I remember hearing about the rubber centipede from an ancient channel (Techtite) that the rubber centipede was not mentioned on the box's contents so It would give players a scare before even opening the box, a neat Idea.
The "Frobozz Magic Floor Wax (and Dessert Topping)" is probably a reference to an ANCIENT Saturday Night Live skit, a commercial for Shimmer Floor Wax. I tried to find a video online but it's being elusive.
This one was interesting, but I was really surprised at the almost abruptness of the ending. I really would have expected it to be longer. And I wasn't enjoying it but that enjoyment was sort of curtailed when we got to the end so suddenly. Thanks for your playthrough and analysis! Can't wait for the next one
In hindsight, arcade games and computer games like this weren't all that different. In both you're supposed to lose over and over again, learn from your experiences and use that to beat the game. The way you pretty much have to use knowledge your in-game character couldn't possibly have, reminds of a particularly odd bit in Shadowgate. There, you find a chained woman, who's actually a werewolf you have to kill. But the only way to find that out is to cause her to transform, at which point she immediately kills you. So, in-universe, the player character rams an arrow through a seemingly innocent woman's body, while, at most, only having hunch that she might be evil. The 2013 remake changes that, so that she doesn't appear to be a prisoner and transforms right away before she kills you. But she does that weird villain bit, where she tells you her plan/backstory (don't quite remember) beforehand, which is pretty pointless when she plans to kill you anyway. Also this video (and by extension game) enriched my knowledge. I never heard the word "unctuous" before and didn't even know what a hyrax is.
Absolutely loved this game as a young teen. I did use walkthrough hints to finish it. I wrote several short horror stories in middle school that took a few plot points from this game. Love the Zork references too.
I think this video is important to keeping this game preserved in a way that a modern audience can actually meaningfully appreciate. The combination of Lovecraftian mysteries, 80's MIT culture and slang, and references to all kinds of things that largely aren't timely anymore (plus the general eloquence of the prose) is like a brick wall to anyone under 40 in this day and age. Let alone the copy protection and at times genuinely obtuse game design. If you can't understand what a text-game is _saying_, you can't play it. You won't get very far, and what progress you do make, you won't understand. So thank you for this.
Love to see people still talking about these classics! However, I have to disagree with the idea that learn-by-dying puzzles like the rats and alchemy lab ritual are bad puzzle design full stop. Rather, they’re just of a style that has fallen out of favor because the prevaling attitude toward saving and loading has changed. People have fallen out of the habit of saving frequently, and see dying and reloading as a chore or punishment now, but back at the time we were constantly saving, trying things, reloading, trying other things, and so on until you’d figured out the most optimal path. That was just the process of exploring and figuring out the game, the same way dying several times to a boss until you figure out their attack patterns is the process of beating a modern Dark Souls game. We never had any expectation of being able to beat a game in one go without dying and reloading. Plus, deaths often came with jokes that you wouldn’t otherwise get to see, so it was all part of the fun.
In that sense you are correct, but my general approach is to take these games as they were released but examine them through a contemporary lens. Our standards were far different in the 80s, but even by '87 that style of puzzle design was falling out of favor - Sierra games too were getting far more forgiving.
Yeah, the Sierra games were the beginning of the end for this sort of thing, definitely - mainly because trudging your character back across several screens of real-estate after dying was orders of magnitude slower than typing E.E.N.GET LAMP.TURN ON LAMP.N and hitting enter :P
I love how old 20th century games don't instruct you and expect the player to use their determination to find the answer. Playing these games without a wiki holding your hand shows how these games were made for a vastly different type of gamer with a much longer attention span. When you get stuck and find the solution by yourself you get such a feeling of accomplishment that isn't present in new games.
I played this a lot back in the day. I didn't manage to solve the whole thing.but I saw a lot of the locations that came back to me during your playthrough. I couldn't agree more regarding the atmosphere of the game, I still have strong images of many of the key places. Enjoyable at the time but I would find the fail to proceed style annoying these days.
In you opinion, are the notes "from people at the end of their rope" trope the predecessors of the inexplicably complete journals including their deaths that are found in games like the Elder Scrolls? Are these good narrative elements in your opinion?
