Audyssey; Computer Games Accessible to the Blind Edited by Michael Feir Issue 7: July/August, 1997 ++ Welcome Welcome to the seventh issue of Audyssey. this magazine is dedicated to the discussion of games which, either by accident or design, are accessible to the blind. We also discuss any concerns and issues raised by them. This issue marks the first full year of the existence of Audyssey. In addition to covering the latest game news and developments, we will be taking a special look back at where we've come from, and ahead to where we're going. Please write articles and letters about games or game-related topics which interest you. They will likely interest me, and your fellow readers. They will also make my job as editor a lot more interesting and true to the meaning of the word. This magazine should and can be a highly interesting and qualitative look at accessible computer gaming. To insure that high quality is maintained, I'll need your written contributions. I'm not asking for money here, and won't accept any. This magazine is free in its electronic form, and will always remain so. PCS needs to charge a subscription cost to cover the disks and shipping costs that it incurs by making the magazine available on disk. I'm writing this magazine as much for my own interest as for everyone else's. Your articles, reviews, and letters, as well as any games you might care to send me, are what I'm after. Send any games, articles, letters, or reviews on a 3.5-inch disk in a self-addressed mailer so that I can return your disk or disks to you once I have copied their contents onto my hard drive. Please only send shareware or freeware games. It is illegal to send commercial games. By sending me games, you will do several things: first, and most obviously, you will earn my gratitude. You will also insure that the games you send me are made available to my readership as a whole. As a further incentive, I will fill any disks you send me with games from my collection. No disk will be returned empty. If you want specific games, or specific types of games, send a message in Ascii format along. *Never* *ever* send your original disks of *anything* to *anyone* through the mail. *Always* send *copies!* This principle may seem like it shouldn't even have to be stated, but when it comes to just about anything related to computers, there's always some poor soul who will act before applying common sense. Disks are *not* indestructible. Things *do* get lost or damaged in the mail, and disks are not immune to these misfortunes. If you have a particular game that you need help with, and you are sending your questions on a disk anyhow, include the game so that I can try and get past your difficulty. If you can, I recommend that you send e-mail. I have acquired a copy of the UUencode software, and can send and/or receive files which are encoded via this means. This way, no money will be wasted sending me a game I already have, and you'll get my reply more quickly. You are responsible for shipping costs. That means, either use a disk mailer which has your address on it, and is either free matter for the blind, or is properly stamped. I can and will gladly spare time to share games and my knowledge of them, but cannot currently spare money above what I spend hunting for new games. I encourage all my readers to give my magazine to whoever they think will appreciate it. Up-load it onto web pages and bulletin board systems. Copy it on disk for people, or print it out for sighted people who may find it of value. The larger our community gets, the more self- sustaining it will become. This magazine is published on a bi-monthly basis, each issue appearing no earlier than the twentieth of every other month. All submissions must be sent to me in standard Ascii format either on a 3.5-inch floppy disk, or via e-mail to my Compuserve address. I will give my home address and my Compuserve address at the end of the magazine. There are now several ways of obtaining Audyssey. To subscribe to the distribution list so that you receive all future issues, send a subscription request to J.J. Meddaugh. As he is running several lists, be sure to specifically ask to join the Audyssey list. His address is: jmeddaug@cris.com You can find all issues of Audyssey on the Internet on Paul Henrichsen's web site at: www.thesocket.com/~henrich All issues are also available in the disability forum on Compuserve. If you have web access, Audyssey now has an official web-page, maintained by J.J. Meddaugh. There are links to other interesting sites, and all issues of Audyssey are available there as well. In the near future, software may also be posted there for you to down-load. The address for this page is: http://www.geocities.com/timessquare/alley/1989 For those of you who have trouble finding some of the software discussed in this magazine, or if you know someone who doesn't have access to the Internet, but would be interested in the magazine, this magazine is now available on disk. PCS has agreed to distribute Audyssey, as well as selected shareware or freeware software on disk for ten dollars US per year. To subscribe to Audyssey on disk, contact them at: Personal Computer Systems 551 Compton Ave. Perth Amboy N.J. 08861 Phone (732)-826-1917 E-mail: pvlasak@monmouth.com ++ Contents: Welcome Contents From the Editor Letters My views on Games for the Blind The Latest Finds PCS: the People behind the Games My Audyssey Game Reviews The winning Contest Entry Special Anniversary Bonus contacting Me ++ From the Editor Hello, everyone. The first order of business is to explain why some of you might not have received your copies of Audyssey via E-mail as you were supposed to. J.J. Meddaugh, our internet expert and distribution manager has gone to work at a camp for the blind. When he returns, I'll ask him to re-distribute the issue so that we can be certain that everyone gets it. In the meantime, he has provided me with a copy of the distribution list as it was before he left. I will attempt to distribute this issue myself to as many of you as I can. Please accept my humble apologies for any delays or inconvenience. This issue of Audyssey marks the first year of the magazine's publication, and what a year it has been. The community of readers has grown tremendously. And yet, this magazine still remains a very fragile and uncertain thing. Looking back over the past issues, I notice that most of the articles have been either written by me, or contributed by a small handful of people. I get letters from a whole lot of you, but actual articles and reviews only come from a very small group of you. The most regular contributed has been Allen maynard. A few of you have contributed some very good reviews, and an even smaller number have contributed actual articles. We had Ken Parry's excellent introduction to multi-user dungeons, and in this issue, we have an excellent article about the possible future of games for the blind by David Lant. We also have an interesting look into the people at PCS. To those of you who have contributed, I offer you my sincere thanks. I hope that you will continue to offer your writing talents to this magazine. if more of you don't start contributing articles and reviews, I don't know if Audyssey will survive another year. I'm going into my final year of college, and this year will be the most intense I've ever experienced. Without your submissions, there won't be any Audyssey. It's that simple. I've tried everything I can think of to give people incentive to write for this magazine. I figured the contest for one of PCS's games, normally worth $30 US, received for free, would be enough incentive to draw some response from you. Yet, two months later, only one person entered the contest. So, readers, where have I gone wrong? Was seven hundred words too long? Is there nothing which will get more of you to write even small articles for Audyssey? I'm quite willing to entertain suggestions. I'm also entirely out of ideas. If PCS is willing, another contest might be tried some time in the future. After the appalling response they got this time, I don't see them being overly enthusiastic to offer up another free game. To all those who have contributed articles and reviews, please continue to do this. You might be the small core who keep Audyssey going. You also might finally encourage our other readers to finally get off their duffs and start participating instead of merely hanging on for the ride. if people are looking for games to review, there are plenty out there which have not been properly reviewed in this magazine. One of the letters was an article from the rec.games.int-fiction newsgroup which points to a web-site with text-based software which was formerly commercial. the company was called Beam software. If anyone has web access and can get these games, reviews of them would be very much appreciated. Also, if any of you card-sharks decide to get pCS's new pack of card games, I would very much like a review of these. If any of you have a favourite mud or on-line game you like to play, review it for the rest of us. One final bit of news here is that despite extensive efforts, no contact has been made with TMA Incorporated, the makers of Anacreon Reconstruction. I am now willing to distribute the registered version of the game to whoever wants it. this comes without the full manual, of course. It seems that there is no longer any hope of obtaining this. the general consensus of those I talked to about the game was that TMA Inc. no longer exists. if any of you want Anacreon Reconstruction, please let me know. Sierra Inc. has released its long-anticipated Battle at Antara, the sequel to Betrayal at Krondor, which was discussed in the last issue. I have yet to obtain this game, which is available on cd-rom, but chances are excellent that it is even more suitable for blind people to play with sighted partners than the last one was. I'll eventually be getting the game, but cannot guarantee that it will be before the next issue. If anyone else gets it, please review it for us. On that note, I'll leave you all to enjoy the rest of this special issue of audyssey. Keep those articles, letters and reviews coming. ++ Letters + From Travis Siegel For text games of all kinds, you can ftp to softcon.com, and check in the textgame directory. There's (currently) over 140 games there, with more being added all the time as I find them. Feel free to grab what you like, and if you have something I don't, and would like to share it with the world, contact me by sending a message to tsiegel@softcon.com, and I'll see about getting it online there. Hope this helps someone. + Three cheers for Travis! I have had an opportunity to examine his site, and he has managed to find some rare items. A version of the old Wumpus game, all-be-it not a terrific one, is available there. a lot of the AGT games have also found their way onto the site. I hope that the frotz interpreter and some of the Inform games find their way onto the site, as well as other gems like Fallthru. I encourage all of you to have a look at the site for yourselves. This could become the premier site for blind people to find text- based games of all kinds on. I don't believe that this has happened yet, but it could happen over the next year if enough people help Travis out. I certainly plan to. + From Jan Wright: I downloaded your zine off Paul Henrichson's web page. I liked it very much. I have seen many gaming zines for the sighted