I Got the Babel Fish!

In the mid 80's one of my absolute favorite things to do was go to the local newsagent to pick up my copy of 'Zzap64'. While I read the actual magazine from cover to cover multiple times and never threw a single one away (something that happened later against my will… that I still haven't fully forgiven my parents for) my favorite part was the cover tape.

You see, we weren't what you'd call poor back then, but actually getting to buy anything other than a 1.99 budget game was a rare occurrence. On the other hand, I could easily afford a copy of Zzap or Commodore Format once a month and they usually came with a tape or two filled with demos and other fun things, and even a full game once in a while.

It was one of these tapes that introduced me to something that would take up a significant portion of my childhood. The thing that convinced me that games could be more than just a twitch-based pastime that you won by getting the high score. It was something that convinced me that videogames were actual honest-to-god art.

Back then, there was a whole section of the magazine given up to the cover tapes. There was a little bit about the games and the authors (this was when magazines might put a 'home-made' game on the cover disc) as well as instructions on how to play them.

I remember this issue of Zzap very well because I'd bought it while I was one vacation with my family…two week's camping in the New Forest. Of course, I didn't bring my Commodore 64 with me and the Gameboy was still years away from being released. I was already a massive geek, and the thing that sticks in my head the most about that whole vacation was that I couldn't wait to get home to try out the games on the cover tape. (In my defense, this wasn't as bad as it sounds as we ended up going home a few days early anyway because there was almost nothing to do in rainy weather, and it had rained almost solidly since the day we arrived. Not many young kids appreciate being stuck in a caravan with nothing but a deck of cards for entertainment for two weeks).

One game had particularly caught my eye. You see, even today a lot of games are released that have almost no story to them, and what little story they have is usually just a few sentences explaining why you're shooting all those people. Game 'stories' usually consisted of little more than "You're an elite Earth pilot and the evil Zarklonian Empire has attacked, earth's survival is in your hands. Controls: Cursors/joystick to move your ship, Fire button or spacebar to shoot."

This one, however, seemed a lot more interesting. Not only was there about half a page of back story, the instructions talked about exploring a huge derelict spaceship, investigating a mystery and doing all kinds of crazy things.

I couldn't wait.

I remember getting home weeks later and literally racing upstairs to my room, and much to my chagrin, realizing I had to wait through almost 45 minutes of cassette tape to get to the game I wanted. You see, the counter on my "datasette' (read: tape deck) was broken, so I couldn't skip right to the game I wanted, and my tape deck was second-hand and really flaky, meaning it tended to mess up if I tried to fast forward a little.

(It's weird, but until I started writing this I didn't realize that I'd completely forgotten what this game is called. Hopefully it will come back to me)

Finally, the C64 announced it had found the game on the tape, and started to load it with its characteristic flashing border, and about five minutes later…which felt more like hours to me…the game started.

Unlike most kids, I'd always loved to read and loved getting into the story behind a game, so I didn't skip through the text screen that came up, I actually read it.

It was full of awesome stuff about how there'd been some kind of distress signal from a big military starship, and I'd been sent to investigate. It described a tiny point of light in the distance slowly getting bigger until it became recognizable as a massive dreadnought.

Okay, it was time. I was finally going to play the awesome game I'd waited two excruciatingly long weeks to play.

I pressed the spacebar… nothing happened.

I pressed 'run'… nothing happened.

I pressed 'Return'…nothing happened.

What the eff?

I groaned inwardly…after waiting so long for it to load, the game had messed up before it had even started (not unusual on my C64 with its second-hand, flaky tape deck). In frustration, I half slapped the keyboard and let loose with a string of random letters.

AFHNOGHEJIGRE_

Then, my finger hit enter and suddenly:

I DON'T KNOW HOW TO "AFHNOGHEJIGRE" SOMETHING. FOR HELP, TYPE 'HELP'.

Whaaaaaa???? The game is talking to me? It understands what I type? I typed 'HELLO'

I DON'T KNOW HOW TO "HELLO" SOMETHING. FOR HELP, TYPE 'HELP'.

Of course, I was around ten years old, so after thinking for a few seconds, I typed what any normal ten year old would type when faced with a possibly sentient C64:

FUCK OFF.

THAT'S NOT A VERY NICE THING TO SAY. The game scolded me.

GO FUCK YOURSELF

THAT'S NOT A VERY NICE THING TO SAY.

PENIS COCK FART TITS BOOBS ASS.

THAT'S NOT A VERY NICE THING TO SAY.

DICK PUSSY SHIT POOP PUKE SNOT FART

THAT'S NOT A VERY NICE THING TO SAY.

Realizing I wasn't going to get much more of a rise out of the game, I admitted defeat and typed HELP

COMMANDS SHOULD BE IN THE FORM OF <VERB> <NOUN>, FOR EXAMPLE 'OPEN BOX' OR 'GO NORTH'. YOU CAN ALSO USE MORE COMPLEX COMMANDS LIKE 'OPEN BOX WITH WRENCH' OR 'SHOOT ALIEN WITH BLASTER'. FOR A LIST OF WORDS I UNDERSTAND TYPE 'VERBS'.

