Before Myst there was the interactive text game Adventure. Introduced in 1976, I first played Adventure on an Infoton dumb terminal in 1981. I can’t find a picture of the Infoton, so here’s a Lear-Siegler ADM-3A, also introduced in 1976.
I became an expert on dumb terminals (Dumb Terminals for Dummies?) and asynchronous data communication at the suggestion of the co-founder of my employer. My thorough understanding of 7-bit ASCII, RS-232 interfacing, start bit/data bits/parity bit/stop bits, and Xon/Xoff flow control served me well for about ten years, until it was rendered irrelevant by the PC revolution. I never got all the way through Adventure, but it’s available to play online for free.
I’m amazed and dismayed that I wrote this post almost a year ago!
Don’t know how I missed this post the first time around, so I’m happy to see Iain’s comment that brought it to light. In any case, I *love* both those games! Somehow, in spite of many, many hours of game play, I never finished Myst, but found it very engaging, and just my speed (as opposed to the endless FPS games I didn’t particularly care for). Portal was a somewhat similar puzzle solving game that I also enjoyed, and never finished. But Adventure/Colossal Cave really takes me back. Spent hours on that one, too, with a friend on his dad’s new IBM PC back in the early 80’s when I was in HS. (And before that, it was games that a different friend and I typed in to his TRS-80 from magazine listings, or from our own fevered brains…)
Sorry, no. I once had a large collection of VDT manuals in my lab at work, but the company president’s son threw them out! I haven’t heard the name Four-Phase in many years.
you wouldnt happen to have/know some one who has a service manual for a ADM 31 would you?
BTW.. first played adventure on a Four Phase Systems IV-70
loved it then. glad to have a link to it online. hopefully will get my ADM 31 working hooked up to my IMSAI 8080 to play adventure
and Star Trek and lunar lander. lol