The last six months have been a blur of crunching for Spring Thing. I’ll never enter two games in an event again, that’s for sure! But now that things have settled down, it’s time to do a bit of catch-up at Gold Machine.
Next up is Leather Goddesses of Phobos, a game I truly love.
As a comment, I’ve long wished that these threads could inspire discussion of the games. I don’t expect conversation to necessarily be about my essays. I just think they’re fun to talk about.
Woohoo I’ve caught up with Gold Machine!
Very nice! I saw that you had some Trinity posts on BlueSky.
But enough about me. Glad Gold Machine is back. But it was gone for a good cause. I liked your Spring Thing entries very much, especially Marbles.
Woo! LGOP! This is definitely my favourite Infocom game. The puzzles, I don’t know, they seem to form this big whole where everything along the way is just plain fun. And there are some surprisingly clever puzzles, like the canal.
It is a very nice puzzle game, and some of the jokes work too.
The polemic of it all really gets on my nerves, though. He’s trying too hard to own the prudes.
If I recall correctly, TAME mode wasn’t even tested properly. But who’s going to find those bugs?
Also, this is a hugely influential game. Counterfeit Monkey wouldn’t even exist without it.
The T-remover! It’s like Counterfeit Monkey was built entirely on the concept of that puzzle! I think it’s also the first game (at least I was aware of) with a “portable hole” - a cartoonish concept of a doorway you can carry around and then drop and jump through.
Also a rare game with an in-universe diegetic choice of PC gender.
Scott Adams actually did the portable hole first, though in a sufficiently confusing way that I’m not sure that was actually the intent.
But yeah, the T-remover was the explicit inspiration for Counterfeit Monkey as a whole; there’s an homage to the original in the Bureau’s museum.
I haven’t really thought about this before, but with hindsight it is apparent how a healthy attitude of wanting to “own the prudes” in impressionable young men can slip into “do sexism to own the prudes,” and eventually “do sexual harassment to own the prudes,” or worse.
The thing is, you can tell Meretzy wasn’t really leaning into the “lewd” thing. It’s camp, not sexy.
I played LGOP when I was sixteen, and I didn’t think it was actually horny. I mean, there’s a low bar there.
I distinctly remember the T-remover. The first thing I tried it on was the rabbit and I laughed so hard at the response that I remember LGOP for this moment alone. I’ve never laughed so much in any other game. (I must get around to playing ‘Counterfeit Monkey’ one of these days. My current game has a monkey, but he ain’t counterfeit.)
I’d forgotten about the black hole. I was thinking of using this idea in one of my own games, but it was inspired by Coco the Clown and Felix the Cat. Now, it’s no longer an original idea. Bummer.