and am glad to see a zine for text based games. I am a blind mother of four sighted children. My children range from 9-4 yo. I am trying to educate them, as well as have fun with them on my computer. I am looking for games that are text based, but have a little graphics to sustain children's interest. My oldest child and I can play one of the games in the vip611 package. I would like a very very simple adventure game with limited graphics, or something similar. Are such games? I do not have C.D. rom, yet, nor do I have capability to hook up a mouse without getting a mouse bus card. I hope to get these in the future, but are not able to, at this time. If you can give me any suggestions, please do. Also, I found a wonderful text based game that deals with word execution. The game is called wordy. In this package, you can get scrabble capabilities, chess clock, unscramble capability, searching and pattern wordfinds, and anagram capabilities. One player can play the wordy game. The computer gives you a twelve letterset. A more experienced user can put in their own letterset. The player has three minutes to find as many words as possible. The computer keeps score and a record file. You can look at this game by going to: http://personal.riverusers.com/~thegrendel/ Tell me what you think??? Jan Wright + Many thanks to Jan for informing us all of Wordy. This is an excellent word-game which a lot of people are sure to enjoy. I can certainly testify to my grandmother and I having a lot of fun with the game while she visited us. See the latest finds section for my review of the game. I'm afraid that finding games with minimal graphics isn't exactly my strong point. The best I can do here is tell you that some of the AGT games are supposed to have graphics. The best place to find adventure games remains the interactive fiction archives at: ftp.gmd.de If any of you know of any games which you think are particularly good for younger children, please send reviews of them, or information on where they may be found, so that others may write reviews of them. In the meantime, I might recommend a couple of the Adventureware games. The Haunted Mission, and Island of Mystery, seem particularly geared towards younger kids. + From Alun Evans: Hello Michael, I have just read Audyssey Issue 5: March/April, 1997 which I found very interesting. Reading the magazine reminded me of years ago when "Windows" were things you looked through and put curtains at. and I was trying to get to grips with my new toy - A Sinclair ZX81 - Now with that brute you couldn't even find the keys let alone play a game because the keys weren't raised. Ah well with a mountain of patience and a good deal of determination I managed to learn a smattering of "basic" and eventually wrote a little game where a slowly moving train, composed of inverse or black squares, could be bombed by a descending "V" which was controlled by the cursor keys. Now having some sight I could just about play this game and at the time I thought myself dead clever to have written it, but of course the damn thing was of no use to anyone and my wife, Kate, who has no sight at all, was less than impressed with my offering. Later on we got an Atari with "Real Keys". Games were acquired by typing them in from magazine listings. I remember one in particular which had the hero, a fellow called Joe, leaping about some subterranean caverns chased by a collection of ghosts. To help Kate play this game I added some code to report exits from the caves as a series of beeps. A bit crude you might say but it worked and amazed the kids by leaving them standing. Then there was this professional game for the Atari called Bounty Bob, perhaps you've come across it. The thing about this game was that you could hear the little chappy move about the screen so that you could count footsteps in whichever direction you were going and as the platforms never varied you could learn a level. Kate managed to learn level one and could clear it 8 times out of ten. Now we have the PC it seems that that type of game has died out, unless of course you know different. Anyway I just thought I would write and tell you to carry on the good work, I'll certainly try and catch the next issue. Thanks putting in the effort. Alun Evans. + Mr. Evans has given us a very timely glimpse into the past here. I also used to have a lot of fun with video games which I played using my light perception and memorization of the levels. This was even possible with arcade games, which also didn't vary too much from game to game. Of course, those days are long gone to the best of my knowledge. Video games are designed with re-play value in mind, and tend to vary quite a lot. this is true in arcades and at home. In the future, I wouldn't be surprised if PCS explored the possibilities of this kind of game. They plan to eventually use sound as a primary input in games. The results of these efforts should be quite interesting. If any of you have managed to find video games which are playable via memorization and hearing, please do let the rest of us share in the excitement. In the meantime, I hope that you find some of the games which are discussed in this magazine to be enjoyable. Your thoughts on the small collection of screen-oriented games, such as Nethack and Adom, would be most interesting in light of your video game experience, and I hope that you'll have occasion to try these games and share your reactions with us. + From Randall Lewis: Hi Michael. . Thanks for your E. My wife is totally blind. I did follow the links you gave me, but I had no luck with what I was looking for. I downloaded the vipegs file you mentioned but there was nothing suitable. I have found loads of crossword games, and companies that compiles crossword games, but none that are actually able to be read by any screen reader. I have also put out various inquiries on the internet, but have not received any useful information. I do now have a copy of PW Webspeak. I do hope that your exams went ok. If you can help in any way, I will be pleased to hear from you. Regards. Randall. + Despite considerable effort, I am sorry to report here that no crossword games have been found which are accessible to the blind. The Wordy game found by Jan Right, might prove somewhat interesting to you, and you might want to check that out. Other than this find, no new word-games have been found, and as far as I know, none are being worked on. Like many ideas, I fail to see why no speech- friendly crossword game exists. It should be quite workable. Several requests for speech-friendly crosswords have come my way, and any game developers out there might want to think of making a program. To be comparable with what is available for sighted people, such a program would have to allow for the creation of one's own crosswords, and contain numerous pre-made puzzles as well. i can only hope that someone, somewhere, will take on the task of making a crossword system for the blind. + From Timothy J Truman: Mike, I read your request to MVP concerning a game that was developed for the blind. I used to program games for other companies. I now have my own called Nocturnal Creations. Although NC has primarily made graphically based games ,I was stirred in your request for games that are accessible to the blind. This is a market area of gaming that I believe is untapped. Perhaps I could be of assistance to your readers and make a game that is blind Accessible. I am excited about exploring this area of gaming. Perhaps you could answer these questions for me : What makes a game blind accessible ? Are there any games available that fit the requirements? What is the average age of your reader ? What type of games do they like best ? Any other helpful information you could provide would be appreciated. I would really like to explore this area of gaming further. Sincerely , Tim Truman President of Nocturnal Creations + To have another company enter into the business of games for blind people is an exciting possibility indeed, and I have already tried to offer Tim what information I could to answer his questions. He seems quite eager to responde to what the market wants, and to help him do this, I invite all of you to send me any letters with your answers to the questions Tim poses. Also, what kind of games would you like to play which haven't been made yet? Perhaps, Tim and his company will do something to remedy the situation. I've explained to Tim that he, like any other developers of games accessible to the blind, is welcome to advertise in this magazine. hopeful, we'll be seeing more of that in the future. + Hello. I have been reading over your game audyssey magazine, regarding games for the blind and visually impaired. I do have a question for you, and it may in fact be covered in an issue of the audyssey, but what the heck, I will ask it anyway. Since you have a great knowledge of games for the blind, what would you recommend for good games in the sports area of gaming such as, football games, baseball, basketball, boxing, and any other sports games that are out there. I find it really amusing that certain companies such as otsports, who publishes the ABC Monday night football cdrom game, make a game that has play-by-play as well as color commentary. Only problem is that the menus for setting game preferences etc are not really accessible with any windows screen reader. Shrug. Thank you for any info and pointers. Also, if you have an issue of the game audyssey devoted to this, please alert me. Thanks again. Jeremy Hartley + Sports games are still one of the rarest kinds of games available for the blind. PCS has made a Football game, a bowling game, and a shooting range so far. Also, it has helped to bring sounds and a new interface to the highly praised World Series Baseball game written by Hary Hollingsworth. Jim Kitchen has made simple games of Baseball and Golf. He has possibly made more which have not yet come to my attention. Besides these sources, no other sports games exist that I am aware of which are accessible to the blind. If any readers come across accessible sports games, they are asked to inform me of them so that I can announce them in Audyssey. + From Frank Gulics I would like to thank you Mike, for providing this platform for blind gamers to exchange ideas. In your issue six, Allen Maynard made a comparison between two baseball games. I would like to answer his statement if I may. Allen, it is not fair to compare two different game classes like you did between Harry's WORLD SERIES BASEBALL and Jim's baseball game. Jim's game is more like an arcade style game, while Harry's game is a strategic simulation. The two games are not easily compared. I can understand a person's preference for games of physical skill. Many people love to test their hand abilities, quick reflexes, and or their dexterity. There are also many people who like to play what if scenario games of what would, could, or should have happen. However, Harry's and Jim's games are as different to play as comparing chess to ping-pong. World Series Baseball simulates a what if scenario. Like, what would happen if the 1996 Yankees played against the 1969 Mets? Jim's game uses a player's fast action input to generate a result. If the player hits the right spot when they are supposed to, the odds for a favourable result is higher. I agree with your assessment about Jim's game, but I believe your bashing of Harry's game was wrong. I think the games perform