Listening to the Mathbrush episode, isn’t one of the more notable games with participation from a serious author in the commercial era Mindwheel? In terms of people discovering IF circa 2009, could
in 2010 introduced at least some people to IF?
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In Episode 34 we wade into “Is Gremlins a Christmas movie?” discourse (yes, because its text adventure is a Christmas game), taking on A Spell Of Christmas Ice and the curiously British adaptation of Hollywood blockbuster Gremlins: The Adventure.
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In this episode, you get to delve further into the lore of my BoffinCore upbringing.
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Lots of guests!
Some hosts!
Visible Zorker news!
How Sierra / Lucasarts lulz were defeated in the marketplace!
And more in our year-end chatisode!
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Thanks for keeping us posted on all the fun you’ve had throughout the year. Here’s hoping 2026 is as good!
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It was fun!
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I should have used “Pronunciations of glulx!” in the lead.
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I always pronunced it gee-lul-x…
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I’m just sad that the noise filter ate my pronunciation in the recording!
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We play the oldest and the newest-surviving variants of the original text adventure known simply as Zork. The 1977 edition Zork-285 and the 1990 (!) release of Mini-Zork are the featured games in Episode 36 of The Retro Adventurers.
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Thank you for playing Zork 285. As you probably know there are a couple of different iterations of the zork devolopment on the MIT tapes, some as binaries and some as MDL source. I once had the ambition to make a Z-version of all the intermediade stages, but I have not come around to it (yet…).
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Right, I keep meaning to update my Infocom catalog with the versions of MIT Zork that aren’t there yet…
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Thank you for doing all this fascinating archaeology! Jason sent me the ZZAP64 edition early in 2025, and asked me to pick an old one. I dug through the archive of muddle versions, found your restoration project for the 285 edition, and realised we simply had to do “Youngest and Oldest Zork Versions” as the show format.
We had these recordings in the can since July, and I later met @larsbrinkhoff via some LINC history work that formed my capstone project for a Public History MA. He informed me that my guess about the five-letter-ism in Z285 was close (It was indeed a way to fit the strings in a single 36-bit machine word) but not for the reasons I had guessed: it’s actually 35 bits of 7-bit ASCII, getting you five characters. I had assumed all this time that it was using 6-bit text internally!
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Further to my thread here: Jacaranda Jim: Anyone worked out how to get 100% or close to?
I don’t suppose you guys from the podcast can help at all? Thanks either way!
Further to my thread here: Jacaranda Jim: Anyone worked out how to get 100% or close to?
I don’t suppose you can help at all, as you did an episode on Jacaranda Jim recently? Thanks either way!
(Sorry, I couldn’t work out how to reply to two people at once, if that’s possible. So that’s why there are two separate replies.)
(No need to reply twice: we both follow this thread with full notifications!)
We’ve asked our co-hosts if any of them have done this, as Ben in particular grew up with this series and it was his suggestion for the show. I wasn’t on that episode, and didn’t do much more than poke at it briefly via an online emulator!
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Ah, sorry I misunderstood one of your earlier posts where you talked about the episode bringing up some of your history or something, so I assumed you were involved. Sorry about that!
Ah, I think that was in response to the Gremlins/Christmas Ice episode!
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Ron Martinez (Star Trek: The Promethean Prophecy, Hidden Agenda, Star Trek: TNG - The Transinium Challenge, Make Your Own Murder Party, etc.) returns for an expanded discussion of everything from the works of Vladimir Nabokov to generative AI in modern storytelling. Special guest Dave V. from This Week in Retro again joins Jason and Nick for this new episode. Available now on all podcast platforms.
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The 2025 chatisode sessions were a lot of fun, and really felt more like an online Interactive Fiction conference this year!
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