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Comment by kianryan | Hacker News Reader

Infocom adventure games are some of the grand-daddy's of text adventures.

Zork is by far the most well known, but also pretty infamous are Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy, Leather Godesses' of Phobos and A Mind Forever Voyaging.

As a warm-up, I'd recommend Moonmist. It's a mystery game listed as a "Beginner" game, and is great for introducing elements of the Infocom system.

The feelies are available to view here: https://gallery.guetech.org/greybox.html

There are a collection of game files here: https://eblong.com/infocom/

My preferred player is still Frotz. It compiles and runs on practically anything, my Psion, my Pis, Windows, everything.

https://gitlab.com/DavidGriffith/frotz

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> feelies

This is a term we're going to have to explain to the younger generation: when games were shipped in boxes, those contained at minimum a disc and a printed manual, but some companies came up with gimmick items you could put in the box and "feel", to enhance your immersion in the game.

I still have my Ultima 6 "moonstone" and cloth map somewhere.

They also sometimes included essentially proto-copy protection, e.g. you need this decoder wheel to solve some puzzle--which of course worked a lot better pre-Web.

A lot of the original packaging could be rather unique generally but eventually they ended up standardizing for retail shelving.

I still love the wheel and manuals of SSI Gold Box games. Apparently there wasn't enough space for all those texts so the games guide you to read say Page 31 for a certain long dialog.

I actually think it gives a lot of immersion than modern day AAA games.

I actually am from the box/manual generation and never heard it called 'feelies'.. I remember to register some games i would have to look up charts or keys in the manual, or on page numbers

IIRC 'feelies' was a term coined at Infocom by Brian Moriarty for the extra gewgaws that wound up in the boxes. I don't think the term was used much elsewhere in the industry, even though it did become part of the general gamer vernacular at the time.

I should ask some of the other Infocom folks one of these days. I imagine one of them remember.

It's sad that game publishers don't do it anymore since I don't know when. Everything goes online nowadays. Boring.

Actually, there are a LOT of 'collector's edition' versions of physical games from publishers like Limited Run, Super Rare, and iam8bit. Check out this Cuphead package, for example:

https://www.iam8bit.com/collections/collectors-editions/prod...

Now, for many of us, they are prohibitively expensive, but they are available.

You are right. They are indeed very expensive.

That particular example is above the typical price, I think, but they're certainly called collector's editions for a reason. It's a shame, but I suspect the majority are purchased and left unopened.

Loved my Peril Sensitive Sunglasses from HHGTTG

I recall this being a term in paper-age SF, a fututristic trope of what mass entertainment might become. A “feely” was a sort of movie that involved touch. It was almost always described somewhat disapprovingly, as a sign of future decadence.

It was in Brave New World, and I think originated there. The Feelies are also a jangle-rock band.

Oh, so that’s it. I couldn’t recall which one.

Planetfall is another by the same author as Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy, Leather Godesses of Phobos and A Mind Forever Voyaging. AMFV doesn't get the love it deserves. It is more about real interactive fiction than puzzle solving. Hitchhiker's is enticing but pretty difficult--not as big an issue perhaps these days as it's so easy to "cheat" if you get stuck as opposed to calling the author :-)

Trinity is another good one. As is The Lurking Horror--set at a thinly-veiled MIT campus where many of the authors were from.

Planetfall Enchanter Trilogy Starcross (took place inside a space station -- map was wrap-around) Suspended was harder but definitely very good

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