well, and meet most of the criteria that the programmers set out to achieve. All products have short comings, and it is your duty to point them out to the creators of the product. If no one makes any comments, suggestions, or complaints, programs would not improve or grow into very good, enjoyable, usable products. When one makes a comment about a program make sure that you keep a relative perspective of what you are comparing. For example, if Harry would add the pitch and hit to his game, it would no longer be usable as a baseball simulator. On the other hand, if Jim would add real player statistics to his game, the statistics would be meaningless. However, if you were to say something like, I like Jim's baseball game because I like games of skill better then strategic games that heavily use player stats. What this comment tells the game maker is that the market for games of skill might be worth developing. One last thing to remember, explain why you dislike or like something in a program. If you do not tell a programmer why you dislike a particular aspect of a program, or what might make it work better, then the programmer could not fix the problem, or know what solution would work better. On the other hand, if you really like the way something works, tell the programmer, because the programmer might not realize they had something good, and change it. Remember, if your suggestion is not understood, or you offend the people making games for your enjoyment, they might blow you off. Talk to the people who make products you like, and support their efforts whenever you use their stuff. Mike, you might like to put together a short article on the breakdowns of the different categories of game playing and what it takes to play the various styles. You could explain the difference between tactic, strategic, simulation, real time, and game turn. Once again Mike, thanks for the magazine, and keep up the good work. I don't have email so I gave this letter to Phil to send to you, and if anyone wants to respond, send it to Phil at pvlasak@monmouth.com and I will get it from him on disk. Frank Gulics Woodbridge NJ. + Frank has raised a lot of good points here. I can certainly agree with him that the comparison between the two Baseball games was not a particularly fair one. Of course, the fact that these two games are the only Baseball games available for personal computers leaves little room for any other comparison. While the comparison is flawed in this way, it will certainly help players by explaining the two games and their differences. they will then be able to decide which game to acquire. This kind of response is very welcome indeed. It is one of the few examples of the kind of interaction I envisioned when I started the magazine. I hope that more of you will follow Frank's example and offer feedback on the contents of this magazine. Allen will certainly benefit from Frank's good advise, and I have no doubt that Mr. Maynard's contributions will be all the better for it. Allen is one of the best contributors to this magazine, so we'll all benefit from Frank's efforts here. I hope that more constructive criticism such as this is forthcoming from our growing community of readers. Frank, you have demonstrated an excellent skill for tactful critique, and have also demonstrated a high degree of insight. I hope that you'll continue to offer these to this magazine, and might also write us some articles and reviews. I think you'd be absolutely splendid at it. On the subject of the proposed article explaining various types of games, I would be perfectly willing to do this if people think it will aid them. Anyone interested should write to me and let me know what you'd like me to cover in this article. ++ My View of Games for the Blind. By David Lant As we all know, there are, at best, few games which are specifically designed to be played by blind people on computers. With the appearance of PCS in the US there is now a nucleus of interest in producing such games and, having looked at some of their demos, they are taking it seriously. The future for this market, however, is greatly underestimated by many people today. One of the fundamental problems is the perspective from which game designers start the process of developing a game which requires no visual input. I will make it clear right now that if I make any reference to PCS games in a way which might seem negative, this is not because of any failure or shortcoming in their staff or products. They are merely the victim of being the best I have come across in the market and are therefore what I choose to use as the current watermark. If you like, it's a sort of back-handed compliment to PCS that I use them as an example. Firstly, one of the difficulties of designing a game is that many attempts to do so start from a concept which was originally designed for sighted people. The developers then try to find a way of adapting it to work without the need for sight. Next, the technology is considered in much the same way. Most commercially available games use fantastic amounts of visual effects of an incredibly high quality. So an immediate reaction is to disregard the multimedia technology and go back to text based games as they are at least known to work. Finally, the potential use of sound is recognized as a wonderful source of "flavouring" to give a game atmosphere. All of these considerations are perfectly valid in themselves. There is nothing untrue or disrespectful in any of these considerations. However, there is another perspective. One which, as yet, I have not found in any game. To invent a new game specifically for the blind is not an insignificant chore in itself. But the initial difficulty is to know how much information can be presented to the blind player in as pleasing and entertaining a way as possible. Also, what volume and density of information can the player accept? Clearly, using speech synthesizers or braille displays, this information will tend to be in a rather linear form, rather like listening to an audio tape, the information will come in a series of sounds or symbols one after another. This is not how we live our lives. Sounds do come to us at all times and from all directions. It has been shown in studies that we can process several sound inputs at once provided they are compatible and coordinated. And the information that everyday sounds provide is not just contained in what the sound actually is. For example, when you hear a car engine, you are not only aware that somewhere nearby a car engine is running. You are also aware, assuming you have relatively normal hearing, of such things as the direction from which that sound is coming, whether it is moving towards or away from you and even, quality of the sound, whether it is a new petrol engine or a clapped out old deise. Of course you have no idea what colour the vehicle is or, unless you are a real expert, what make or model it is. But most people would probably be able to tell the difference between a two door hatchback and your average juggernaut. So you can see that the sounds we receive can contain large amounts of parallel information which is a potentially great source of inspiration and entertainment for games. The advancement in technology available in sound production today could be compared to the change in visual technology between the two movies "Tron" and "Toy Story". By today's standards, "Tron" seems clunky and cumbersome; consisting of relatively simple perspective wire-frame animations and linear drawings. But with newer software and hardware, it is now possible to produce near live quality motion pictures entirely from within a computer's memory. The same is roughly true of sound production in modern home computers. I the early days, we considered ourselves lucky to get a small built-in speaker which could produce a range of musical tones to accompany our "Space Invaders" game. Now, with multimedia sound production at its best, we can achieve 3D CD quality sound as well as multi-channel sound synthesis of an amazing complexity. So, given this fact, why are most games for the blind basically text data with sound files played to give atmosphere and background to the event? Why do our games not warrant the full use of the kind of sound generation most of our computers are capable of? Just wander past your average computer store and listen to the sounds being produced for normal sighted games. It is not just background music these days. You get synthesized noises of guns firing, cars racing, balls being kicked and crowds cheering. Clearly there is a matter of cost involved. For a very small market by anybody's standards, the development of high quality synthesized sounds in complex active games may constitute a high initial investment. I am sure there are others out there who are much better qualified than I to quantify this matter. But just think of the possibilities. As an extremely simplistic example I would like to present the following as a development for a game for the blind. Please do not take this as an example of the pinnacle of excellence or imagination in the use of sound technology. I am simply using this as a blackboard on which to scrawl some ideas. Consider a randomly generated maze. I know this is not an original thought in the games market, but it allows for replayability in this example. Now, what information does the player need? Well, she or he needs a goal to aim for. Although there might be some satisfaction in simply reaching the centre of the maze, it would make the game more motivating if there were an actual reward of some kind. Let us take the "Fountain of Youth" as our reward. Your mission is to find your way through the maze to this site to gain immortality. We could just as easily base the game of the myth of the Minotaur and have the slaying of that beast as the objective. In any case, we can have the system produce a sound of a fountain playing continuously throughout the game. This is not merely a background effect. The sound would be played to the player in such a way as to indicate the direction to the center of the maze. Thus if you can hear the fountain over your left shoulder, you know that you are facing away from your ultimate goal and that you need to bear heavily around to your left and back some to be heading in the right direction. So far, so good. Now what about the maze itself? What data is needed by a player to negotiate one? Clearly, the player must be able to tell where the walls of the maze are. Are they standing in a long featureless corridor or are they at a junction? Let us for the sake of argument say that the maze is constructed from high hedges. We could produce sounds of rustling leaves from whichever direction the player is immediately confronted by a wall. For example, if the player is in a dead-end, they would hear rustling from in front and to their left and right. By using keyboard or joystick controls, the player can rotate and move themselves in order to judge which is the clear route. If the mere absence of a sound to indicate a clear passage is not enough, the sound of a soft breeze blowing could emanate from the direction of an open space. Thus if you hear a breeze from all four directions, you are probably in a crossroads or a wide open expanse somewhere in the maze. Some sense of mystery and difficulty must be maintained in the game, so we must stop short of providing audible signposts which point all the way to the center of the