Adventure Gamers - Forums

I played text adventure Jinxter (1987) on my beloved Atari ST (best monitor ever!) I loved the pics, a novelty in those days, which purist IF fans could turn off. Not Magnetic Scroll’s best one, in my opinion. Most puzzles can be solved in more than one way. Sounds good? Not really, cause the player doesn’t know that. Something else players don’t know is that they need to solve all puzzles the hard way or they won’t be able to defeat the evil opponent.

Guess how you can cross a field with a fierce bull? Yes, correct, but that’s the easy way! 

Yeah, that too, but I think that came a couple of years later. They preferred their own imagination to the prefab pics in the game. I didn’t, I regarded it as an immersive and atmospheric innovation. But in 2014 I want IF games with an excellent parser and a story that grabs me. Puzzles and nice extras like music, pics, voices have become less important for me.

I’ve said it before, I’ll say it again. Text adventures have come a long way since Infocom (which always had the best ones IMO), Magnetic Scrolls and others. You can do simply anything with text. And that includes everything graphic adventures can do. Where’s Augustin Cordes when you need him… he can explain it so much better.

I’d shit my pants if I met such one bull in an open field (wait, I did once!). That bull DOESN’T slurp and munch on a cornflower, it’s looking for the best possible way to slurp and much on me.

diego - 13 July 2014 07:44 AM

I’d shit my pants if I met such one bull in an open field (wait, I did once!).

Please tell us the whole story!

That bull DOESN’T slurp and munch on a cornflower, it’s looking for the best possible way to slurp and much on me.

Heh, exactly. One more reason why I prefer game graphics to my own fantasy.

Karlok - 13 July 2014 07:56 AM

diego - 13 July 2014 07:44 AM

I’d shit my pants if I met such one bull in an open field (wait, I did once!).

Please tell us the whole story!

I can’t remember all the details, all I know is that I was wearing red shorts (since then, I do not think of “bulls get angry when they see red” as a stereotype at all ) and ran like hell across some fence when I saw him charging towards me (but perhaps he was only going to slurp and munch on some cornflowers he saw).

But I had a much more dangerous “rendezvous” with a cockerel, once. I barely escaped.

diego - 13 July 2014 08:10 AM

I can’t remember all the details, all I know is that I was wearing red shorts (since then, I do not think of “bulls get angry when they see red” as a stereotype at all ) and ran like hell across some fence when I saw him charging towards me (but perhaps he was only going to slurp and munch on some cornflowers he saw).

Nice story. A pity you hadn’t played Jinxter or you would have taken off your shorts and thrown them at the bull’s horns. Fortunately bulls are unable to see colors. Their retina consists of rods only and lacks the necessary cones.

But I had a much more dangerous “rendezvous” with a cockerel, once. I barely escaped.

And the dangerous cockerel does see colors!