The Jargon File, 4.0.0
The Jargon File, 4.0.0
Free DownloadJuly 24, 1996
Book Excerpt
adventure game, first designed by Will Crowther on the {PDP-10} in the mid-1970s as an attempt at computer-refereed fantasy gaming, and expanded into a puzzle-oriented game by Don Woods at Stanford in 1976. Now better known as Adventure, but the {{TOPS-10}} operating system permitted only six-letter filenames. See also {vadding}, {Zork}, and {Infocom}.
This game defined the terse, dryly humorous style since expected in text adventure games, and popularized several tag lines that have become fixtures of hacker-speak: "A huge green fierce snake bars the way!" "I see no X here" (for some noun X). "You are in a maze of twisty little passages, all alike." "You are in a little maze of twisty passages, all different." The `magic words' {xyzzy} and {plugh} also derive from this game.
Crowther, by the way, participated in the exploration of the Mammoth & Flint Ridge cave system; it actually *has* a `Colossal Cave' and a `Bedquilt' as in the game, and the `Y2' that also turns up is cavers' jargon for
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FEATURED AUTHOR - Alice K. Boatwright is the author of the Ellie Kent mysteries, which debuted with Under an English Heaven, winner of the 2016 Mystery and Mayhem Grand Prize for Best Mystery. The series continues with What Child Is This? and In the Life Ever After. Alice has also published other fiction, including Collateral Damage, three linked novellas about the Vietnam War era; Sea, Sky, Islands, a chapbook of stories set in Washington’s San Juan Islands; and Mrs. Potts Finds Thanksgiving, a holiday parable… Read more