maze and leave the player with a little exploring to do. At no time during the playing of our game so far has the player been given any textual information. At present, as the game stands, there is no need for any. We could settle for its simple puzzle quality as is. But of course some of you out there might prefer a little excitement so the maze could be populated with roaming, growling beasts to be avoided or fought. These encounters could be dealt with in similar ways to the logistics involved in navigating the maze, but there might be yet more scope for directional sound information as well as warning noises of a leaping hound or swinging axe. Again, these should not just be atmospheric events but should allow the player to judge direction, distance and speed. Before I round up, I will admit that the kind of intensive use of sound that I foresee would require a degree os skill development to play with. But I see this as part of the challenge of any game. Even the sighted must improve their hand-eye coordination by trial and error before they become proficient in some games. What I do not want is a game that is so simplified for my lack of sight that I am almost bound to win. Nor do I want a game which is so heavily influenced by random events that my skill level will have little impact on my enjoyment of the game. However, none of my suggestions preclude the possibility of having skill levels such that differing amounts and types of sound can be provided for novice and expert players. Again, in no way am I saying that we are being sold short deliberately by anyone. The inventive minds are out there. Just take a look at some of the games from PCS for example. The technology is readily available. Most new computers sold today have multimedia capabilities. And the customer market is out there too. Just look at the readership of Audessey to judge that. David Lant England ++ The Latest Finds + New game from PCS Card club game released July 97. Hear the cards being shuffled. A cloud of cheep cigar smoke drifts over you. Your mother always told you to stay out of places like this! The card club ain't so bad! Where else could you find a collection of shady characters to play a game of Hearts, Norwegian Whist, Widow Whist, or Crazy Eights? The gang at the club house are sharp and always ready to play you. Can you beat them? Well come on in, grab a slice and try your luck. Card club comes on two disks and has over fifty real sounds that play on any computer. Card club cost thirty dollars. You can contact P C S in any form at: Personal Computer Systems 551 Compton Ave. Perth Amboy NJ 08861 new phone area code (732) 826-1917. Email pvlasak@monmouth.com Editor's note: PCS has been kind enough to send me a copy of this package of games for reviewing. As I've stated before, I'm not much of a card-player. If any of you are, and would care to obtain your own copies and give a more thorough review of the four games in the pack, I would certainly appreciate it. One of the games, Crazy 8's, happens to be a card-game which I'm fairly good at. After playing several games of this, I believe I have the authority to state that the game is extremely entertaining. The sounds added to it give the game a good deal of atmosphere and charm. You can play with up to four computer opponents, and rules such as "terrible twos are taken into account. The interface is very simple to use, and the only thing to be careful of is that when you are selecting cards, be certain that you know how to select the suit that you want. It doesn't tell you which suit you are going through when flipping through the cards of a single suit. This is not really much of an inconvenience, but it is something to be alert to. All in all, Ivan should change the "terrible" at the end of his alias to "terrific". He has done a splendid job of programming Crazy 8's, and I have no doubt that the rest of the games are done with the same degree of excellence. Card-players everywhere are in for a real treat. + From newsgroup rec.games.intfiction: Beam Software recently brought out its collection of old software, including text games like The Hobbit and Sherlock Holmes. Download at: http://www.beam.com.au/textonly/oldstuff.html Jason Dyer + The game Wordy, found by Jan Right, is an excellent game for word- lovers out there. It has a dictionary of around 99000 words, which seem to include all of the commonly used and thought of words. The game gives players a group of twelve letters, and challenges them to make as many words as possible using the letters they have been given. Letters can only be used once, but you can get duplicate letters in your set of twelve. Letters are chosen at random, so anything is possible. I've had games with no E's to use, and since E is the most common letter in the English language, it can certainly cause complications to lack its use. The longer your words, the more points you get. you can lose points for using illegal words. there are also some other rules about scoring which are covered in the game's excellent documentation. This game is relatively small, and even the unzipped version will easily fit onto a disk. the game is "cheapware", the author's term, not mine. He asks for, but doesn't demand small contributions. The software is not crippled in any way, and the author welcomes contact from anyone interested. See Jan Right's letter for information on where to find the game. It is on compuserve as well. + A Journey into Xanth is a fairly well-written AGT game about the world of puns and magic created by Piers Anthony. It seems fairly linear, but is full of the wit and humour found in the best-selling Xanth novels. the game comes with a complete solution included in the archive. it suffers from the same vocabulary problems common to most AGT games, but takes full advantage of the capabilities of creatures offered by AGt. This use of creatures is quite rare, and was an especially welcome surprise. The game is quite suitable for all but the youngest family members, who might not be able to grasp or enjoy the game's many jokes and puzzles. A Journey into Xanth is freeware, and is a relatively small game. It can be found at: ftp.gmd.de ++ PCS: The People Behind the Games By Phil and Carl Phil and Carl from Personal Computer Systems talk about their beginnings with computer games. Does their start in the world of computer games sound similar to yours? If not, why not share your story with us? We would all like to see how people got started and what game got you hooked, and why? For Phil it was the manipulation of source code to help him win a game. Maybe the first computer game cheater? Fifteen years ago, I never would have imagined writing computer games for a living. I was an architectural designer specializing in retail store design for a Long Island firm. I worked for Saks Fifth Avenue and Macy's stores. That was before I lost my eyesight to diabetic retinopathy. My vision began to fail rapidly in 1981. In one year, I was completely blind. I was a big fan of video games in the seventies. I enjoyed playing Space Invaders, Pac Man and Centipede, and eventually bought an Atari game machine. After loosing my sight, I tried to find games that I could use without sight, but found few. I bought an Apple TWO E in 1984 with an Echo speech card. I got basic games in the BAUD and Apple Talk magazine libraries. These games were freeware and shareware and allowed me to read the source code to find out how they worked. I was soon making changes and improvements in them. For example, I enjoyed a game called Kidnapped in which you started at the top of a ten story building and had to escape from the first floor. On each level there was a different puzzle to solve. If you couldn't solve the puzzle, you were killed off and ended up on the top level again. I discovered how to write a save function and could start on any floor that I was able to reach. I found a list of accepted verbs and wrote a help function to bring up the list when stumped for an answer. I also developed braille maps of each floor listing what objects were in a room. I used a separate three by five index card for each room, and taped them together to form the map of that level. After finally escaping from the bottom floor, I realized that I had more fun changing and improving the game than playing it. In 1988 I took a crude baseball game that used a dice roll to decide what kind of result you got, hit or out, and I added an interactive pitch and catch function. I had the program play 60 beeps, and you had to swing the bat at beeps 58, 59, or 60 to get a hit. You swung the bat by hitting the enter key. If you swung to early or too late you got a strike. In 1986 I got an IBM 8086 computer with 640 K and a 20 megabyte hard disk. I was still using an Echo speech synthesizer. I started searching for text based games and found the world of Infocom. These games were a great improvement from the earlier Apple freeware games that I was used to. I got Zork, Hitchhiker's Guide, PlanetFall, and many others, since they were compiled, I couldn't change them. I found some games written in GW basic that I could alter and improve. I received many books on tape from the library that had program examples that I learned from. I heard about Harry Hollingsworth's World Series Baseball Game. I was happy to be able to go inside his code and make changes, but soon his program was too big to be played in that fashion. He had to compile the game in order to play it. I started working with Harry in 1993 and was again having fun making improvements in his game. I purchased games like MARS and CASINO from Richard De Steno, and although they were fun to play, they all had the same limitation. While commercial computer games written for the sighted world were using great visual effects they were also using great sound effects. I thought that blind people should have the enjoyment of real sounds in their games and not just synthesized beeps. In 1995 I bought an up-to-date IBM computer with a sound card, CD player and a Double Talk synthesizer. I was happy to hear the sounds of a real baseball game when I got Microsoft Complete Baseball, and the real sounds of birds in Audubon's birds of North America. In 1996 I joined Carl Mickla, of Perth Amboy, who is also blind, at Personal Computer Systems. Together we worked on games such as Monopoly and Tenpin Bowling. We were able to figure out how to add sounds to computer games and recreated the feeling I had when playing the old video games. I knew that today's programs have the ability to pause, run another program then come back where they left off. I used this idea combined with several freeware sound playing programs to play the sounds in our games. After working on Harry's Baseball game for a year, I was finally able to add the sounds of a real baseball game. I have also been in touch with Jim Kitchen and Richard De Steno to help them add sounds to their games too. In the future I plan on writing games for Windows, releasing games on CD, and using stereo effects to aim at targets. These advances will prevent people with older computers without sound cards from playing them, so I hope everyone considers upgrading their computer. Next Carl will tell us about his early days with the home computer. He looked at the machine as a tool to help him play board games. A junk food computer gamer from way back and another cheater! I became interested in computer games in the early eighties, when the