~2 minute readLoad & Run
Four-In-One Infocom Sampler
Designed by Mark Blank, Dave Lebling, Steve Meretzky, Stu Galley, and Mike Berlyn
Infocom, 1984 / Most systems / Disk / $7.95
The Four-In-One Infocom Sampler is a brilliant idea. There are few who haven't heard of Infocom and its excellent text adventures, but many have never actually played one. Price plays a major role in this; Infocom adventures are unique, and a lot of people don't want to spend $40.00 on a piece of software that they may not like. Even if you're sure that you would enjoy an Infocom game, you may not be sure just which one to get. So some people have never bought an Infocom adventure for no reason other than that they wanted to prepare themselves for what they were getting into. The Sampler changes all that.
The Four-In-One Infocom Sampler, as its name suggests, contains samples from four popular Infocom games, each representing a different category of interactive fiction -- Zork I for Fantasy, Planetfall for Science Fiction, The Witness for Mystery and Infidel for Tales of Adventure. In addition the Sampler contains a tutorial that is an excellent introduction to the world of adventure gaming, in which the computer leads the player, step by step, through a mini-game with the object of capturing a butterfly in a small, three-room world.
The tutorial is witty and enjoyable on its own -- even with only three rooms and a handful of objects to work with, that Infocom humor shines through -- but the real attraction of the package is its game samples. Each sample takes the player through the opening sequence of a game; for Infidel that means finding the lost pyramid, for Planetfall surviving the wreck of your spaceship and landing on the deserted planet, and in Zork I the player must find the first caverns of the Great Underground Empire. The Witness' sample is slightly different from the others because of the way that Infocom's interactive mysteries are designed; in that sample, the computer actually inputs predetermined commands on its own, to give the player (or rather, in this case, the viewer) a feeling for the general atmosphere of the game.
The segments are not long, but they manage to give the player an idea of what each game is like. They certainly fulfill their purpose, which is to make players want to finish the games, while also giving good examples of typical Infocom situations and puzzles.
The Four-In-One Infocom Sampler should put an end to some of the procrastinating that's been going on. Now all those people who have been putting off buying an Infocom adventure will no longer than an excuse. After all, four Infocom adventures on one disk? For only $7.95? It's almost too good to be true.
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