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Are classic adventure games genre dead?
Most of the 80s ascii stuff (as I remember) is RPG/rogue-like. Adventure games at that time were text with graphics, or graphics with text, without blurring that line.
I’m mostly familiar with Infocom games. A few of them did use the occasional bit of ASCII art. The original mainframe Zork had a few illustrations of treasures that didn’t make it into the commercial versions. (They were probably cut for space.) Here’s my favorite:
---v----v----v----v----v--- | _______ | > One / \ G < | Lousy / \ U | > Point | ___ | E < | | (___) | | > <--)___(--> P < | / / \ \ o | > / / \ \ s < | |-|---------|-| t | > | | \ _ / | | a < | | | --(_)-- | | g | > | | /| |\ | | e < | |-|---|_|---|-| | > \ \__/_\__/ / < | _/_______\_ | > | f.m.l.c. | < | ------------- | > < | Donald Woods, Editor | > Spelunker Today < | | ---^----^----^----^----^---
Other than that, a few of their games used ASCII art for in-game maps. Zork III, Enchanter, and Seastalker at least, albeit in quite different ways. Arguably Beyond Zork. Most versions used a custom font for the map, I believe, but it could fall back on ASCII graphics if necessary. Infidel used it to represent hieroglyphs. Border Zone to illustrate the positions of guards and searchlights. I’m probably forgetting a few. (Bureaucracy was mentioned already.)
Off-hand, I can’t think of any adventure game that used ASCII art the way an illustrated adventure game would use graphics. But it wouldn’t surprise me the least if there is one. If someone can make an ASCII animation of a substantial part of the original Star Wars movie, then why not?
Awesome, eriktorbjorn dropping some science.
Sometimes I’m not sure if I’m a nerd, because I don’t really feel all that welcome in overtly nerdy social circles. But getting a visceral thrill reading about infocom history and ascii graphics is probably a tell-tale sign.
Here’s a more recent game with pure* ascii design. It’s also pretty weird:
There were a couple of great adventure games for ZZT. The approach to ascii was more based on block shading and emulating 90s graphic adventures. To anyone unfamiliar with ZZT and curious: I recommend the Dizzy-series, CAT, CAT, THAT DAMN CAT and Evil Sorcerer’s Party.
* actually, that’s not true. It’s more like the main stylistic element in a more general non-ascii graphic design.
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