The Joy of Stacks 23/11/25 – Where else would arms go? | Spin to not win | Sunday papers
The Parser Knows
I really, really want to get into text adventures. Really.
I have briefly fumbled about with one or two. Tried things, got misunderstood, started typing in swear words. A bit like most of my relationships. I played a little Hobbit on the ZX Spectrum, I played a bit of Ooze on the ST. I got absolutely nowhere near completing or even making decent progress in either. I’m not sure where or when this little itch, this knot of unfulfilled something began burrowing into my psyche, but it sure is getting annoying. It might have something to do with the two rather evocative bookend scenes from Big. You know the movie. The film where a kid makes a wish to be big and becomes Forrest Gump. The one with the chopsticks piano bit in FAO Schwarz. The one that makes you feel really uncomfortable by including a sex scene between a woman and a prepubescent teen (albeit with a grown man’s visage).
Here’s the bit I’m talking about:
Little Tom can’t solve the puzzle at the beginning, but when he comes back from his adult adventures, he rinses it. It’s an allegory or something.
(By the way, Little Tom’s game isn’t a real game, but has been made playable by someone with far too much talent and far too much time on their hands.)
Another formative experience that may have an influence on my misty-eyed, unrequited love of text adventures involves some of my earliest video game memories. Like many primary schools in the early eighties, my school was home to many BBC Micros. Upon these black, red and beige marvels could be played two games: The first was Granny’s Garden, an edutainment graphical adventure game with text elements and the second was Podd, which was not really a game, but more of an interactive toy where you could type in verbs to see if the weird on-screen alien guy could do them. ‘Pod can explode’ was particularly fun with the BBC’s extremely loud built in speaker.
So, back to the issue at hand: my text adventuring, or lack of it. I need your help before I take my first tentative steps. I have a couple of questions for you:
Which game should I start with? It should be accessible, a shining example of the genre and above all else, it should be fun.
How should I play it? On original hardware? With original disk and feelies? Via MiSTer? Or using a modern interpreter like Spatterlight? Some of those options are inexpensive and accessible, but one in particular is very expensive and quite inconvenient, but I am prepared to go to such lengths to penetrate the world of text adventures, dear reader.
I look forward to hearing your advice. Oh, but make sure it’s expressed in this form:
<verb> <noun>to ensure that I can parse it.
The Sunday Papers
Gears of Games played Atax. It’s a game for people who love shoot ‘em ups with tiny little sprites that move too quickly to hit. What do you mean ‘that’s no one’?
Atari Basement played Midwinter. This is a game I’ve been meaning to play for the longest time. Want to watch Captain John Stark snipe a snowmobile? Of course you do!
Pete is playing Space Rogue. And he’s going all the way, the mad bastard.
This week’s Joy of Sticks videos
Use your Side Arms, you fool, not your front arms!
Now Side Arms was an interesting one! The screenshots look absolute garbo, but look past those please, for here is a horizontal shoot ‘em up that is controlled by mouse. See, the arcade original has three fire buttons: one to shoot left, one to shoot right and one to cycle through the different weapons on offer. Using the mouse allows you to scoot about the playfield with never before seen 360 degree accuracy, and the dual buttoned nature of the mouse means you have a button for each fire direction. Unprecedented levels of control! (We will ignore the usual annoyance of space bar reacharound for weapon swap)
Forgotten Controls
Speaking of interesting controls for arcade conversions, here’s a game at the other end of the spectrum. The brown end. Graphics? Noice. Sound? Noice. Animation? Noice. User experience? Garbo. Another game in the ‘so very nearly good, but not actually good’ category of arcade conversions.
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