I would say that the "documents you find in the game" really hits its stride with the audio logs in System Shock - and you can see that games that follow - especially horror sci fi games - use that a lot in the games that follow. They're more effective narrative elements than static documents because 1) the player can listen to them while continuing to play, and 2) effective voice acting can convey mood and emotion very well. Especially effective in games where including live/interactive NPCs is not practical. I definitely consider them narrative elements - backstory the player doesn't have to be present to 'witness' but is part of the game instead of the manual, which always has a degree of disconnection.
I think the "bad game design" puzzles are designed that way on purpose. This is a horror game. Make all the puzzles basically unwinnable the first time, combine it with timed horrors lurking to kill you in a few turns of futility, and you get the game's purpose: you are supposed to experience dread and horror from all the deaths... whether that was successful or not is up for debate.
A lot of them felt very sudden and binary. You don't necessarily have to cause a player's helpless death to provoke fear. More drawn out failure scenarios with maybe one or two escape paths for an observant player (maybe with some consequences down the line) could greatly enhance immersion compared to forgeting to turn on the flashlight you're holding making you step on the Rake of Doom which caves your skull in.
@@Tasarran AMFY is the one where you are a computer program and go through a couple of different theoretical simulations and see society collapse more and more over the decades if a certain plan were to be implemented by the government. AMFY barely contains any puzzles though, its more about observation and recording events, and while you can die it doesn't really have any consequences for the most part, seeing as you are a program and the simulation just resets. You can lose the game at the end though when the government goons are trying to shut your facility down. Its probably my favorite ancient game right up there with Alter Ego.
![Oops, all Pong: Console Gen 1 [1975]](http://i.ytimg.com/vi/AzKMT4EV7l4/mqdefault.jpg)
The rubber centipede is peak elementary school haunted house tour, but I'd be lying if I said it wasn't somwhat charming.
I remember hearing about the rubber centipede from an ancient channel (Techtite) that the rubber centipede was not mentioned on the box's contents so It would give players a scare before even opening the box, a neat Idea.
The "Frobozz Magic Floor Wax (and Dessert Topping)" is probably a reference to an ANCIENT Saturday Night Live skit, a commercial for Shimmer Floor Wax. I tried to find a video online but it's being elusive.
It absolutely is a reference to that SNL sketch.
This one was interesting, but I was really surprised at the almost abruptness of the ending. I really would have expected it to be longer. And I wasn't enjoying it but that enjoyment was sort of curtailed when we got to the end so suddenly. Thanks for your playthrough and analysis! Can't wait for the next one
It indeed does make a nice job of making the campus a live-in, historied place.
In hindsight, arcade games and computer games like this weren't all that different. In both you're supposed to lose over and over again, learn from your experiences and use that to beat the game.
The way you pretty much have to use knowledge your in-game character couldn't possibly have, reminds of a particularly odd bit in Shadowgate. There, you find a chained woman, who's actually a werewolf you have to kill. But the only way to find that out is to cause her to transform, at which point she immediately kills you. So, in-universe, the player character rams an arrow through a seemingly innocent woman's body, while, at most, only having hunch that she might be evil. The 2013 remake changes that, so that she doesn't appear to be a prisoner and transforms right away before she kills you. But she does that weird villain bit, where she tells you her plan/backstory (don't quite remember) beforehand, which is pretty pointless when she plans to kill you anyway.
Also this video (and by extension game) enriched my knowledge. I never heard the word "unctuous" before and didn't even know what a hyrax is.
Absolutely loved this game as a young teen. I did use walkthrough hints to finish it. I wrote several short horror stories in middle school that took a few plot points from this game. Love the Zork references too.
I think this video is important to keeping this game preserved in a way that a modern audience can actually meaningfully appreciate. The combination of Lovecraftian mysteries, 80's MIT culture and slang, and references to all kinds of things that largely aren't timely anymore (plus the general eloquence of the prose) is like a brick wall to anyone under 40 in this day and age. Let alone the copy protection and at times genuinely obtuse game design.
If you can't understand what a text-game is _saying_, you can't play it. You won't get very far, and what progress you do make, you won't understand.
So thank you for this.
I've loved these games since I was a kid, it's the least I can do.
I've been waiting for your next video; I'm so excited to watch this! Wish I could support you more, but you definitely have my upvotes!
