YOU SEE A BOARDED-UP HOUSE TO THE WEST

Peter Gabriel is working on a Myst game. Poor Peter, but his last album did kinda suck, so maybe he needs the money. I never could get into Myst. It struck me as a pretentious slide show with obscure puzzles. Which reminds me. I was poking through my hard drive and found my collection of old Infocom games. Talk about old skool. Before you had your fancy Nintendos and Segas, there was Infocom. I used to spend hours in front of my old Apple IIe, slowly typing out commands like PUT BABEL FISH IN EAR or KILL GNU WITH CROWBAR. i was always bugging my dad to get me the latest Infocom adventure when they came out. And then, a couple months later, the hint book with the invisible ink clues. I think I liked them because even though they were text-based games, they were so well-written that I could clearly see those places in my mind’s eye. When I look at them now, it’s with a mixture of nostalgia and respect. Games are a thousand times more sophisticated today, but I’ve rarely been immersed in them like I was when I was twelve, bathed in the green glow of a monitor and making friends with a robot named Floyd.