Show Notes
Fourteen (!) capsule reviews of games submitted to this year's Interactive Fiction Competition (IFComp 2026), all with at least one claim to neo-retro status. Joining regulars Jason, Tim, and Nick are three guests from past episodes: Robin Raymond, Christian Neuhaus, and Dudley of Yesterzine. Some of this year's entries can be played in ancient languages (Hittite!) and on ancient devices (Atari 2600!) Let us know what you think of this experiment and if you'd like to see adjustments made if there is a next-time! Games covered: Copper Tavern (Tavern Heist)The RatDemonstrationRuined TempleBob the BarbarianForensic Necromancy9:00 AM TrainGambler’s QuestMeet the TimesheetWait-Our-Way TowerḪattušumna Laḫḫa (Hittite Adventure)The Count and the CommunistThe Two Seasons: Encounter With a VampireLogic Land
More from The Retro Adventurers
It's our 50th episode! Jason, Nick, and Tim make it a working holiday with news on the peak of competition season (Ectocomp! Introcomp! Iron ChIF! And of course IFComp!), news on developments for Z-Machine developers and Å-Machine players, five new Fairlight releases on C64, and, yes, reverb Ramsberg. Iron ChIF Adventuron wrapup: https://intfiction.org/t/iron-chif-season-one-episode-3-flacrabbit-vs-dee-cooke-using-adventuron/81129/138 Iron ChIF TADS sought: https://intfiction.org/t/iron-chef-looking-for-tads-challengers/75758/36 Introcomp: https://introcomp.org/ ECTOCOMP 2026: https://itch.io/jam/ectocomp-2026 ReZet80: https://rezet80.blogspot.com/p/rezet80-sentinel.html Tiny Text Adventure Engine: https://rezet80.blogspot.com/2026/02/tiny-text-adventure-engine.html Haunted House: https://rezet80.blogspot.com/2023/09/haunted-house.html Adventure Family Tree: https://www.ifwiki.org/Adventure_Family_Tree Adventure Family Tree discussion: https://intfiction.org/t/adventure-family-tree-using-ifwiki-to-record-and-display-information/77211/2 ZigZag: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/ZigZag_(software) Lantern: https://textadventure.net Swiss Family Robinson/FLT: https://csdb.dk/release/?id=263890 FairLight TV 159 (Synapse cracks): https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=j2x1xYSHCFQ The Demon Jar: https://qladventures.itch.io/the-demon-jar AGI-64/AGI-ANTIC: https://meanhamster.com/games/agi-64 Vanyar: https://johanberntsson.itch.io/vanyar I'm Still a Cannibal For the FBI: https://cannibalforthef.bi/ Dialog interpreter for Apple II: https://intfiction.org/t/help-dialog-choose-a-commodore-64-color-palette/81746/9 SCUMMVM MADS support: https://www.scummvm.org/news/20260826/ Fish on Apple platforms?!: https://www.gamesthatwerent.com/2026/09/fish Magnetic Scrolls' Upon Westminster Bridge: https://www.gamesthatwerent.com/2026/09/upon-westminster-bridge/ DAAD tutorials: https://markhardisty.wordpress.com/ The Greedy Dwarf: https://mjhardisty.itch.io/the-greedy-dwarf/devlog/1674561/the-greedy-dwarf-now-available Adjunct of Computing #1: https://youtu.be/tojYY6hdnNY Plague On the Discovery testers wanted: https://intfiction.org/t/testers-needed-for-new-bdb-project-s-game-plague-on-the-discovery-morgan-tyler-series-3/82097 Dracula Spectrum Next: https://giadacu.itch.io/dracula-english-zx-spectrum-next-illustrated-edition A Spy's Heist: https://ifdb.org/viewgame?id=au4s1nyuqonq10fw PARANOID blog: https://play-paranoid.online/blog/best-mystery-text-adventure-games Legends: https://ifdb.org/viewgame?id=3xgiq6kxz60zvff2
It's Infocom and Iron Curtain classic text adventures from the final years of the Cold War! With special guest Ana Meisel (ana.help), Nick and Jason take on two entertaining political-statement classics of the 1980s. First up is PRESTAVBA, aka PERESTROIKA, a once-anonymous satire set in the Prague Spring of 1968 and published (very carefully and also anonymously) in the former Czechoslovakia for ZX Spectrum. Then it's a not-so-distant flash-forward to Rockvil in the year 2031 for A Mind Forever Voyaging, Steve Meretzky's immersive statement on Reagan-era socioeconomic policies in the United States. Does Perry Simm have free will? Is a Soviet lighter reliable in a pinch? It's the first (and last?) time both our games are the standout selections of Aaron Reed's 50 Years of Text Games project: are they worthy? Join us and find out! A Mind Forever Voyaging (IFDB) A Mind Forever Voyaging docs (code table for Simulation Mode on p31) A Mind Forever Voyaging (playable online) Přestavba, original Czech and English translation downloads (ZXArt) Prestavba (IFDB) 50 Years of Text Games (features both games as the standout of 1985 and 1988, respectively) Gaming the Iron Curtain London Permacomputing Club Our Friend the Computer podcast Bonus - 1980s Czech film recommendations from Ana:
