Graphics? We don’t need no stinking graphics!

Modern gamers and gaming pundits that either rave or rant about the graphics and cutscenes in the latest adventure games always make me grin just a little bit.

Once upon a time, we didn’t HAVE graphics in our long adventure games.  Just words.

Yes.  Words.   Text on a screen… usually in a color that was hard on the eyes.

Frankly, while I am among those amazed at the details that exist in modern-day gaming graphics, I somewhat miss the old text adventures.  They are perhaps the one gaming medium that doesn’t still exist in the modern day, at least in the mainstream.

In those early days we often had to pretend that the boxy things on a computer game were what they said they were, limiting us in any kind of real adventure.  The text adventures allowed us to go where we wanted at try almost anything, something that doesn’t even exist in many of today’s games.

The best ones were the sarcastic ones.  I recall one on my Commodore 64 that would scold you if you typed profanity toward it or tried something silly, like “insert wand into bird”, an act that caused the game to give me a firm lesson on the proper way to treat animals.

Most of all, the old text adventures were more like interactive books.  You had to use your imagination to visualize what was going on in your adventure, not unlike the text of a book, but you are allowed to choose your own way and live that adventure how you saw it.  I don’t believe this is an element that I have encountered within any other form of video gaming since.

I miss that.  Those of ya that know text adventures can feel free to chime in if you feel the same way.