The Retro Adventurers

"Is Gremlins a Christmas movie?" discourse in this latest episode. (Yes, as its text adventure is a Christmas game!)

Save Christmas itself in A Spell Of Christmas Ice, and save our fair village from monster mayhem in Gremlins: The Adventure.
retroadventurers.podbean.com/e/34/

Diamond Trail (1983) (This post about Gilsoft continues the story after Time-Line, so you should read about that game first.) Three months after Time-Line started being offered, Tim Gilberts attended one of the legenda…

Diamond Trail continues the story of The Quill, with Tim Gilberts's first game (which has uncanny similarities with Time-Line, yet plays much better).

#zxspectrum

bluerenga.blog/2025/11/28/d...

WE SEE WHAT YOU DID THERE

opensource.microsoft.com/blog/2025/11...

An eye-opening and horizon-expanding episode. It made me realize how little I know about IF so it motivated me to dip my toes a bit more into the IFDB pool. Mathbrush’s reviews on the site provide a good entry point for a panoramic view of the IF scene, and I’ll try some of his recommendations.

A chat with ultra-prolific IF reviewer and author Mathbrush in our latest episode.

retroadventurers.podbean.com/e/33/

New episodes incoming!
Your Retro Adventurers have several episodes recorded. Things got a little busy this autumn and competed for our edit time, including the exciting news that Nick has joined the staff at @tnmoc.bsky.social !
He's pictured here putting the ICL 2966 to its ideal use.

Is the Rasperry Pi 500+ bringing wedgetops back? Did Jordan Mechner clear up Prince of Persia history on our subreddit? Is there such a thing as too much Infocom?
youtu.be/eOPYzQ0we9g
Plus your preferred control schemes on This Week in Retro 238, available now on YouTube and all podcast platforms!

This has been one of my holy grails. I knew Rob was working on something big, and thought it might be this, but I did not suspect he found the whole playable game. One of the first games in Norwegian and one of the first Tolkien games.

Also an article on a new Adventure variant!

Urban Upstart (1983) Scarthorpe is the sort of town where even the dogs carry flick knives, where there’s only one road in, and it’s a one way streeet!!! This is the second adventure game by Pete Cooke, aft…

On the All the Adventures, we return to Britain's seemingly unique "satirical urban grunge" genre with Urban Upstart for the ZX Spectrum.

#zxspectrum

bluerenga.blog/2025/09/06/u...

Coming soon: space adventures with Tim Gilberts!

The IFComp 2025 logo is an ornate gold-framed mirror with silhouetted profile, stylized text ‘IFComp,’ crown, stars, moons, and a banner reading 2025.

🎉 The 31st Annual #IFComp is live!

85 new interactive fiction entries are ready for you to play and judge. (You only need to rate 5 to cast a ballot!)

Read more about this year's competition at blog.ifcomp.org

Or just dive straight in: ifcomp.org/ballot

Get ready to type out every letter in "dodecahedron" and to remember your math and physics! Two sciencey adventures this time out--
The BBC Micro original L: A Mathemagical Adventure and the TRS-80 BASIC-to-C-to-Inform extradimensional oddity Beyond the Tesseract.

retroadventurers.podbean.com/e/32/

Hello Horrorble Opinions runners, joggers, commuters, cookers, vacuumers, and whatever else you do when listening to us. Great news! We found out that we gained exactly one subscriber because of the Infocom plays we've been doing, so here you go! Another one! Its "Sorcerer" by Steve Meretzky ½

Commodore 64 Text Adventures: Objects and Actions Now in our Commodore 64 text adventure it's time to put objects that the player can interact with into our game

#C64 Text Adventure in BASIC Part 2!

This time we add the ability to interact with objects so you can win or lose the game ...

retrogamecoders.com/c64-adventur...

That's one way to say "our game is highly subject to stack overflow"...

me: gets new laptop

also me: makes sure Infocom games still work on new laptop

BBC Archive 1986: Text Adventure Games Fred Harris goes behind the scenes at Infocom (makers of Zork and The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy fame) to see how their text adventure games are made.

An interesting look at Infocom making text adventure games in 1986. If you're into that sort of thing.

#gamedev

Has anyone ever actually installed this? Was Infocom distributing a broken installer for years, and no CD editor noticed? [2/2]

Robots on Terminus IV (1983) Today, this blog’s first encounter with New Zealand. It might not seem surprising offhand New Zealand had to wait until 1983 — their population in 1982 was about 3 million, ranking it b…

A new country awaits for All the Adventures: New Zealand! I give the history of the country's microcomputing scene in the 80s (more dramatic and twisty than expected) then embark on the first adventure we currently have from the country, Robots on Terminus IV.

bluerenga.blog/2025/08/08/r...

It is 1992. I am up when I should be asleep. I get excited when discovering this new BBS has Infocom game doors.

It is 2025. I am up when I should be asleep. I get excited when discovering this new BBS has Infocom game doors.

Workday Podcast Entertainment:
@redshirtcinema.bsky.social Dredd
@retroadventurers.bsky.social The Colour of Magic and MST3K: Detective
@dtdiscworld.bsky.social Interesting Times
Thanks 🤠

We've got Text-Adventure-Sign and bumble through the (unofficial) MST3Kified Detective, and Delta 4's treatment of Terry Pratchett's Discworld in The Colour of Magic for 64, CPC, and Spectrum. (Waiting simulator, Nick.)
Available now on all podcast platforms!

retroadventurers.podbean.com/e/31/

Poor Valhalla, but really it only has itself to blame.

🎧 Really (really, really, really… 😜) loving the origin stories for guests and stories from our youths. I too was a big Fighting Fantasy lad back in the day.

That this went on to “personals” and “grottos” brought out the grins here.

🎮 #VideoGames ⌨️ #TextAdventures #InteractiveFiction 🗺️ #Podcasts 📻

If someone reissued the entire set with the feelies and everything, I would THROW MONEY AT IT.

Journey of a Space Traveller (1983) I have been sent on a difficult and rather dangerous mission to a distant planet called EARTH. My mission is to locate ten items of treasure and bring them back to my spaceship. I will, in addition…

In which I embark on the works of Steve Lucas, one of the most prolific adventure authors of the 80s.

We play an alien visiting the dangerous planet known as EARTH.

bluerenga.blog/2025/07/26/j...

I’ve come to the realisation that I enjoy retro computer programming because the goal posts don’t move on a weekly basis and because it distracts me from the dark void engulfing the world while idiots cheer. Anyway, I like coding my little c64 games

Deadline and Seastalker Invisiclues, plus The Book of Adventure Games, nice!

Episode 30 features two of the newest games we've covered although you'd hardly know it! Captain Cutter's Treasure (PunyInform), Young Arthur's Quest (VIC-20/C64), and 10 Cave Adventure (Sinclair ZX81) get a look.
Also, Smooches Collier is in effect.
retroadventurers.podbean.com/e/30/

Sherlock – “Careful examination shows that the drawer has a false bottom” When making The Hobbit, Beam Software and Melbourne House apparently knew they were onto a good thing. They decided early that they wanted to make another similar adventure afterwards using what th…

ICYMI, my post this week was on the text adventure Sherlock.

Read about:

- Ingenious ways of portraying mastery of disguise
- Hobbit-bugs being replaced by "the more advanced, state-of-the-art Sherlock-bugs"
- What its Watson has in common with Blue Prince on PS5

www.superchartisland.com/sherlock