The Retro Adventurers
Explore classic text adventure games from legendary publishers and authors including Magnetic Scrolls, Level 9, Infocom, Scott Adams, and Interplay. A podcast for fans of GET LAMP, Eaten By a Grue, The Classic Adventurer, Renga In Blue, and Quest For Clues. Follow us on your favorite podcast app, and keep the conversations going on Facebook and Bluesky.
Episodes
Get ready to type out every letter in "dodecahedron"!
Nick, Jason, and Ben play two games steeped in math, science, and trippy physics in this episode. Beyond the Tesseract by David Lo is the appetizer course, a game originally designed in TRS-80 Level II BASIC, then ported to C and published on a variety of platforms before later being reimplemented in Inform 6 by Andrew Plotkin. A self-professed "abstract adventure", you'll have ...
WE'VE GOT TEXT ADVENTURE SIGN!!
Ben, Jason, and Nick stooge their way through two comedy games. First up is the 1993 Matt Barringer "classic" Detective as put (unofficially) through the wringer of the Mystery Science Theater 3000 crew by CE Forman and a collection of subsequent riffers. One player was (and remains) completely baffled by this format in which a man and two robots are forced to watch a bad movie (slash play a bad game...
Ben, Jason, and Nick set sail for adventures new and old on this episode, starting with 10 CAVE ADVENTURE, so named for the number of BASIC lines making up its entire codebase. They then head to the Commodore VIC-20 for a crack at Young Arthur's Quest before journeying to the not-so-long-ago 2021 release Captain Cutter's Treasure, a neo-retro style adventure created in the PunyInform system.
Ben, Jason, and special guest Dave "Velociraptor" of This Week in Retro take on a double dose of robot-themed games. First up is Souls of Darkon by Andy Walker, published by Taskset and Bug-Byte for Amstrad CPC, Spectrum, and Commodore 64. The robot "Komputa" aids the player on their quest to combat a variety of dread evil forces.
For the main course we take on Epyx's text adventure adaptation of Isaac Asimov's novel The Robots of ...
Creator of games including Hadean Lands, Spider and Web, and Shade, as well as a long-time maintainer of Inform and participant in Interactive Fiction Technology Foundation (IFTF) leadership, Andrew "Zarf" Plotkin was also a teenager once. And back then he wrote Inhumane, as covered in Episode 27.
Jason and Nick welcome him to the program discuss the creation of Inhumane, the evolution of his work as a participant in the modern int...
All the way back in Episode 1 we promised to play Level 9's Knight Orc. Ben and Jason chip away at that obligation by playing... the first of three independent-load sections of the game. (We're working on it!) They do their best to navigate the aptly-named "KAOS" engine and assemble rope. (So much rope.)
But first, a clearout of news and listener mail, and a visit to the wry parody of Infidel, Andrew Plotkin's Inhumane. The game is...
Ben and Jason take on the text adventure distillations of two uniquely British phenomena.
First up is the "prolific musical innovator" genre with Number 9 Software's Beatle Quest, a psychedelic trip into lots and lots of Beatle song concepts and name-checking.
For the main course, the duo explore the "slobs in space" phenomenon through the storytelling of shareware highlight Jacaranda Jim by modern-day InfoSec celebrity Graham Clul...
Tim Gilberts is back for another rummage through the magazine rack, this time with Jason and Dave. We pull a corporate newsletter and three full-length issues, all from the 1982-1984 period.
We look at the first (and only?) newsletter put out by Spinnaker sub-brand Trillium (later Telarium), browse through the general-interest UK mag Personal Computer Games and compare it to a similar American counterpart, Computer Gaming World, be...
Peter Golden, author of Sherlock Holmes: Another Bow and a key figure in Bantam Software's Living Literature series joins us for a conversation about his work in text adventures and subsequent work as a novelist.
For this roundup of Sherlock Holmes adventures from the 1980s, Ben and Jason call in an expert: Sherlockian playwright Christian Neuhaus, co-creator of You've Ruined a Perfectly Good Mystery. The trio of amateur sleuths take on the three major commercial releases in chronological order.