first affordable home computers hit the markets, and Avalon Hill put two computerize war games out for sale, Midway and Bismarck. I always had a fascination for World War Two, and could spend many hours discussing the strategy of the generals. This lead to playing boxed war games. Since I had a vision problem from birth, it was very difficult for me to work with the print on the counters, charts, and maps. One other difficulty I had was to find opponents to play against, as many people do not share my fascination with the subject. So it is needless to say, when I saw the two games on the shelf I was hooked. Soon after the Avalon Hill games were out I Bought a TRS 80 MODEL three. In a short time Strategic Simulations Incorporated released their first game, Tigers in the Snow, which was the closest war game to a board game yet. I was soon to find out that SSI was going to develop more games for the Apple computers then for any other brand, so I sold my TRS 80 as fast as I could, and bought an Apple Two. In those days the computer ran on forty eight K of ram, and the TRS 80 loaded the programs from a tape recorder. The Apple computer had a external five and a quarter floppy drive. In a short time the Apple's were using sixty four K of ram, and soon the ram would climb up to one hundred and twenty eight Ks in the Apple Two E. The Apple Two C and the Apple GS were to push ram to five hundred and twelve K and up. The main problem with the Apple computers was that every time a improved model came out you could not up grade your old machine. This became very expensive as the computers cost between three thousand and fifteen hundred dollars. So I quickly gave up on the Apple WORMS, and moved over to the IBM pc computers, which were becoming affordable at the time Mac was starting to come onto the markets. The IBM PC also afford more variety and the ability to up grade without buying a whole new machine. I found screen access devices and software more accessible for the IBM PC computers as well. The computer became more usable to me since my vision was failing and the programmers started using graphics, and all my accessible screen reading devises became useless. I could still play text adventure games, but that is not my cup of tea. I want to play some heavy duty D AND D or World War Two games, and there are none out there yet. There was one game that a friend and I used to play fanatically. Wizardry snagged us but good! We would stop after work on Fridays and buy a sack of burgers and a case of Coke and on the way to the computer's house discuss the strategy for the up coming session. Our session would last until Sunday, after fifty phone calls or so from Jon's wife and many promises of " I'm just getting ready to come home, hon!" One thing, in those days there was no reset button and it took many sessions to build a decent character; and if your character got unfairly killed there was no restart feature either. So we got smart and kept one finger on the power switch. We were just a little before our time, because the next Apple model to come out included a reset switch, and other games started to include a start from "last killed restart function." Before I quit making computer games for the blind I will make a huge Dungeons and Dragons game, and a massive World War Two campaign game, since it does not look like anyone is working on any such project. In the meanwhile I will continue to develop ways for the blind community to get some fun and fun challenges from the computer. I was lucky enough to experience video arcade games, and will try to get the excitement and frustration that those games give to my sighted friends to my unsighted friends. If you would like to contact Carl or Phil, you can at, PERSONAL COMPUTER SYSTEMS 551 Compton AVE. Perth Amboy NJ. 08861 Phone 732 826 1917 or E-MAIL at pvlasak@monmouth.com ++ My Audyssey by Michael Feir Since I started this magazine, and even before that event, I have been asked questions such as: "How did you become interested in computer games?", "Why are games so important to you?", and "How have these games enriched your life?" Fearing that a really full answer would bore my interrogators, I have never bothered to actually sit down and collect my thoughts. Your continued curiosity in this area has at last prompted me into action. I hope that the resulting article will interest you, and answer most of your questions. Some of my readers who have read the first issue of Audyssey might remember my article about the first game I played, called Great Escape. This game began my journey through the universe of computer games. I played it on an Apple II E, which was once the best computer in terms of accessability to the blind. I still have that computer, sitting in my basement. Amazingly, it still works. I used that computer system until my first year of secondary school in 1988-89. During this span of time, I found many games for the Apple, and still have a small collection of them on old 5.25-inch floppies whose condition might not be as good as that of their computer. The Apple was one of the original home computers, and as with all computers, most games for it were graphical. Infocom made a lot of its games available for the Apple, but I had no idea of their existence until I received some of their games on the Eureka A4 I purchased in 1988-89. The Apple games I gathered included such famous ones as the Eamon adventures, Othello, Kingdom, and Hunt the Wumpus. The Eamon adventures have made it over to the IBM, but a number of the old classics haven't. The Multi-player Hunt the Wumpus game has failed to re-appear, as has a really good version of Kingdom. Anyhow, enough crying over lost concepts. My purchase of a Eureka opened a whole lot of new kinds of games for me. I was able to play Rogue, a screen-oriented role-playing game which spawned such excellent games as Nethack which we can all enjoy today. This game was one of the first I found which taught me the value of experimentation. Until that point, all of the games I played were strictly text- based. That is, they dealt with words which you would read, and either allowed you to type in commands, or provided text menus. Rogue was the first game which was different. I almost threw it out the first time I played it, since I failed to appreciate the fact that the graphical representation of the dungeon room was made of text characters I could read. Games were a solitary activity for the most part, until I got my eureka. This small computer with its braille keyboard and Australian accent proved interesting to some of my sighted friends. Often, we would play games in the cafeteria during lunch hours or spare periods. We occasionally caused quite a stir, as heated arguments would break out as to what to do next. Yes, worried parents, the prospect of playing games in class was often extremely tempting, but i never actually caved into it. High school went on, and my experience with games grew. I eventually wrote a couple of articles for the Arky newsletter for people who owned Eurekas, and still occasionally get calls about those pieces of writing. I eventually obtained an IBM pc, along with the Artic Businessvision software which I still use today. This software enabled me to play infinitely more games than anything I had experienced before. I found text adventures like those made by Infocom, and more screen-oriented games like Nethack and Adom. Another kind of game which I began to enjoy was the tactical and strategic wargame. Games like Empire and The World is Mine are not available on the eureka. Multi-player games are also much more abundant on the IBM than on any other platform I have come across. Regrettably, viruses are also more abundant in Dos than in any other operating system. I learned that the hard way. Like most folks, I trusted my hard drive far too much, and treated it as indestructible. A good friend of mine was infected with a nasty virus which he was unaware of. Unlike me, he had prepared himself for such a catastrophe. I hadn't, and neither had some of the friends who I had accidentally infected. It was an absolute disaster. I had to eventually format my hard drive to totally erase the virus, and throw out most of my floppy disks. It probably cost me around three hundred dollars to recover from that, and I have been extremely cautious ever since. I scan all of the disks I receive for viruses, and also keep things backed up in safe .zip files which cannot be infected by viruses. I encourage all of you to take similar precautions, and obtain virus-hunting software like f-prot. I've learned an awful lot from the games I've played over the years, and have found them to be an excellent alternative to the more mindless forms of entertainment out there. The fact that the process of thinking can actually be fun might very well be the most profound thing I have learned from playing games. whenever possible, i have tried to help others experience the power and intrigue found in the universe of computer games. Towards the end of high school, I came up with the idea of writing a kind of magnum opus on games, and actually started this work. It has yet to be completed. Various things side-tracked me. Eventually, a year ago, the idea of Audyssey came to me. I took the plunge, and the rest, as they say, is history still in the making. I've talked to many people about games, and their reactions are as diverse as the games out there. Some people tend to dismiss games as a waste of time. Others seem to think that games are inherently harmful. I tend to think of games as the ultimate art form. Like any works of art, games can invoke emotions and ideas which can be both good and bad. They can be excellent teachers, showing us aspects of ourselves, our fellow players, or the reality we live in, which we would otherwise never experience. Most importantly for the blind, games can take us places where we couldn't go any other way. Through board-games like Othello, I began to appreciate the concepts of strategy. Adventure games have allowed me to appreciate a wide variety of things, from what things like caverns are actually like, to the problems presented by the prospect of time travel. I can certainly appreciate how hard it must be to be a doctor or police man a lot more due to the dilemmas I've faced in the games I've played. Games such as Jigsaw, Fallthru, and Shades of Grey, have forced me to make decisions which effect imaginary lives. While these lives are imaginary, it doesn't necessarily follow that this completely invalidates the experience. If we are willing to suspend our disbelief, these decisions can be quite meaningful. Good games can draw their players in like good novels, and make them care about their imaginary worlds. This, combined with the fact that games force players to take action, gives them an effectiveness which no mere novel can possess. I've met so many blind people who lead lives which are sheltered from so much. some of this sheltering is for the good of everyone. I am the first to admit that I'd make a terrible police officer or race-car driver. If we can't live these lives, we can at least experience some of their excitement, out-look, and scope. ++ Game Reviews + The game called "Curses" should never have been created and distributed on the internet. It is a pure exercise in futility. In fact, I think the previous phrase was created after someone played Curses. The author says that Curses got its name because your