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This month, a first in this newsletter: an interview! Scroll down to read more...
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My news
Honestly? I mostly took a breather this month! I worked on a couple projects, but nothing major. Nothing to report here! 😁
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Last month's survey results are in!
Thank you to everyone who took the time to fill the survey! I really appreciated the feedback, and I must say, it was overwhelmingly positive! I'm really glad lots of people seem to enjoy the newsletter, and I appreciate the morale boost! 😀 Another great thing: basically everyone who replied to the survey told me they read the article every month, which is great - these articles take me quite a bit of time, so I'm very happy to know they're appreciated!!
Other parts of the survey were inconclusive: some like articles on the history whereas others prefer the technical ones, there's players and makers, anglophones and non-anglophones... It looks like I can't please everyone every month, sorry 😆 But you'll note that I tend to cycle through these themes, so if you don't like one month's article, you'll probably like the next one ! But I cannot commit to strictly alternate between themes, because, uh, some months I don't even know what I'm going to talk about up until a few days before the deadline! 😅
Anyway, glad everyone is enjoying all this!
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Community news
Things are pretty quiet in the summer... The PunyInform Discord server is pretty quiet, and it seems like my colleagues Stefan and Davide are taking a break from text adventures, just like me. But I still was able to find some interesting stuff to mention here! 🙂
- Stephen Illingworth has very recently announced he completed an experimental port of Scott Adams' Adventureland for the... Atari 2600! Of course there isn't a keyboard, but the Atari 2600 had a number pad, which makes input slightly easier. It's very cool, I didn't think we'd see a text adventure for the Atari 2600 !
- Uto has updated DAADReady, his package full of tools, scripts, and templates to start with the DAAD format. He fixed a few bugs in the templates, and added a new interpreter, one for PC with VGA 256 colors. Grab version 0.4 here.
- The Duckology Advanced Research Centre has released a new z3 game, "Duck! Me?", along with disk images for the BBC Micro and the 8-bit Ataris. If "an 1980s/Infocom style text adventure featuring Duck as the protagonist" sounds like your cuppa, head over to the game's page; it's still in beta, but very much in an advanced state!
- Shaun McClure, author of several books on ZX Spectrum games ("A guide to ZX Spectrum Games" - and even though each only covers a couple of years, they sound massive), is now working on "A guide to ZX Spectrum Adventure Games - 1982-1990". It'll be... 800 pages (!!) and contain developer interviews. It seems like it's currently sitting at the proofreading stage, so it might come out in the next few months!
- Tim Gilberts has released a video this month on the very first adaptation of Crowther and Woods' Adventure on microcomputers: a version released on the Heathkit H8, a venerable microcomputer sold in kits around 1977. It is a very interesting video, and the hat is just awesome 😁
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This month's article
I had a little help this month, as Juanjo Muñoz was kind enough to say yes to an interview with me! Juanjo is a very important figure of the Spanish text adventure scene: he created the largest Spanish-language community centered around adventure games, CAAD, way back in 1988 - and it's been active all these years! In this interview, he talks a little bit about the history of games, but also about how a community like this can keep going for so long! A big thanks to Juanjo, and long live the Spanish adventure community!
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See you soon!
Thanks again for reading this newsletter! Can't believe it's been going for the better part of a year now... See you soon for more news and interesting articles about your favorite genre 🙂
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