First up is Sherlock from Melbourne House, written in the same "Inglish" system that powered The Hobbit... and with many of the same strengths and ...
POW! KABOOM! KWAH!
Dave and Jason explore two 1980s text adventures pulled from the world of comic books! (At the time, comics were just one of many forms of narrative expression and not the dominant storytelling platform as they are this century.)
First up it's Redhawk from Melbourne House, which experiments with text/graphics adventure presentation by building a three-panel comic on-screen based on player input. Can you, as mild-...
🎂It’s our first birthday!🎂Enjoy an anniversary celebration with all the hosts and minimal editing!
Founder Ben holds a contest of Retro Adventurers knowledge–who will reign supreme? How many countries have at least one download per episode? Who will be named the Seven of Nine of text adventure podcasting? Will the boys have a polite conversation about expanding to other genres or will chairs fly?
Thank you for listening to our fi...
Dave and Jason confront a double dose of terrifying terrors! First up is the RamJam Corporation's Valkyrie 17, a Cold War thriller set in a pseudonymous Eastern Bloc nation, boasting excellent off-screen production values but some quirky on-screen choices. The title was originally published for ZX Spectrum and Commodore 64, with a Windows update released more recently.
Then we travel to South America for the so-close-to-the-origina...
Ben occupies the throne, attended by minions Jason and Nick this episode to plumb the depths of the text adventure archives. In the featured spot is the Phoenix/Topologika title Monsters of Murdac by Dr. Jonathan Partington (Episodes #12 and #16), a punishingly creative game. Up first, however, is the 1991 disk magazine SAM Coupé Adventure Club #1 and its featured free game... the toilet-escape simulator Behind Closed Doors by "Bal...
Iain Lee, "an old bloke who was popular in the Nineties" as well as counsellor, broadcaster, and I'm a Celebrity survivor joins Dave and Jason this episode. They discuss Tolkien sendup Bored of the Rings by Fergus McNeill and the Mark Data classic Calixto Island. Iain shares his love for the Dragon 32, memories of sneaking text adventure time on school BBC Micros, and Experienced Media Professional Image Advice with Jason.
Jason, Nick, and the returning Tim Gilberts of Gilsoft dig into the magazines of the 1970s and 1980s that chronicled the rise of text adventures!
We look at two of the most significant Stateside issues of the early commercial period, the November 1979 issue of Creative Computing with a full (and unusual) implementation of Colossal Cave Adventure, and the December 1980 BYTE with articles by Dave Lebling, Jon Freeman, and of course o...
Jason and Dave welcome classic text adventure author Jonathan Partington to the program. While studying at Cambridge University, he created and contributed to several memorable games including Avon (featured in Episode 12), Crobe, Sangraal, Fyleet, Monsters of Murdac, and Spy Snatcher.
We discuss how Jonathan got hooked into text adventures, how the pipeline between Cambridge mainframe creations and the broader commercial market wo...
Our first three-player episode since the premiere pits Ben, Jason, and Nick against challenges that span millennia! Learn the intricacies of long-lost Earth military law as Joe Justin fights for freedom in Avalon Hill's G.F.S. Sorceress before traveling way back to King Arthur's England in Level 9's Lancelot. Robots, colored objects, and companion knights (so, so many companion knights) stand ready to assist!
Dave and Jason return to the pioneering Artic Adventure series with Ship of Doom (Adventure C) before plunging into a fantasy world on the brink in The Dark Crystal by Sierra, licensed from Henson Associates and representing the very last example of Roberta Williams' parser game design.
The Dark Crystal manual and short story
The Dark Crystal on SierraGamers
Holiday merriment! All the hosts! Return special guests! Minimal editing!
Retro Adventurers Dave, Jason, Nick, and founder Ben(!) chat about the year that was, later joined by Scott Adams (Episode 3) and Tim Gilberts (Episode 5)!
Hear about Tim Gilberts' Heathkit, Scott Adams' next professional moves, adventures in ADABAS / Natural, and a long-overdue callback to the Clarion Beauty Computer!
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