character is cursed throughout the game or something. I think the title of the game reflects exactly what you will be doing if you play this thing. If you are insane and wish to play this game then don't read on for I will be revealing some puzzles/solutions in my delicate review. Have any of you taken a huge glob of mud and just hurled it against a wall? It makes a cool splat doesn't it? Well that's what Mr. Graham Nelson did when creating Curses. He just took it and flung it against a brick wall. The resounding splat he called a cool adventure game. I don't think so, Graham. The game was put together in a fashion reflecting your little brother or sister's random Lego creation. There is no rhyme or reason to this game. Adventure games are based on logic/logical progressions and subtle clues. As far as I could tell there were no subtle clues. For example, you were in an attic and the description included dusty rafters, insulation and a closed door. Well it turns out that a new battery was hidden in the insulation. Yeah, right!!! Another room in the attic was a maid's room with a night table and a bed. It turns out that you have to lie down on the bed and go to sleep, but the damn game never mentioned being tired. Are you beginning to see the flagrant illogic involved here? Let's see...what else was stupid. Oh, yes. At one point I found a medicine bottle with a child-proof top. When I looked in the solution file, in order to open the bottle you had to drop it in the back lawn and run over it with the garden roller. What the hell? In good games like Zork1, for example, objects and actions have some link or logic involved. For example, in Zork1 you had to get past these ghosts guarding an entrance. You had to ring a bell which you find in the chapel or church or something. You then read from a book which was lying on an altar, and then you had to light some candles also found on the altar. All these objects have a link to religion which is normally considered to be against evil spirits. It's not like you had to play a violin, smoke a joint, and read a porno magazine in order to get past the spirits. Eventually I gave up with this game since I could think of no more logical paths to follow. Of course had I known there were none to begin with.... I finally took a look at the solution file and kept swearing incredulously as the progression from point to point was laid before my stunned ears. At one point during the game a key had fallen through the floor boards of the attic. Later I found an electronic/robot mouse. There were no clues on how to speak to the robot mouse to command it. There were also no clues indicating that the lost key was somewhere in the robot mouse's hole, even why a robot mouse needs a mouse hole is beyond me. Anyway, the solution file told you to tell the mouse to go in all these directions inside it's hole to retrieve the key which you didn't know was there in the first place. But how the hell were you supposed to know what directions to send the damn mouse? Okay, Al, okay...calm down, Al...I'm alright now. Where was I? Oh, yeah. Well as you can see Curses was one of the few games I felt relieved to stop playing forever. I finally wiped the game off my hard drive after my computer begged me to do so or else it threatened to ralph all over my shoes. Text adventures are supposed to employ tricks and things which include using more than logic like putting water in a bottle before snagging a fish to go into the bottle. But I firmly believe that there must be SOME logic or viable association between an action/object, an object/location, and action/location, and/or an action/object/location. Whew...wow! I think I'll go take a valium now and let the rest of you read the remainder of Audyssey in piece. Allen Maynard + For those of you who own the Masterpieces of Infocom cd-rom from Activision, you are in for a very pleasant surprise. Two of the games which were thought to be too graphical to play have been rendered playable by the frotz interpreter. This interpreter can be found in the if-archives at: ftp.gmd.de Using the command frotz -d 1 (game name.zip), one can cause the games Journey and Arthur, to be played using only text. These two games are up to Infocom's usual excellent standards in quality, and are two of their largest offerings. both are radical departures from the interactive fiction norms. Journey is the only instance of interactive fiction which involves a party of adventurers on a quest to save their world. It is a kind of choose your own adventure story, where you must decide what characters in your party do. You play the role of an apprentice food merchant who travels with the party and keeps a journal of events. The rest of your party consists of two warriors, a kind but sceptical doctor, and a crafty old wizard. All of the characters are very well developed, and the story is full of vivid descriptions and excellent humour. The command interface is somewhat unconventional, requiring the use of arrow keys to select commands, or the entry of the first letter of a command. Once you get used to this, the game is absolutely first-rate. Arthur is an excellent work of interactive fiction based on the legend of King Arthur. You are the young Arthur, destined to become the king of England by pulling the famed Excallibur from its stone. An evil King Lot is trying to steal your throne, and you must challenge him to a battle to finally take the throne. Before you can do this, you must you must earn the right to pull Excallibur from the stone by proving yourself worthy of the office of king. The game comes with built-in hints which are context-sensitive to prevent you from seeking hints to puzzles you haven't come to yet. The game is rich in detail and humour, an excellent mix of actual history and the more romantic notions of King Arthur. ++ The Winning Contest Entry by Allen Maynard Adam--The Immortal Gamer JUDGEMENT DAY Once again Adam found himself drifting aimlessly in the darkness he had grown so accustomed to. But this continuous test or whatever the hell it was, was beginning to rub his nerves raw. "Hey, Computer!" he shouted, shuddering slightly as he heard no echo. In fact, he wasn't even sure if he had spoken or not. "When are you going to release me?" "When I feel you are ready," a disembodied genderless voice hissed. Adam winced as that voice resonated through his body. He reeled backward for a few meters, or maybe a few million miles. "Mortal gamer," the voice taunted, chuckling. Adam was growing very uneasy. Up to this point the computer voice hadn't sounded sinister. But now.... He wished there was a door he could duck through or something. His bedroom door suddenly materialized before him. His heart jumped into his throat. Home? He yanked open the door and dove through. His stomach kicked bile into his throat as he plummeted through mid air. His heart raced as he saw the earth rushing up to meet him at a deadly rate. Adam blacked out. A few minutes later he opened his eyes and looked down at himself. He wasn't in several bloody flattened pieces after all. He then noticed the policeman's uniform he was wearing along with a nice looking snub-nosed colt .32. He grinned, fondling the shiny weapon. Adam holstered the gun, stood and glanced around. The horizon glowed with an eerie light, looking as if the undersides of the clouds were afire. Two words flashed unbidden before his eyes--Los Angeles--. He studied the homes along the street where he stood. They were all fancy and large. They stood proudly on their well- manicured lawns as if posing for a picture. Standing in the driveway of one of these homes, Adam turned and gazed at the one he was in front of. "Oh, man," he groaned, recognizing it. He was at the beginning of the Infocom game called Witness. "Please," he said, not even attempting to disguise the scorn in his voice. "You call this a test? If I have to run through your stupid gamut, the least you could do is challenge me." Adam punctuated his words by spitting on the pavement. Shrugging indifferently, Adam strode up the driveway. Might as well go see Mr. Linder and solve the game, he smirked. Making his way around the side of the house to the side door of Mr. Linder's study, Adam peered through the slightly misted window of the door and spotted a man seated at his desk. Knocking politely, Adam grinned conspiratorially at Mr. Linder as the older Oriental man beckoned him into his office. Sitting down again behind his desk, Mr. Linder motioned for Adam to take a seat in one of the easychairs near his desk. Preferring to stand, Adam shook his head and opened his mouth to ask the first of the important questions needed to solve the game. The window of the door exploded, the lead slug slamming painlessly into the side of Adam's head. He was sent reeling backward into the wall, and through it, tumbling into the inky void. Instinctively, Adam clapped his hand to the side of his head before he jerked it away again irritably, chiding himself for his own stupidity. He failed to notice the single drop of blood staining his fingertip. Adam ground his teeth in frustration, partly at himself but mostly at this deranged computer of his. He had made a novice mistake because this damn computer and its test. "I'm through playing your idiotic game. "But I'm not through with you," that same chilling voice hissed, echoing all around and through Adam. A spark of anger flared briefly in Adam's gut but he smothered it before the computer sensed it was getting under his skin. "Stage two," the voice taunted in a maddening sing-song lilt. Again Adam's bedroom door snapped into sudden existence before him. "Hell, no," Adam said, pointedly turning his back on the door. An immense hand hurtled toward him, seeming to come from a great distance in seconds. Before his mind ordered his legs to leap aside, the pinky of the huge hand gently nudged Adam sending him careening backwards through the door. Cartwheeling helplessly through nothingness, Adam fought unsuccessfully for some kind of control over his flight. Presently, the nothingness began to take shape. A wall of splintery wood rapidly grew from a speck into a solid wall. Reflexively, Adam threw up his arms in front of his face an instant before he soundlessly passed through the wall and landed with a grunt onto a narrow low bed. Sitting up, he glared impotently at the wall behind him. Scowling, wishing for once that the computer would crash, then scowling even deeper when he remembered he was inside the damn thing, Adam looked around and immediately brightened. Over there against the far wall was the small sink, his feet were firmly planted on the dusty floor, and right over there was the wardrobe-looking thing. Bounding to his feet, the immortal gamer retrieved the holster from where he knew it was, and left his room. Adam nodded in recognition. "Supernova," he said aloud, heading confidently down the narrow stairway. He nodded again as he emerged into the dusty bar, one of the few on this God forsaken dustball of a mining planet and nodded again grinning. There were the three tables, still rickety looking, and, ah...there was the bartender still gazing at him expectantly, Adam chuckled to himself. Ordering some glug but not feeling particularly thirsty at the moment, he hurried outside. He grinned again knowing that he didn't have to waste anymore time in the bar. He already knew the coordinates of the planet he had to get to. With a grimace at his earlier