly incompetence in what is supposed to be a -writer’s- area of expertise: keeping me interested in experiencing more.
I’m necro’ing this thread … not just more than a decade after it began, but also nearly a decade after the series finished its run.
A Review With Massive Spoilers
HCAF ended up airing four seasons, and text adventures, games, etc., turned out to be a significant plot beat in Cameron’s career and character development.
By the second season, Cameron has moved on from her failed conversational user interface. She’s running an MMO, Community, which is the in-universe equivalent to LucasArts’ Habitat, and it has a built-in text adventure. By the end of the third season, she’s lost all of what she’s made and is making independent games from her bedroom.
The overarching theme and question is whether Cameron is really connecting to people through her work.
She tries really hard to do this — first with failed the conversational UI, which Joe blames her for falling in love with. Then she tries to build a group of friends and colleagues around her Community MMO, but she loses it all as she’s ousted from the company as she refuses to go public in an IPO.
Ironically, her critical failure, Pilgrim, is the one game that actually has an impact on another character. The game’s simple portrayal of a parent meeting its hits Donna, Cameron’s former co-CEO hard, because she’s having troubles with her kids post-divorce. And that ultimately helps Donna and Cameron repair their broken relationship as the series draws to a close.
Connection as the Main Theme
Connection is a pretty explicit theme throughout the series, especially by season 3. I’m just looking at it through the lens of one character, but there is a bigger question.
And the question is – are all of these dysfunctional people with broken relationships locking themselves in their garages, luxury apartments, Airstream trailers, etc. actually building groundbreaking and influential things, or are they just creating individual sanctuaries? Are they just slipping deeper into their idiosyncrasies?
There’s a sleight of hand here. At first glance, the main cast is scripted to be revolutionaries, while Microsoft, Apple, etc are just throwaway references and footnotes. But by the end of the series it’s clear that these characters are nobodies who failed at everything commercially and their careers. Their final project loses out to Yahoo!, meaning that the only impact that the main characters had was on each other. (“Friends we made along the way” meme goes here.)
Why I Recommend It
While the tech stories and personal drama of HCAF are both strong pulls, I’d recommend watching through the series if you agonize over creativity and the influence of your work on people.
The writers can sometimes rely too much on massive plot jumps, but IMO the show has great character-based plot progression when it comes to the core cast.
The general opinion is that the series got stronger as it went on, but I think season 2 is the strongest. Maybe that’s because I saw most of season 2 in reruns around 2017-2018 and so I have some light nostalgia for it.
I also see Cameron as the main character of the show, which is debatable, but she’s certainly the main character of season 2. It’s also the only season to not have epilogue episodes. I think it’s the most substantial season, but that’s just me.
Boy, it’s more than 11 years since I started this thread???
Well, but as Parjeter wrote I can still recommend the show today (did a rewatch last year).