Iowahawk reprises the ancient distributed computing, pre-PC era game Adventure in an updated context.

You have to be pretty old to remember the original, but it’s hilarious if you do.

YOU ARE IN AN OVAL OFFICE. THERE IS SNOW OUTSIDE. YOU ARE BEHIND A DESK. ON DESK THERE IS A BUST OF CHURCHILL.

YOU HAVE A CONGRESS.

YOU HAVE A SENATE.

YOU HAVE A MEDIA.

YOU HAVE A TELEPROMPTER.

YOU HAVE A MILITARY.

YOU HAVE A BIG JET.

YOU HAVE $3 TRILLION OF GOLD.

YOU HAVE 82% APPROVAL HEALTH.

THERE IS 7.2% UNEMPLOYMENT IN THE FOREST.

YOU HAVE A RACE CARD.

YOU HAVE INAUGURAL PARTY LEFTOVERS.

WHAT DO YOU WANT TO DO?

>EAT LEFTOVERS

>RETURN BUST

If you wanted to buy a pre-1921 edition of the Royal Geographic Society’s Hints to Travellers Scientific and General, I’m afraid you’d be completely out of luck today. Only a single copy of the 1921 10th edition is on offer at the present time at all. though you can buy it at three different prices, depending on the book search venue chosen: $57.66 (Bibliophile) or $63.70 (Choose) or $72.94 (Amazon UK).

Or you can read it on your PC, right here, for free.

The Archive.org stream isn’t as fast over satellite modem as one would like, but it is surprisingly readable and the user interface is simple and intuitive.

———————————–

Hat tip to John Murrell via Karen L. Myers.

If you are old enough to have used a computer in the late 1970s, you must have played Adventure. Who knew that the game’s inventor was Will Crowther, or that Adventure was based upon the real Bedquilt Section of Colossal Cave in Kentucky’s Flint Mammoth Cave System?

Adventure is now a topic for scholarship, see: Dennis Jerz’s study in Digital Humanities Quarterly.

More here.

—————————————–

Hat tip to Karen L. Myers.