miscalculation, Adam forced himself to slow his pace slightly as he entered the lot where his ship was parked. For an instant he panicked, then he relaxed as he found the satchel in his inventory. Shrugging in a "why wait" gesture, Adam clambered up the ladder and opened the hatch, dropping into the cool interior of his old but proud spaceship. He closed the hatch and stepped onto the bridge. Whistling softly, Adam settled himself in the captain's chair and keyed in the coordinates of his destination and engaged the ship engines. Sitting back with satisfaction, he listened to the shipboard computer count down the minutes toward lift off. "Minutes!" Adam leapt out of the chair and threw himself into the corridor. He had to.... With a rumble and lurch upward, the ship lunged into the sky. Adam was hurled into the bulkhead, striking his head. There was a slight sensation of skull connecting with steel, but Adam barely noticed as he kicked feebly at the opposite bulkhead in frustration. Then he blacked out. Actually, Adam had blacked in. The darkness engulfed him like a cold blanket. Adam forced down the sudden burst of anger which seemed to singe the lining of his gut. A twinge of something like pain, but not pain exactly drew Adam's attention. It was similar to having a tiny pebble in your shoe. He probed the back of his head for a few minutes before his fingers brushed across a small lump. But before he could fully grasp this fact, the computer's voice pierced the silence. "I'm extremely disappointed in you, Mr. Immortal Gamer," the disembodied voice said. Adam distinctly heard a sneer in the voice. "Not used to failure?" the voice taunted. With an effort, Adam adopted a stony face and refused to reply. "ready for stage three?" his nemesis asked, anticipation charging the air with negative energy. Adam's features cracked as he glared into the emptiness. His fists clenched at his sides. Adam opened his mouth to retort when abruptly the huge hand caught him between thumb and index finger, and like flicking a speck of dirt off one's finger, sent Adam spinning into the void. Knowing it was useless to try and slow his momentum, Adam let himself fall through nothingness. Moments later, or perhaps aeons, shapes began flashing past. Adam struggled to identify them. A filament of some kind flashed past followed immediately by a wide wavy something almost looking like a road. Rectangular images dipped and whirled past him along with more filaments which were attached to the rectangles. Slowly Adam noticed that the objects were steadily growing larger, as well as slowing in velocity. In the distance another wide filament or road or whatever approached. Adam braced himself as he saw that he was going to collide with it. But his caution was unnecessary as he landed feet first onto the filament with hardly a trembling of the material. Adam looked around. Something was familiar about this place. Much of what he saw was only darkness but the shapes he had glimpsed moments before had taken on an intricate pattern. He felt something in his hand. Looking down he found that he was gripping a laser gun. A memory poked at the back of his mind but he couldn't snag it. He closed his eyes, trying to focus his thoughts, when the filament suddenly heaved beneath his feet. Adam's eyes snapped open. He found himself staring into the pseudopod of a giant microbe. The memories came flooding into his conscious mind at the appearance of this microscopic monster. A microscopic Adam was standing on a strand deep inside a computer in a laboratory on a rocky continent of the planet Resida in the game Planetfall. "Infocom again," Adam sighed then ducked as a pseudopod struck at his head. A second pseudopod whipped through the air right at his face. Adam ducked again squeezing the trigger of the weapon as he did so. The laser bolt sliced harmlessly through the fleshy body of the microbe. Adam cursed and jerked aside as the microbe slapped at his chest. Wrong setting, he hissed through clenched teeth. Quickly resetting the laser, Adam took aim and fired. The laser beam scored and a small spot of gelatinous outer membrane boiled and sizzled away which only served to madden the creature. Adam fired a third time then leapt backward. Glancing fearfully over his shoulder, he saw that there wasn't much room left between him and the edge of the strand. A pseudopod glanced off his shoulder and another struck at his head during Adam's momentary pause. He staggered and ducked, narrowly avoiding those ciliated pseudopodia. There was something he was forgetting. The battle shouldn't be lasting this long. The microbe snatched at the gun and Adam spun away. The laser was almost too hot to handle. He raised the gun again but the microbe snapped a pseudopod at it again. Damn this game, he fumed, not knowing if he was swearing at Planetfall or the game his own computer was playing. The microbe lunged forward slashing at the laser gun. Adam fired again and again. Then suddenly, the laser beam died. Too late. Adam had forgotten about the battery charge. Glaring at the gun, he slammed it to the floor just as a pseudopod gripped his arm. "No, wait!" he cried realizing his mistake. "I should have...wait a minute!" Adam suddenly realized he was being dragged inexorably toward the microbe. He didn't remember this happening in Planetfall. An unbidden scream burst from between his lips as he was absorbed by the microbe. Adam tried to gasp as he found himself smothered in a viscous, undulating ooze. He tried to scream as his flesh was slowly dissolved. His earlier anger suddenly erupted into a searing fury. He tried to kick out but his leg only slogged a few inches. "This game sucks!" he roared in his mind for his lips were glued shut by a thick layer of ooze. The bottom dropped out. Adam spiralled into an all too familiar darkness. An enormous eye blossomed before him, its dilated pupil the size of an automobile tire. The glowing orb slowly blinked at Adam in mock solemnity. The immortal gamer bit his lip and was surprised to taste a hint of blood, almost forgetting his desire to spit into the eye. Pain? How can that be? With this preoccupation, he failed to notice that his right hand was glazed with a thin layer of ooze. The eye rolled with undisguised exasperation. Adam retrieved his temporarily discarded anger. "I quit," he hissed through clenched teeth. The eye casually blinked without the accompaniment of the voice and a fierce wind whipped Adam away and deposited him unceremoniously into a gondola crammed with people who seemed to take no notice of his abrupt appearance. Immediately Adam knew where he was. He glanced over the side of the gondola to confirm his gut feeling. Sure enough, he was high over a tropical jungle, Misnia if he wasn't mistaken. There was only one game which had a gondola and a Misnia jungle--Beyond Zork. Infocom strikes again, he thought ruefully. The flame of anger still burned steadily in his gut, but there was one area in this game he hadn't conquered. Up ahead, a maintenance tower materialized out of the mists. As the gondola drew along side, Adam threw his leg over the side and dropped to the top most platform of the tower. "All passengers please remain in the gondola," the conductor drawled emotionlessly. Adam almost flicked him off, but instead he quickly scurried down the long narrow ladder to the jungle floor. Looking around quickly, Adam recognized where he was and started out at a quick trot toward the snow-capped mountains. He past the familiar cataract and proceeded up into the mountains. When a light dusting of snow coated his shoes, he knew he was there. Altering his course, he hurried up the faint trail to his right. And there they were. The Christmas tree monsters. Still they stood, ready to march relentlessly over the tiny village, kept at bay by nothing but an intricate glyph etched into the snow. Rummaging through his pack, he could find nothing which would drive the monsters away nor strengthen the glyph. He knew he would find no help in the pack or in his inventory, but he looked through them just the same. He stared at the glyph, but his stare quickly became a glare. Presently he had a notion. He pulled the stave from his pack and tried to copy the glyph. "You have no tool to carve with," a voice echoed in his mind. Adam tossed the stave contemptuously to the frosty ground. He tried reading and memorizing the glyph. "It is too complex for you to study," the same monotone droned behind his eyes. Adam breathed hotly threw his nose. Turning, he ran back down the trail and burst into the small church. Just like every time before, the patrons and preacher were bemoaning their impending doom regarding the Christmas tree monsters. Adam tried talking to the congregation then the preacher. But all they did was continue to wail and weep. Finally, Adam lunged for the reliquary on the altar but the preacher blocked him. Fuming, Adam flounced outside and stamped back to the glyph. He tried to force his way through the cluster of monsters, but only received a solid "thunk" on his head from a plummeting ornament. With a sudden burst of rage, Adam obliterated the glyph. He stared with cold satisfaction at his handy work, his narrowed eyes smouldering. Then there came a frenzied rustling, like thousands of needle- sharp teeth raking across one another. Adam glanced up and froze. He opened his mouth and sucked in a bitter lungful of air. But he never got the scream out as the hoard of Christmas tree monsters marched right over him, smashing him into a bloody pulp. Adam opened his eyes and swore violently. Blackness met his eyes, but at least he was only drifting this time and not falling or spinning out of control. Somehow he sat up and winced as a sharp pain sparked in his forearm. Adam stared at the spot in disbelief, then gingerly pulled at the evergreen needle imbedded deep in his flesh. Gritting his teeth in anger and pain, he jerked out the needle and stared at it again. It was a game, he thought. A stain of blood formed around the entrance of the puncture wound in his arm. "Are you stuck?" the immense voice crooned in syrupy tones. Adam whirled around and saw two huge eyes and the faint outline of smirking lips. Adam's blood boiled and he wished he had a weapon. The sparks of fury within his blood suddenly coalesced into a solid blue-white flame in his fist. He whipped a lightning bolt at those hideous eyes. The searing bolt scored a direct hit in the center of those enormous pupils. The huge lips parted into a soft chuckle as the eye which had been struck merely began to glow as it absorbed the energy. "Is the little boy angry?" the computer mocked. Adam slammed his fists together sending a blistering wave of fire into that partial face. Again the voice chuckled, but this time with an undertone of contempt. The fire slammed into the half-face. But rather than incinerating their target, they blossomed outward, spreading like molten lava around the eyes and mouth. Adam stared open-mouthed at the flaming, hellish, fully- formed face which grinned back at him. Adam was furious. He was through being manipulated. He strode forward and kicked viciously at one of the smouldering eyes. A sharp pain stung his knee as his heel struck only air. He had nearly overextended his knee joint. "The little gamer likes to play with fire?" the computer asked with sickening sweetness. "I'll accommodate you." "I won't..." Adam started to yell but a sudden roaring sucked his