Newsletter on retro text adventures: >Remember

Hi all,
I don’t recall having announced it here, but I am starting a monthly newsletter on retro text adventures, that I named >REMEMBER.

In it, I will talk about my current projects and news in that field, and also give an exclusive long-form article. For instance, this month’s article is on Sierra’s first game in France; next month will be on a more technical topic (and maybe i’ll alternate history and technical things; there will also be at some point post-mortem things on Tristam Island).

I’m sending it every 10th of the month, so the first issue is tomorrow! Signup here: http://www.hlabrande.fr/remember

Thanks!

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The first three issues have been sent, which includes:
#1 - The French translation of Mystery House
#2 - Text compression in Infocom games
#3 - Portraits of 15 women who contributed to the 80s text adventure scene

My subscriber count is still growing so I probably still haven’t reached everyone I can reach :slight_smile: You can subscribe at hlabrande.fr/remember, then open the welcome email in a browser and click on “View past issues”.

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Thanks, I read the latest issue with interest - especially the women in text adventures article. The story of St Bride’s is a fascinating cultural nugget that I was previously unaware of, despite having read seemingly every page of Wikipedia (I must have missed that one).

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I signed up and got one “subscription confirmed” and one “Thanks for signing up” letter but none of them contained a link to past issues. Am I to expect more mail or am I missing the link somewhere?

EDIT: Nevermind, I found it…

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I sent Issue #5 today, which means it’s a good time to up this thread :slight_smile:

#4: a tutorial for Moiki.fr, the amazingly intuitive new tool for creating branching fiction (and rven export it to inform 6!) that’s under everyone’s radar here :wink:
#5: a master list of 72 platforms that can run a Z-Machine interpreter, with links and helpful info to set most up!

Enjoy!

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Issue #8 is out! The last 3 issues were on:

Issue #6: A brief history of French text adventures
Issue #7: Horror in text adventures
Issue #8: Making browser-based retro text adventures with Inform and Vorple

Available at Remember Newsletter ; sign up, then open the welcome email in a browser, and click “past issues” :slight_smile: Thanks for everyone’s support!

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I’m glad to see something like this, disappointed I didn’t check the project announcements earlier, and glad there’ve already been 8 issues, so it is not a flash in the pan! I subscribed.

Like Henrik, I was initially unable to find a link to past issues. Are they available? Am I missing something obvious?

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As mentioned…

This newsletter is basically a year old! Here are the topics for the last 4 articles:
Issue #9: an interview with Juanjo Muñoz on Spanish text adventures
Issue #10: saving and restoring, from a technical perspective
Issue #11: a few ideas of “de-makes” that need to happen
Issue #12: how to build a Z-machine which outputs text on a thermal printer

I’m particularly proud of today’s article, which is a DIY project! I might even post the article publicly at some point :smiley:

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There’s an update on m4zvm

I managed to kill Mrs Dunbar. Awesome! Infocom didn’t usually let you do that!
I must try this on a real machine (the game, not killing) :slight_smile:

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Just to add: you need to open it in the right browser. I tried this on my phone first and didn‘t find the past issues, neither.
… because the past issues button isn‘t there on my phone (iPhone SE, Safari Browser). Perhaps a matter of screen size.
On my desktop there is this button available!
Hope it helps

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Glad you are enjoying it! Looking at the date of this post, I’ve made quite some updates since then which will provide numerous speed and feature improvements. As of this writing, the current version is Release 10B.

Feel free to let me know if you’ve got any feedback or questions on M4ZVM.

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I just sent Issue #16 - yep, still going strong! If you’d like to keep tabs on the retro text adventure scene (new games, remakes, new tools, etc.), and if you want one monthly article a month, subscribe at hlabrande.fr/remember :wink:

The last 4 issues were on:
Issue #13: Old and new translations of retro text adventures
Issue #14: Digging through Quill games (finding themes and patterns in the texts of hundreds of Quilled games)
Issue #15: A look at the history of German text adventures
Issue #16: Adaptations of book/movies in text adventure format

You can read all these articles by subscribing, then clicking the “past issues” button that is found when opening the email in a browser! Thanks for your interest :slight_smile:

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I announced a couple of weeks ago that this newsletter was ending, but never made a formal announcement here :slight_smile:

Issues 17 (an interview with Chris Ainsley) and 18 (the new Inform 7 and retro text adventures) were the last ones for this newsletter! I was starting to run out of ideas and have less time available / need to rebalance things in my life. I hope you’ve enjoyed the newsletter while it lasted, for the past 18 months! :slight_smile:

For posterity, I am uploading the 18 articles and the 18 newsletters (which contained community news on retro and neo-retro text adventures) to the IFArchive, with a copy hosted on my website. I hope you enjoy reading them!

Thanks for your interest and readership; there were several hundred subscribers to this newsletter, which was awesome and more than I anticipated! If you want to keep in touch, I’m still lurking around here, or you can find me on Twitter, where I’ll give updates on my upcoming text adventure for retro computers, The Depths of Time, whenever I have made more progress on it :slight_smile:

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