Yeah, I’m aware of it. But you are right, some readers haven’t played AMFV or other Infocom titles. So they can’t know what we are talking about. Well, Infocom had texts on paper that introduced the game to the player, often placing important little infos in it. (Because that made playing illegal copies without that text not impossible but harder.)
The box contained (beside floppy disk and bespoken text) a feelie. Could be a map iirc, or could be glasses (do I remember that correctly,?)
But I don’t know if every Infocom game had a paper text and a feelie.
I feel like these items are being undersold a bit. The materials shipped with Infocom games were a way to overcome the limitations of games at the time, both in terms of actual data storage as well as presentation challenges (visuals, images, and what not). Jimmy Maher explores this subject a great deal in his essays on Deadline and the Wheatley Crime Dossiers. I don’t know what Deadline is without the feelies; I woudn’t recognize it.
The only games that came with nothing but instructions were the original folio releases of Zorks I, II, and III (folio is any game before Infocom standardized on the famous “gray box.”). Here’s info on the other folios:
Deadline: a ton of stuff related to the crime, police documentation and such. Technically not needed to solve the mystery (for Jason Dyer, anyway). Added a lot to the experience! The manual included commands that players would not try on their own, making for a “soft” copy protection.
Starcross: the big attraction was the “saucer” container, which is very expensive today! Included a “space map” that served as copy protection. It also had vibes.
Suspended: In addition to a very cool box (that remains expensive), included a map with tokens for keeping track of where the robots were. Like Deadline, the manual contained some commands that players would not try, this was a sort of “soft” copy protection.
The Witness: contained several “cool” items that helped create a period atmosphere. None were “hard” copy protection.
Planetfall: Included tons of fun goodies like postcards. All to add to worldbuilding–no copy protection involved.
Enchanter: the main attraction is its lovely, die-cut box. Still no “hard” copy protection, though the verb “reach” may be hard to guess without the manual.
Infidel: essential character development for the unlikable protagonist. Materials to help with decoding the glyphs.
Sorcerer: a rather extravagant “infotater” that was both enjoyable as well as providing “hard” copy protection.
Seastalker: an incredibly generous package meant to give a “gee whiz” experience to young players. Some hard copy protection.
After Seastalker, Infocom standardized on the gray box. Those are findable at MoCAGH (the above links) or the very convenient Infocom Documentation Project.. I wrote about that transition at my blog, Gold Machine. In fact, I write about packaging as an essential part of every Infocom game. I do this for two reasons. One, I just feel that it matters. Two, I write about audience reception, which considers every aspect of experiencing a text. If packaging is part of that experience, I write about it.
I was very excited to learn that people had preserved Infocom documentation with high-quality scans! The documentation that came with the Lost Treasures was of poor quality: grainy Xeroxes. The documentation that comes with commercial releases of the Zork games is the same, isn’t it? We’re fortunate that the community has taken such pains to care for these important artifacts of gaming history.
Whether intended as copy protection or not, it certainly had that effect. That’s why I had almost no relationship with Infocom games as a kid – except for Suspended, all Infocom games I had were pirate copies! That made them impenetrable to me.
PS - I realise the phenomenon I just described is sort of ‘my fault’, but ‘Don’t copy that floppy’ was still about a decade away.
PPS - Don’t Copy That Floppy being an American thing, and me being Australian, I never heard of it until I was an adult. But that makes it a neat mirror of my story about not having much to do with Infocom games until I was an adult due to their feelies’ side-effect of making pirated copies of them hard to play.
While I’m sure it was not deliberate, the kajillion pirated copies of the zork trilogy games floating around must have done a good job of convincing people that they might not regret paying for Infocom games. It worked on me, at least, and for a few years I only wanted Infocom games for birthday and Christmas.
I spent a good deal of unpaid time with Enchanter, The Witness, and Planetfall, which didn’t require documentation to play. Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy also had no copy protection. Over the next few years, I asked for Sorcerer, Deadline, and Wishbringer, and definitely didn’t regret it. Sorcerer, rather deviously, let you play long enough to know that you wanted to pay for it.
>s
Library
This is a library, or rather it was until it was ransacked and despoiled. Most of the contents of the room have been burned in a huge bonfire in the center of the room. Hundreds of charred and empty tubes are scattered about, as if by someone searching, so ashes are strewn about. There are rat tracks in the ashes.
To the south you can hear the sound of a group of low, guttural voices.
Amid the tubes is an old and dusty book.
>follow tracks
There are plenty of rat tracks here, going in various directions. One prominent rodentine thoroughfare stands out though, going as it does into a small hole in the wall.
The low, guttural voices seem to be coming in your direction.
>reach in hole
You reach around for a moment and come up with something. It’s a frayed scroll.
The feelies and thick manual were a form of copy protection that meant you could mostly leave the disks unprotected. This allowed the customer to make backups. If you recall, the disk was accessed s lot during play and could easily wear out. Getting a replacement was tough before the internet.
Were you spurred on by any early success in any of them?
I think the first I had was Suspended, which we bought. In a sense, I didn’t understand it at all, but the atmosphere of the robots reporting on these people coming to shut me off always gave me the chills, which I loved. However, I don’t regard it as typical or good preparation for any other Infocom game, and I was barely dealing with it successfully on its own terms.
I probably next tried Zork III, Wishbringer and Hitchhiker’s, none bought. Though I was at least aware of Zork by then, Zork III was a brick wall for me. Wishbringer, I loved what I could see, but got stuck pretty quick, and I recall you need the manual for both info and to get your brain in the ballpark. Hitchhiker’s, no matter how popular, it remains that huge swathes of people say it was experienced as ultra hard (raises hand). Even though I’d watched the HGTTG TV series repeatedly; I know in retrospect that would not necessarily help.
In summary, Suspended didn’t prepare me or give me an early success, and I had none in any of the other games, sometimes because of the lack of the feelies, other times because of game hardness or because my brain never managed to get on their wavelength. I think we can safely say your @kamineko brain did.
Yeah, for sure. I had access to all three of the Zork games (pirated), and I think I did pretty well for a kid. Well enough to want more, anyway. I very nearly finished Zorks I and II, but two obstacles prevented it (bauble in Zork I and the “maze” in Zork II). Nevertheless, the many enjoyable hours I spent playing them made a believer of me. Zork III probably was a wavelength thing; the scoring system is weird and people either seem into it or not. I was appreciative of it. I was able to beat Enchanter without hints (and without owning it). I’d say I vibed with it from the start, in terms of the loop. It felt like a continuation of what I loved about Zork.
I love Suspended and played a ton of it with a pirated copy and no manual. I got nowhere, but I think the humor (and then the terror) and my genuine love of just poking things around made it feel worthwhile. I would make a more serious go at it in college, eventually getting a good score. But I can definitely see how that might not motivate you to try other Infocom games. Or even indicate what those games might be like.
HHGttG is overtuned, definitely. I think that’s the consensus. Meretzky is a rather affable puzzle designer, so the difficulty might have been the preference of Douglas Adams. Adams wanted to work with Mike Berlyn, because he was a tremendous fan of… Suspended.
If I look back, though, a big part of it was the polish and personality of the games. I played text games by other publishers, but there was something special about the Infocom games. C64 piracy was huge at my school and there were always a ton of games available, but the Infocom stuff stood out for me.