This was it? This was the game I'd waited two weeks to play? It didn't have any graphics and you controlled it by typing? Where was the fun in that?

I stood up and went to walk out of my room in disgust. I was almost at the door when I stopped. After all, I'd waited so long to play the damn game; I might as well give it a chance. It was going to be stupid, but a game's a game. I sat down and looked at the blinking cursor.

DOCK WITH SHIP. I typed.

A SUBTLE VIBRATION RUNS THROUGH THE SHIP AS THE AUTOPILOT GUIDES YOUR CRAFT OWARDS THE DREADNAUGHT'S DOCKING HATCH.THROUGH THE WINDOW YOU CAN SEE THE MANEUVERING THRUSTERS FIRING.

LOOK AT DREADNAUGHT. I typed

A MASSIVE SHIP, ALMOST TWENTY MILES LONG. IT APPEARS TO BE COMPLETELY UNDAMAGED. YOU SEE THE COMMUNICATIONS ARRAY IS INTACT.

CALL SHIP ON RADIO.

SORRY, I DON'T KNOW HOW TO 'CALL' SOMETHING.

HAIL SHIP WITH RADIO.

YOUR SHIP'S INTERNAL SPEAKERS CRACKLE INTO LIFE. "THIS IS THE ALLIANCE DREADNAUGHT 'INVINCIBLE'.WE NEED IMMEDITATE ASSISTANCE! ONE OF THE EXPERIMENTS…" THERE IS A SUDDEN LOUD BANG AND THE SOUNDS OF SCREAMING AND GUNFIRE. THE SIGNAL TURNS TO STATIC AND THEN THE MESSAGE STARTS OVER. "THIS IS THE…" YOU TURN THE RADIO OFF.

I was instantly and completely hooked. Other than playing on the computer, my other favorite thing in the world to do was read. It was like someone had taken my two favorite things and combined them, just for me. It was like reading this amazing story, only I got to decide what happened…or at least what decisions the protagonist made.

I couldn't wait to share my discovery, but my parents were never really interested in anything to do with computers (my experience is like most geeks of the time… the people who would spend the next 20 years bothering me for tech support vocally disapproved of all the 'time I wasted on the computer' when I could be 'doing something constructive'…and you wonder why we get so pissed off when you call us to us your computer is 'broken'.)

I told everyone who would listen how awesome this game was, unfortunately, my brother realized you had to read and think and pronounced the game 'totally gay'… and it was even a hard sell to even my geek friends.

As an aside, it's something that still makes me laugh today. There I was, playing a game that was basically like reading a good novel but with some seriously difficult puzzles that required logic, imagination and lateral thinking…while asshole aunts and uncles would 'voice their concerns' to my parents about how I was 'rotting my brain with video games'… while they sat on the couch and watched TV, of course.

That very first text adventure (known today as 'Interactive Fiction') really captured my imagination. Within a few months I'd written one of my own, which just to turn my geekometer up to 11, cast the player as a brand new officer on board the USS Enterprise just after the ship had gotten caught in sub-space anomaly.

I was convinced it was going to make me rich, until one of my friends pointed out that Paramount might not be too happy with me making a game using nothing but their copyrighted intellectual property.

Oh… there was also the minor issue that I'd programmed the whole thing in BASIC and no being really good at it, my game was literally just a series of paragraphs that you got to show up by typing the right thing. For example, you could be standing on the Bridge and if you typed "Shoot Romulan with phaser", you'd shoot the Romulan, who hadn't beamed aboard the ship yet, in engineering, that you hadn't visited yet, with the phaser you hadn't picked up yet.

I still stand by my work. As long as you weren't a giant asshole like the friend I got to test it, and just remembered what the game told you and only did things that were logical for the situation you were in, it would work fine.

Of course, there was one more very minor issue in that, for some reason, every time you pressed 'Z' you'd jump to the next step in the adventure. Not having a clue how to fix it, I did something Microsoft would later make a huge business out of. I claimed it wasn't a bug, but a 'feature' to help you along if you got stuck.

Anyway, as a kid I played some amazing text adventures and some truly awful ones as well, but good or bad, like all art, they captured my imagination. I realized that games weren't just about high scores, but they could be used really effectively for telling stories. It was a huge revelation hat I could care for a videogame character just as much as I cared for the characters in my favorite TV show or my favorite books. It was the day that, for me, videogames stopped being just a fun thing to do and became an actual art form. I was the first time I found myself playing a game not just to beat the last boss or get the high score…but for the same reason I'd stay up way past my bedtime, reading under the covers with a flashlight… because I wanted to find out what happens in the end.

It also gave me the perfect comeback for anyone who ever told me I was wasting my time or rotting my brain with video games, and the best thing is, it still works today. The next time someone looks down their nose at you when they realize you play 'mindless videogames' sit them down in front of a copy of Zork and tell them that if all games are mindless, they should be able to beat it easily.

Believe it or not, there is still a very active Interactive Fiction community today, with both new adventures and some of the old classics in any genre you can think of available for download. If you're interested, just google 'Interactive Fiction'. Give them a try.

In closing:

IT IS PITCH BLACK. YOU ARE LIKELY TO BE EATEN BY A GRUE.