~3 minute readPanak Strikes!
A Mind Forever Voyaging
A MIND FOREVER VOYAGING
by Steven Meretzky
INFOCOM
125 Cambridge Park Drive
Cambridge, MA 02140
128K ST Disk $44.94
Well, I have to admit it. I hate to admit it, but I have to. I made a mistake. You must understand; let me explain before you pull my plug.
Like a two-pack-a-day smoker who just heard Dan Rather say that cigarettes would be illegal tomorrow, my ravings were those of a man gone mad.
I thought that Infocom was cutting me off, cutting all 8-bit users off. I was wrong, as Brian Moriarty pointed out in last issue's Reader Comment. They've simply created two lines of games, Classic and Plus, the latter being larger and requiring at least 128K of memory.
This first Plus game is included in our evaluations for your perusal. I hope you'll try it and like it as much as I did.
Unlike the majority of Infocom's interactive fiction, A Mind Forever Voyaging (AMFV) threw me a curveball that kept me swinging for hours. They've forsaken their usual lighthearted approach to adventure and have substituted in its stead a more serious tone, one reminscent of the great science fiction stories of our time.
Imagine yourself living every day of your life exactly as you have: growing up, going to school, loving, losing -- a normal life. Imagine suddenly being told you're not who you always thought you were -- what's worse, you're not what you thought you were. Imagine being told you're a sophisticated computer program; your life has been a simulation. In AMFV you're told just that.
You're Prism, a supercomputer, one of the first utilizing true artificial intelligence, and you've spent the last few years instilling your sense of self awareness. You've broken out of your life-simulation years early to perform a much more important duty: to predict the future.
The arms race has degenerated into a miniaturization race, where the goal is to build weapons so small that they can be smuggled into enemy cities. This has forced the creation of a police state. The only solution seems to be Senator Richard Ryder's Plan for Renewed National Purpose. But it's untested. That's where you come in.
From this point, as always with 1nfocom, you're entirely on your own. However, this time, in addition to being in a different vein, the game is also on a much grander scale. It's the most complex game Infocom has yet unveiled. The statistics speak for themselves: several hundred locations, a vocabulary of 1800+ words, 128K minimum memory and a fast response time.
After testing the latest for the 800 (Spellbreaker, the final chapter in the Enchanter trilogy). AMFV's reactions felt like greased lightning to me -- no waiting, no noisy disk grinding.
Although as a computer life may be rather restricted, you have a number of modes you can enter. Library mode allows you to access information, much the way Whiz did in Suspended. Likewise, the interface mode lets you control the outside environment. Communication mode lets you see and hear in the complex, while sleep mode rests your circuits. Infocom regulars will be most at home in the simulation mode, which allows you to move around your environment exactly as you would in any other Infocom game.
AMFV itself is less puzzle oriented and more story oriented. This is not to say that you're merely a passive observer -- just that your involvement is a little different. Keep your eyes and ears open, and don't bother to look over your shoulder for any evil grues.
With each new Infocom game, I wonder if I'll be writing the epitaph stored away in my mind: the one that says they've failed, they've reached their peak and are on the downside of the marketing curve. Well, with the addition of the Plus line of games, that time will be long in coming. A Mind Forever Voyaging takes the Infocom concept to the next logical step in its evolution and takes you on a voyage you'll never forget.
Next month, we'll look at Championship Lode Runner, plus a few games available only through the mail from some small, individual creators.
This article appeared in
Analog Computing
Mar 1986
These historical, out-of-print articles and literary works have been GNUSTOed onto InvisiClues.org for academic and research purposes.
