* * * * *
                                        
 And this seems more engrossing than those old Choose Your Own Adventure books
                                       …
                                        
> To explain what I mean by “Feelies” in this context: Infocom packaging (and
> really, a bunch of other software packages of the 1980s era) came with
> additional knick-knacks wrapped in, accompanying the disk or cassette and
> the manual. Sometimes these knick-knacks were simply copy protection items,
> like a code wheel or a map with information you'd need to refer to to go
> far enough in the game. Other times, they were neat stuff that provided you
> with an additional dimension to the game. I've interviewed a lot of people
> who have said this was what set an Infocom game ahead of other similar
> products for them; you opened the box, and stuff fell out, and even before
> you played the game you were part of the game, if that makes sense.
> 
> …
> 
> And what else I found out was that nearly everyone I talked to who had
> something to do with Infocom's feelies had owned or knew of this
> interesting property, Murder Off Miami, which had originally been published
> in … 1936.
> 

“The Feelies [1]”

Very interesting. As I read up on _Murder Off Miami_ [2], I began to feel
that, because of the non-linear nature of the story (it's presented as a case
file of a murder in Miami, and it's up to the reader to solve the mystery
given the information presented) this may very well be a type of hypertext
fiction [3], or even, a form of non-interactive interactive fiction [4], if
you will.

[1] http://ascii.textfiles.com/archives/000592.html
[2] http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/ASIN/0863501184/conmanlaborat-
[3] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hypertext_fiction
[4] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Interactive_fiction

Email Sean Conner at sean@conman.org

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