Contest deadlines, international reviews, and some Ramsberg groveling lead our news coverage for text adventure enthusiasts this month. Tim, Jason, and Nick bring you the latest for one of the oldest gaming disciplines... aside from that one story we accidentally repeated from last month. Nick's a little heavy on the reverb filter in this one, let us know if you get seasick. Spanish discussion of RetroAdv: https://mastodon.social/@DekaBlack/117166787290154461 https://mastodon.social/@textualizame/117166805431903978 Madman, port of 1983 VIC-20 game by the dread Ramsberg: https://ifdb.org/viewgame?id=6ymufgd24jnxg256 Wyrmward, Z6 PunyInform title: https://johanberntsson.itch.io/wyrmward Darkwood V: The Lost God found and preserved: https://csdb.dk/release/index.php?id=263342 https://www.facebook.com/groups/EightBitAdventures/posts/28558175203785812/ Inform 6 DM4: https://inform-fiction.org/manual/about_dm4.html Inform 6 Programmer's Guide: https://jxself.org/inform-guide/ OS9 Infocom interpreter: https://github.com/rlucente-retro/infocom-os9-port/releases/tag/v1.0.0 https://www.facebook.com/groups/2359462640/posts/10164528820297641/ Raaka-Tu: https://github.com/DrPitre/raakatu CoCo Nation Podcast Episode 474:
Pack your phrasebook and get ready to defend democracy as Ben and Jason take on a pair of quirky early 1980s adventures. For an appetizer, we order Infocom legend Brian Moriarty's early effort, a type-in published in ANALOG Computing Magazine no less: the Nicolas Cage-coded Adventure In the Fifth Dimension. The feature game is Invincible Island by Pete Cooke... that's Cooke with an e, sadly, although Ben and Jason do find time for a little Derek & Clive discourse which steers clear of the need to flag this episode for adult content. Both games have mindbending maps, but do they have anything else in common? Also, there's quite a bit of listener mail and news... from the summer of 2025, which is how long this episode has been waiting for publication! Thanks to Nick for breathing life into this one. If nothing else, let it serve as a reminder why we've created the monthly >OPEN MAILBOX series! Invincible Island (IFDB) Invincible Island (playable online, ZX Spectrum) Adventure In the Fifth Dimension (IFDB) Adventure in the Fifth Dimension (playable online, Atari 8-bit) The Guild of Thieves, Hit It With a Hammer! playthrough (YouTube) Encounter HD Asimov's The Black Widowers
No rest for retro adventuring news this summer as Tim and Jason bring you lots of news: contest developments (don't delay, some deadlines are very very very soon!), Visible Zorker updates which aren't as stark as they seem, lost games and a lost development environment unearthed, and really quite a bit more. Special thanks to Andrew Johnson for permission to use ZorkPBX demo audio. ParserComp 2026 voting closes soon https://itch.io/jam/parsercomp-2026 IFComp entries accepted (closing very soon!) https://blog.ifcomp.org/post/821438949798084608/ifcomp-2026-now-accepting-intents-entries Visible Starcross https://blog.zarfhome.com/2026/07/visible-starcross Arcturus Z-Machine compiler https://github.com/ByteProject/Arcturus/tree/main https://intfiction.org/t/arcturus-a-new-programming-language-compiler-for-the-z-machine/81091 pdp10 issues in Z1/Z2 Zork https://intfiction.org/t/frotz-and-bocfel-cant-parse-pdp10-in-v1-v2-zork-a-shift-lock-z-machine-spec-3-7-1-easter-egg/81002 Game console Linux ports https://github.com/LinuxMD/linuxmd https://cakehonolulu.github.io/linux-for-jaguar/ Zork-PET / BitShifter interpreter work resumes https://codeberg.org/root42/zork-pet https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wznA6SHQnMQ https://youtube.com/live/IvGJ7XQSHcc?feature=share https://youtube.com/live/Ywp51hY5GDo?feature=share https://github.com/Edilbert/BSA R.A.I.L. language unearthed https://www.gamesthatwerent.com/2026/07/r-a-i-l/ Iron ChIF Adventuron https://intfiction.org/t/iron-chif-season-one-episode-3-flacrabbit-vs-dee-cooke-using-adventuron/81129 https://intfiction.org/t/volunteer-to-beta-test-flacrabbits-game-in-iron-chif-s1e3-aug-23-27/81255 Catacombs and Goblin Towers for Commodore PET recovered https://www.commodoregames.net/catacombs.asp ZorkPBX https://github.com/aejx00/zorkpbx https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XvIENNmuUlY Babelmap interpreter https://intfiction.org/t/babelmap-rust-z-machine-glulx-scott-tui-w-graphics-and-sound-linux-macos-windows/81213 https://github.com/sharkusk/babelmap Review-a-Thon https://intfiction.org/t/review-a-thon-2026/80860 Never Gives Up Her Dead on Steam https://store.steampowered.com/app/4815350/Never_Gives_Up_Her_Dead/ Mega Adventure Creator https://theoasisbbs.com/mega-adventure-creator-adds-new-menu-system-and-status-bar/ https://github.com/lipi650/MAC Multiple Choice Adventure Engine https://solhsa.com/mucho/mucho.html https://github.com/jarikomppa/speccy/tree/master/mucho Adventure Coder Magazine https://www.flickr.com/photos/christopherhester/albums/page2 https://archive.org/search?query=creator%3A%22Chris+Hester%22 The Fool and His Money recovered https://blog.zarfhome.com/2026/07/the-fool-and-his-money-returns David Youd Enhances Secrets of the Pyramid of Light https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OiUZ7qtRHB4 Atari games optioned by major film studio -- what about Infocom? https://bsky.app/profile/neilpolowin.bsky.social/post/3mre5rfptgk2x Interactive Fiction Discord Server (visit #retro-adventurers-podcast !) https://discord.com/invite/8jrbVptACc TREK37 on IFDB https://ifdb.org/viewgame?id=a026gnl4v2aclec2 Skull Island on IFDB https://ifdb.org/viewgame?id=jrvu7excy55dtjuu