* * * * *
“You are in a twisty maze of passages, all alike … ”
> Accordingly, this paper analyzes previously unpublished files recovered
> from a backup of Woods's student account at Stanford, and documents an
> excursion to the real Colossal Cave in Kentucky in 2005. In addition, new
> interviews with Crowther, Woods, and their associates (particularly members
> of Crowther's family) provide new insights on the precise nature of Woods's
> significant contributions. Real locations in the cave and several artifacts
> (such as an iron rod and an axe head) correspond to their representation in
> Crowther's version …
>
Via Flutterby [1], “Somewhere Nearby is Colossal Cave: Examining Will
Crowther's Original “Adventure” in Code and in Kentucky [2]”
I remember first “playing” this game in 5^th Grade (where “playing” involved
the teacher reading the descriptions off the only Apple ][ [3] in the school,
asking us elementary students what to do next, and typing in the directions
given) but it was later, in high school, when my friend Bill and I would play
this game for hours (on his family's IBM PC (International Business Machines
Personal Computer) [4]), and I can still picture the map Bill made as we made
our way through the game.
What's interesting about this report are the actual photographs from the cave
system that show up in Adventure [5].
Fortunately (or unfortunately, depending upon your take), there are no
pictures of a grue [6]—I guess the flashbulb scared him off.
[1]
http://www.flutterby.com/archives/comments/10349.html
[2]
http://brain.lis.uiuc.edu:2323/opencms/export/sites/default/dhq/vol/001/2/000009.html
[3]
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Apple_II
[4]
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/IBM_PC
[5]
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Colossal_Cave_Adventure
[6]
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Grue_(monster)
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