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From: buzzard@world.std.com (Sean T Barrett)
Subject: Re: IF Arcade quick notes
Message-ID: <GEr9nt.1B6@world.std.com>
Date: Mon, 11 Jun 2001 07:47:53 GMT
References: <9g1pg1$7dp$1@watserv3.uwaterloo.ca>
Organization: The World Public Access UNIX, Brookline, MA
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Xref: news.duke.edu rec.games.int-fiction:63685

Joe Mason <jcmason@student.math.uwaterloo.ca> wrote:
>I just finished playing the IF Arcade games, and I thought I'd post some quick
>notes about them.  These aren't even close to reviews (and some of them are a
>little more scathing than they should be) but it's better to post them than
>just toss them out.

For reference, my five-month-old comments are on Google:
  http://groups.google.com/groups?ic=1&selm=G6MAIG.8FH%40world.std.com

I'm still waiting for the authors to fess up; I think I've
learned who wrote five of the games... (The above post refers
to the original version of "Night Driver"; after I posted it,
the (anonymous) author altered it, as is discussed in the
short thread it started. Hmm, the author claimed "real name
still hidden for a short time", is five months long enough?)

>Centipede: It's not clear to what extent you can actually affect your fate.
>That's probably the point, though: it's set up to seem inevitable.

That was what I assumed when I played it--it was supposed to be
like the arcade game: no way to win. But reading the source seems
to imply otherwise; the source has been posted buried away somewhere
on interactfiction.about.com, if you know who the author is (or
vice versa--browsing the site was how I discovered who the author was).

Somehow I missed the cue in the prologue about touching the
one icon or button or whatever it was, so I had an amusing
experience with figuring it after the fact, under time pressure,
and thinking it was something sneaky the author worked in that
you'd have to replay to see. (And actually I suspect that
was the better experience.)

SeanB
