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A Brilliant Throwback to Imaginative PC Games

5 Rating: 5, Useful: 8 / 9
Date: June 22, 2004
Author: Amazon User

The Infocom collection is a delicious piece of 80's nostalgia and features a strong cast of imaginative games that force you to think for yourself. Without graphics to explain things for you, you'll need to create your own images and build the story in your mind. For some this is a godsend... for others it will be sheer doom. Doubtful that teens of today could get into this, but there may be hope for youngsters. My 9-year-old daughter loves the junior level games. Then again, she likes to read and found these game mentally expansive... she thought it was fun to "play" a book.

The collection includes them all, from the foundational Zork series, the humorous "Hitchhiker's Guide..." and "Leather Goddeses", the detective mysteries like "Deadline" and the sci-fi mindbenders like "Suspended" and "A Mind Forever Voyaging". Obviously some are better than others and the difficulty levels swing wildly... some are darn-near impossible and require extreme patience.

A major issue will be your own willpower. Can you resist the burning temptation to scan the Internet for hints or will you stick it out and be honest? FYI - you can download most of these for free at this point.

The most amazing collection of games, ever!

4 Rating: 4, Useful: 7 / 7
Date: August 09, 2003
Author: Amazon User

Really. Most of these games, individually, is worth paying a substantial sum of money for. These are classic text adventure games. Each one is rich and complex for those of us who are happy to play with words rather than pictures. They are clever, humorous, twisted, atmospheric, frustrating, tense, difficult and fiendish. This collection is damn hard to get hold of. Get hold of it if you can.

On the down side: these games originally game as individual boxed sets complete with maps and other 'feelies'. In this set they come as low quality scans in a PDF document. They lack colour and in some cases the detail required to solve the game. In one case essential information for the game is in fact missing from the PDF.

Note: contrary to what some other reviews might say, for legal reasons this collection contains neither Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy nor Shogun.

Remarkable Classics which can never be beaten

5 Rating: 5, Useful: 3 / 3
Date: July 14, 2001
Author: Amazon User

The old infocom video games brought me hours and hours of pleasure .I discovered them at the age of 12 in 1984 , and they bring back fantastic memories. They provide wonderful trips of imagination into other worlds in ways which the graphic-oriented, high tech , over-sophisticated games of today never can .

Great set of games!

5 Rating: 5, Useful: 5 / 5
Date: May 24, 2001
Author: Amazon User

If you like to READ more than you like to watch TV, then these are the games for you. Infocom put out some of the best adventure games in the days before graphics. That's correct, no graphics. Everything must be pictured in your head. Basically infocom's products are games for the mind. They challenge you to use your IMAGINATION to figure out a vast array of puzzles, not just point and click your way around pretty graphics. Some of them are better than others, but overall, you can't go wrong for 10 bucks.

Do you enjoy this?

3 Rating: 3, Useful: 17 / 44
Date: March 30, 2001
Author: Amazon User

If you enjoy the following you need this collection.

The Coast You hear the sound of waves gently lapping on the shore as you approach the wide beach that extends as far as you can see to the east and west. Fish swim and splash in shallow pools near the waters edge, and you can just make out the forms of dolphins playing farther out in the open water. There is an enemy villager here > hit villager What do you want to hit the villager with? > inventory You can't hit the villager with that > inventory You are carrying: a basket an axe a pick a large bone > hit villager with axe You can't do that > hit villager with pick You can't do that > hit villager with bone You bone the enemy villager The enemy villager leaves > quit Are you sure [y]? > yes Your score is 0 (total of 350 points), in 0 moves. This gives you the rank of Beginner.

Very good, if you know what you're getting...

4 Rating: 4, Useful: 21 / 25
Date: December 08, 2000
Author: Amazon User

These games are ten, maybe even fifteen years old in some cases. If you've never heard of Infocom or these games before, you're probably going to be disappointed in them.

On the other hand, if your first computer was an Apple II, Commodore 64, or a TRS 80, this collection is quite a kick of nostalgia. I grew up on these games and they're what inspired me into computers as a career. I sank hundreds of hours of my childhood into these wonderful adventures, which I still consider very fun and somewhat challenging today. Some of them bring a tear to my eye reminding me of all the fun I had.

If you can relate to this feeling, you might enjoy some of these games. They are broad, immersive, and fun, if quite antiquated. They are all text. No graphics at all. The world you are set in is described a paragraph at a time in a beauty that can't be explained or compared to today's games.

I played these games when I was about 12 to 14 years old. However, I don't think they would make a good gift for a child today unless that child has a real passion for reading. This would make a better gift for that quirky older guy you know that builds his own computers and lives in his basement. The nostalgia value of these games is immense.

It's also easy to get stuck in these games, and since it's doubtful your friends are also playing them, it can be hard to get help. There are, however, ample resources on the internet from other nostalgics. You just need to look.

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