COMPUTE!'s Guide to Adventure Games

by Gary McGath

Book by Gary McGath

224 pages, Paperback

First published January 1, 1984

About the author

I'm the author of Files that Last , an e-book on digital preservation for "everygeek." It talks about the risks we face in keeping our digital information, the importance of preserving it, and the ways to do it. You only need to be reasonably computer literate to follow along; it isn't just for archivists and librarians, but for everyone who's got an interest in keeping today's digital materials available tomorrow. If you'd like your grandchildren to see your digital photos, if you're involved in a club that wants to keep the records of its history, or if you're in a business where keeping old information is important, this is a book for you.

Compute!'s Guide to Adventure Games, which I wrote back in the eighties, is available in a Sribd online edition. My understanding is that Omni Publications International, which holds the copyright, has waived any objections to posting the old Compute! books. I wrote it as a "work for hire," so I have no rights in the book to complain about. Enjoy this bit of computing history!

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Writing has always been a favorite activity of mine. I've created lots of songs for the filk (science fiction folk music) community, as well as writing Tomorrow's Songs Today, a history of filk music (free download!). On the tech side, I've written Files that Last on "digital preservation for everygeek."

Lately I've dabbled in realistic historical fantasy, with The Magic Battery, set in a version of 16th century Europe, and I'm working on a sequel.

Reviews

[Edwin · Rating 5 out of 5]

The definitive guide for the early era of computer adventure games with extensive coverage of the games published by Infocom, Scott Adams, and Sierra On-line, and many others. I loved playing text adventures and this brought back a lot of great memories.

[David · Rating 4 out of 5]

Didn't see this book the first time around (the 80's) so I picked up a used copy. Love the smell of old books, and flipping through spiral-bound COMPUTE! publications sure takes me back. Contains reviews of Infocom, Scott Adams, Sierra On-Line, and other text adventure games (Radio Shack, etc.). Includes an introduction to writing your own adventures on 8-bit machines.

[Kevin Rubin · Rating 5 out of 5]

I bought this book in 1984, and I've been carrying it around the world with me since then, I took it to college, I took it to the big city when I got my first job, I took it to India when my job took me there and I still have it on my nearby bookshelf in New York City. It's not particularly useful now, but as it was the first computer book I ever bought, I'm quite attached to it.

As was more common in the 80's, it's sort of a mix-n-match of things, a description of what adventure games are, a guide for players on how to keep track of maps and items while playing, and finally actual code for one in multiple versions of BASIC (including different fonts characteristic of the different computers) and reviews of some then-popular adventure games.

Every time I flip through it, though, I do want to get back into playing text adventures, especially Zork and Raaka-Tu (which I never finished, having gotten stuck with the gargoyle while playing on then-current TRS-80 computers at school).