Love to see people still talking about these classics! However, I have to disagree with the idea that learn-by-dying puzzles like the rats and alchemy lab ritual are bad puzzle design full stop. Rather, they’re just of a style that has fallen out of favor because the prevaling attitude toward saving and loading has changed. People have fallen out of the habit of saving frequently, and see dying and reloading as a chore or punishment now, but back at the time we were constantly saving, trying things, reloading, trying other things, and so on until you’d figured out the most optimal path. That was just the process of exploring and figuring out the game, the same way dying several times to a boss until you figure out their attack patterns is the process of beating a modern Dark Souls game. We never had any expectation of being able to beat a game in one go without dying and reloading. Plus, deaths often came with jokes that you wouldn’t otherwise get to see, so it was all part of the fun.
In that sense you are correct, but my general approach is to take these games as they were released but examine them through a contemporary lens. Our standards were far different in the 80s, but even by '87 that style of puzzle design was falling out of favor - Sierra games too were getting far more forgiving.
Yeah, the Sierra games were the beginning of the end for this sort of thing, definitely - mainly because trudging your character back across several screens of real-estate after dying was orders of magnitude slower than typing E.E.N.GET LAMP.TURN ON LAMP.N and hitting enter :P
I'm thinking of the stairs and bridges in King's Quest, where you could die if you interpreted the screen's graphics incorrectly.
I love how old 20th century games don't instruct you and expect the player to use their determination to find the answer. Playing these games without a wiki holding your hand shows how these games were made for a vastly different type of gamer with a much longer attention span. When you get stuck and find the solution by yourself you get such a feeling of accomplishment that isn't present in new games.
Puzzle design in text adventures has come a long way since those days.
Ha, now we know where they got the idea for the "head of the navigator" in Monkey Island from.
You can actually "Get Ye Flask"!? Simply Amazing.
I played this a lot back in the day. I didn't manage to solve the whole thing.but I saw a lot of the locations that came back to me during your playthrough. I couldn't agree more regarding the atmosphere of the game, I still have strong images of many of the key places. Enjoyable at the time but I would find the fail to proceed style annoying these days.
In you opinion, are the notes "from people at the end of their rope" trope the predecessors of the inexplicably complete journals including their deaths that are found in games like the Elder Scrolls? Are these good narrative elements in your opinion?
I would say that the "documents you find in the game" really hits its stride with the audio logs in System Shock - and you can see that games that follow - especially horror sci fi games - use that a lot in the games that follow. They're more effective narrative elements than static documents because 1) the player can listen to them while continuing to play, and 2) effective voice acting can convey mood and emotion very well. Especially effective in games where including live/interactive NPCs is not practical.
I definitely consider them narrative elements - backstory the player doesn't have to be present to 'witness' but is part of the game instead of the manual, which always has a degree of disconnection.
I think the "bad game design" puzzles are designed that way on purpose. This is a horror game. Make all the puzzles basically unwinnable the first time, combine it with timed horrors lurking to kill you in a few turns of futility, and you get the game's purpose: you are supposed to experience dread and horror from all the deaths... whether that was successful or not is up for debate.
There is that feeling that a wrong step can doom you - and it does add to the atmosphere - but doing it several times can frustrate the player.
A lot of them felt very sudden and binary. You don't necessarily have to cause a player's helpless death to provoke fear. More drawn out failure scenarios with maybe one or two escape paths for an observant player (maybe with some consequences down the line) could greatly enhance immersion compared to forgeting to turn on the flashlight you're holding making you step on the Rake of Doom which caves your skull in.
Never completed this one, but the setting was interesting. I did complete A Mind Forever Voyaging though, which is almost as obscure as this one.
Is that the one that revolves around Project Trinity?
A Mind Forever Voyaging was cool. Not nearly as bad about the moon logic puzzles as a lot of IF of its day.
@@Tasarran AMFY is the one where you are a computer program and go through a couple of different theoretical simulations and see society collapse more and more over the decades if a certain plan were to be implemented by the government.
AMFY barely contains any puzzles though, its more about observation and recording events, and while you can die it doesn't really have any consequences for the most part, seeing as you are a program and the simulation just resets. You can lose the game at the end though when the government goons are trying to shut your facility down. Its probably my favorite ancient game right up there with Alter Ego.
I did like AMFV because it was trying to do something new with the genre. Suspended, too, with its different sensory robots.
Didn't know about this one, neat!
dude read out what you are typing I was hoping to listen to this while I draw
Will do that going forward, thanks for the feedback!