words into the maelstrom of noise. An icy spray of water stung his face. Not realizing that his eyes were closed, he snapped them open and found himself standing at the base of a waterfall. At first he thought he was back in Beyond Zork, but as far as he knew, there was no way to get to the base of that cataract. Then he saw the pile of plastic and knew he was in Zork I. He grinned at the computer's first and final mistake. He knew Zork I, even though he hadn't played it in a while. He was going to kick its ass. Adam checked his inventory. He was carrying a battery powered lantern whose glow seemed dim. He also carried a jewel-encrusted egg, an air pump, an Elven sword, a flaming torch made of ivory, a length of rope, a bottle, a nasty knife, and a wrench. He quickly inflated the plastic which expanded into a rubber raft. Dropping the pump, he scurried up to the top of the waterfall, which actually was a dam Adam remembered, and studied the control panel he found. Grinning, Adam placed the wrench on the large bolt and applied tork. The bolt didn't budge. He cranked on the wrench, but still nothing happened. Finally, he leaned all his weight on the wrench but the bolt stubbornly refused to turn. Adam slammed the wrench to the ground. What was wrong? He had done it before. He slammed his fist into the panel. "Damn this stupid game anyway," he growled. He would tackle the sluice gates later. But now he decided to take a trip down the river. He quickly returned to the base of the dam and jumped into the raft. Suddenly he got a sinking feeling as there came a pop and a hiss. The rubber raft went flat. He pounded his fist into his knee and winced with pain. He had forgotten to drop his sword first. Then he stared at his fist and then his knee. More pain. But he was playing a game. Then a shadow fell across him. Adam snapped his head around and saw the thief bearing down on him. His sword began to glow very brightly with a blue light. Adam sprang to his feet and met the on-rushing attacker with a sweep of his sword. "Feel the sting of Elven steel!" Adam cried. The thief dodged nimbly to one side then struck. Adam found himself flat on his back his ribs aching. Aching. How was that possible. Then he noticed that both the thief and his jewelled egg were gone. He swore silently. It had been a long time since he had played this game. He would have to get the egg back. Once again he climbed to the top of the dam and made his way back into the subterranean tunnels. When he got to the circular room he saw a brief flicker but his way was still brightly lit. He looked down and then smacked his forehead self-deprecatingly. The battery had died in his lantern but he still held the flaming torch. Adam set his jaw as his anger grew once again. The computer was beating him and he was getting sick of it. It was making him hasten when caution was needed. It was making him clumsy and forgetful and he was sick of it. He wouldn't go after the egg after all. A flash of memory burst behind his eyes. The mines he said aloud. He had a puzzle or two to conquer in the mines. Adam spun on his heel with the torch held high until he came to the mirror room. The mirror covered the entire far wall. Adam reached out and touched it. There was a subtle rumbling but nothing else happened. "Just as it should be," Adam sniffed. He had shifted a part of the caverns and now he had access to the mines. The anger spurred him on and he dashed down several corridors until he came to a set of short stairs. "The mines," he said, shooting his fist into the air. Adam took a deep breath then plunged into the mines. Adam died. "Gas mines," he sullenly said aloud from the center of the concussion wave of the explosion. The computer had done it to him again. He sighed as his body parts drifted together and rearranged themselves back into human form apparently not liking the human jigsaw puzzle form. Adam lazily opened his eyes again wondering which game he would be thrown into next. Would this ever end? An incredibly blue horizon greeted his gaze. Adam found himself standing on an impossibly high mountain top. For a moment he thought he was gazing at a mishmash of objects and geographies. Then his bleary mind focused. He was staring down at a kaleidoscope of game lands, topographies, and venues down through the ages: stretching beyond the horizon in every direction. There were thousands of them and Adam could see and perceive them all. Had he won? Was he truly the immortal gamer? "Turn Gamer," a deep resonant voice said. Adam slowly turned and started. He was staring at the darkest being he had ever seen. Its body itself was no larger than the average man's, but tines of crimson lightning danced through its chest and silver sparks continuously exploded from its fingertips. Its entire body glowed black, roiling and writhing from neck to toe, giving the being an almost liquid look. Its face had no features: The blackness there whirling like a tornado. Suddenly Adam grinned. He had never played this game before. "Computer," he called, "What is this game called?" The being raised a hand and Adam was blasted with a searing wedge of crimson fire. Striking the ground, Adam tried to breathe. Wild-eyed, he stared for a moment at the thing then rolled away. He got shakily to his feet, pain tearing through his chest. Adam gasped. Pain? There couldn't be pain. This was a game he was in. "What game is this?" the being thundered, shaking the mountain. "Reality!" it bellowed. Then the being's features morphed and the blackness of its face ceased its tornadic whirling. Adam staggered back, his conscious mind unwilling to acknowledge what his eyes told it. Then an anguished cry tore from between his lips as he stared into his own face. The being raised its hand again and a flaming arc of green power rainbowed high into the air then sliced downward, raking across Adam's shoulders. He screamed in agony and threw himself to the ground, crawling feebly away from his tormenter. He struggled to his knees and suddenly remembered how he had attacked the computer's image in the void. Adam reached deep into himself and drew forth a searing bolt of golden incandescence. It slammed into the being who took one step backwards then brushed the power aside then countered with a scintillating black orb. Adam barely had enough time to form a glowing shield but the black orb sliced through it, exploding against his stomach. Adam screamed and was slapped flat on his back. Instinctively he knew he might have been killed if his shield hadn't absorbed just enough of that power. Adam stared into his adversary's face, his own face. He stared at his own features, somehow twisted in a combination of fury and frustration. A thought buzzed like a mosquito in the back of his mind, but he crushed it with a mental fist. Adam, rising with a stab of pain slicing through his torso, slammed his fists together. Twin bolts of silver energy lanced from his fists, merged and struck the being full in the chest. But only Adam screamed as the being somehow seized the power and began draining his strength, tearing it out of his body. It felt like hot needles were being raked through his veins. With a final gasp, Adam collapsed to the ground. He was still alive but he was terribly weakened. If he could stall his attacker for a few minutes, he might be able to call up an even greater blast. "Enjoy battling yourself?" the being asked, his words rumbling down through the ages. That tiny thought Adam had crushed only moments before seemed to burst physically out of his mind and merge with those words. That's what he had been doing from the start--battling himself. And the injuries he had suffered during the last five games...increasingly more intense reminders that there was a certain reality in every game...reminders he had failed to recognize. He had been battling his own impatience, his own frustration, his own anger. And in a very real way, he had been battling death. In every game he had recently played, he had died, but rather than examining his mistakes, which his ego hadn't allowed him to do, he had unconsciously resolved not to die again. He had always hated to die. But in games, dying was an integral part of the game because it allowed one to learn from mistakes and come back for another try. He hadn't learned. He had allowed his anger at the game, no, more truthfully, his anger at himself to cloud his judgement. The computer had changed its tactics to provoke his anger and to see how he dealt with it. What good does it do to slam your fist into the keyboard? A small smile played across his lips as he remembered a line from Star Trek II. Captain Kirk said, "How we face death is as important as how we face life...." Adam stared at his attacker or maybe his saviour as he lay flat on his back. Then, he stretched out his arms until they were perpendicular with the rest of his body. He straightened his legs, bringing them into a parallel position with his ankles touching, and closed his eyes. He waited for the final blistering bolt to consume him. The being paused for a moment then in one great bound leapt to Adam's side, scooped him up and hurled him from the mountain top. Surprised, Adam's eyes flew open and he twisted around. He was falling through the gamescapes he had observed from the pinnacle of the mountain. He began to grow dizzy until his eyes focused on a single object growing larger in the distance. Slowly it took a squarish shape. The blurred color resolved itself into a blue-grey hue. Two thick wires snaked from the back of the object into still another squat rectangular shape. Before Adam's mind could sort out the images into a coherent whole, Adam plunged into the back of his own computer monitor and burst from the CRT, landing in a heap on his bedroom floor. He looked around dazedly for a moment. Then he began laughing: quietly at first, then steadily more uncontrollably with tears of relief spilling from his eyes. When he had calmed a little he looked at his computer and marvelled at its power. It had apparently sent him back through time to a point before he had allowed his family, his friends, and even himself to go by the wayside. He had been granted a second chance. "Adam, are you alright?" his mother called from the kitchen. His mother. He really was home. "Uh, yeah, Mom, I'm fine." "Oh, okay. I thought you were crying, Honey. Anyway, dinner will be ready in a few minutes." Dinner, Adam thought. Suddenly his computer beeped and a message blinked in the center of the display. '" it flashed. Something told Adam to look down. He looked down at the back of his right hand. Burned into the flesh was the perfect image of a scythe. A small smile tugged at the corners of his lips and he nodded knowingly. Getting a little unsteadily to his feet, he shut down the computer, walked slowly out of his bedroom and closed the door quietly behind him. Allen Maynard + Contacting Me I can be reached in two ways. The easiest is through Compuserve. My e-mail address is as follows: 72712.3103@compuserve.com alternatively, you may correspond with me on 3.5-inch disks, provided you be sure to send them in returnable disk-mailers. I don't have the money to pay for postage. My mailing address is: 5787 Montevideo Road Mississauga, Ontario, Canada Postal code: L5N 2L5 I have recently acquired a copy of UUencode and UUdecode for dos, so you may send files to me via this means. I can also now handle attached files, but cannot send files that way.