Hasta La Gadget!

Enterprising gamers are formatting vintage text-based adventure games such as Zork I, II and III for the Kindle and other dedicated e-readers.

“Many people cut their teeth on the imagination-fueled text adventure games released by Infocom back in the ’80s,” PortableQuest’s edman writes at MetaFilter. “Whispernet combined with the handy keyboard and the limiting browser made the Kindle perfect for text-based adventures.”

Everyone agrees that E Ink screens render text beautifully. E-readers’ slightly older but tech-inclined demographic definitely includes lovers of vintage games. And the ability to save and reload games using Amazon’s Whispernet is a nice feature.

Are the Zork games at times frustrating? Yes — maybe even more so on the Kindle, where text entry isn’t as fluid as on a full keyboard. (You occasionally have to enter in numbers, and the alt+Q=1 shortcut is a lifesaver there.)

Are they immersive and addicting? Yes. And I’m not even very old: These games and I are about the same age.

Text adventure games on the Kindle could benefit from including a few images here and there and introducing slightly more intuitive gameplay while staying within the text-based-adventure genre. There’s no reason why mid-to-late-80s RPGs, like my beloved Ultima and Wizardry series, couldn’t be made to work on the Kindle. And that, my friends, is the future of Kindle gaming — just 20-odd years too late.

Hat tip to Oliver Hulland.

See Also:

• Games, Chat, ePub: Imagining the Future of Apps for Kindle
• Scrabble Is First Paid Game App for Kindle
• How to Do (Almost) Everything With a Kindle 3
• Tablet Wars: Amazon Adds Apps to Kindle
• Vintage Video Games Go Highbrow
• Legends of Zork Calls for More Beta Testers
• Legends of Zork: Classic Series Turned Browser-Based MMO
• Old-School Text Adventures Come to the iPhone