Definitely one of my very favorite Infocom games. It's a shame Ms. Briggs never made another game, as she definitely had a feel for how to create true interactive fiction, especially how to handle plot. I wonder if she knows about modern authoring systems like Inform and the like? Maybe she could be convinced to try her hand again...
Being 12 at the time, I didn't want to play a pirate game where I didn't get to play the pirate (and had to play a girl at that). Was very much in Fred Savage "Is there kissing?" mode (appropriate as The Princess Bride came out the same year). That said, a year or so later, I recall playing through Moonmist as both male and female, so apparently like Fred, I grew to not mind it as much.
Honestly, reading the end brings back the bad memories of watching Infocom fall apart in real time. They, Epyx, and Atari - the games companies of my youth - all seemed to blow up right around the time that Commodore ultimately did, and it was sad times.
Wouldn't that be 128K? That would be the upper size limit of the Z-code file, at least. Plundered Hearts is about 126K, which seems to be about the normal size for a late-era "small" game.
There was an article in the Winter/Spring 1988 edition of The Status Line ("What about Atari 8-bits and the Commodore 64?") that talks about the size limitations of different platforms. It doesn't go into a whole lot of detail, but it does have a chart of the sizes of the games, in release order, and lines showing the approximate size limits for TI99, Atari and C-64.
this was an excellent read - a bit of everything in this story!
regarding the clothing simulation: was the "first" for infocom that the clothing simulation was a separate source file? or were its contents (dresses, broaches) the "first"? or maybe something else?
I have not played through all the Infocom games yet and this is one I should certainly do soon. Here's a question though - does playing as a woman in Leather Goddesses of Phobos (I did both as a kid) count in terms of female protagonist? You can certainly make the argument that not much really changes either way and so it's just a slight variation on AFGNCAAP but it should sort of half count. :)
Definitely one of my very favorite Infocom games. It's a shame Ms. Briggs never made another game, as she definitely had a feel for how to create true interactive fiction, especially how to handle plot. I wonder if she knows about modern authoring systems like Inform and the like? Maybe she could be convinced to try her hand again...
Being 12 at the time, I didn't want to play a pirate game where I didn't get to play the pirate (and had to play a girl at that). Was very much in Fred Savage "Is there kissing?" mode (appropriate as The Princess Bride came out the same year). That said, a year or so later, I recall playing through Moonmist as both male and female, so apparently like Fred, I grew to not mind it as much.
Honestly, reading the end brings back the bad memories of watching Infocom fall apart in real time. They, Epyx, and Atari - the games companies of my youth - all seemed to blow up right around the time that Commodore ultimately did, and it was sad times.
> every corner of the 64K allotted
Wouldn't that be 128K? That would be the upper size limit of the Z-code file, at least. Plundered Hearts is about 126K, which seems to be about the normal size for a late-era "small" game.
There was an article in the Winter/Spring 1988 edition of The Status Line ("What about Atari 8-bits and the Commodore 64?") that talks about the size limitations of different platforms. It doesn't go into a whole lot of detail, but it does have a chart of the sizes of the games, in release order, and lines showing the approximate size limits for TI99, Atari and C-64.
this was an excellent read - a bit of everything in this story!
regarding the clothing simulation: was the "first" for infocom that the clothing simulation was a separate source file? or were its contents (dresses, broaches) the "first"? or maybe something else?
Do you know if the sample game ("a game tester assigned increasingly surreal tasks") is available please?
I have not played through all the Infocom games yet and this is one I should certainly do soon. Here's a question though - does playing as a woman in Leather Goddesses of Phobos (I did both as a kid) count in terms of female protagonist? You can certainly make the argument that not much really changes either way and so it's just a slight variation on AFGNCAAP but it should sort of half count. :)
> But it’s worth nothing that Briggs certainly did this deliberately,
Unfortunate typo!