> 21 years after it began, If Monks had Macs is ending, as all good

> ### If Monks is Free!
>
> 21 years after it began, If Monks had Macs is ending, as all good
> media creations must, with a remake. To celebrate the release of the
> If Monks had Macs CD-ROM as freeware, we?ve remade our finest game,
> Killing Time. [Killing Time][1] is beautifully illustrated, quick
> and deep.

? [rivertext library of interactive art][2]

> * "The thing that sets this product apart is its use of
> interactive media as an art form."
>
> ? from a review published in The MacValley Voice.
>
>
> * Our text is beautifully illustrated, quick and deep. In one of
> our books Bruegel's Tower of Babel fills a virtual screen several
> times the size of most computer monitors. The text fits into the
> captions to 100 illustrations.
>
>
> * We include not just games, but also tools. The New Journal, our
> intensive journaling tool, is a tool that helps you explore your
> inner world. Sophie, our reading tool, helps you explore the world
> of ebooks.
>
>
> If Monks had Macs is an eclectic 24 volume guide to some shining
> moments of Western Civilization. If Monks had Macs is 24 volumes ? 4
> collections of interactive media, one on each side of our 4-sided
> revolving bookcase. The next 5 pages describe a few highlights from
> each of the 4 collections.
>

>
> [?]
>
> the If Monks... library includes:
>
> a virtual cloister full of Gregorian chants | Sophie Scholl, the
> White Rose & their resistance to the Nazis | German Expressionism |
> Beethoven, Bach & Schubert | Pieter Bruegel the Elder & his Tower of
> Babel | Thomas Nast, the father of American political cartoons |
> Henry David Thoreau's Walden and his Journal | Ralph Waldo Emerson,
> Walt Whitman, Nathaniel Hawthorne & The Scarlet Letter | a guide to
> the new journal & the world's most intensive journal writing
> application | solitaire for monks | a medieval adventure game | a
> haiku writing machine | Simone Weil, Nietzsche & William Blake in
> Passing Notes | The Imitation of Christ | G.K. Chesterton's Father
> Brown mysteries & The Man who was Thursday | the Kennedy
> Assassination | Sophie, the most versatile ebook reader | JFK
> Witness | Joseph Conrad's Heart of Darkness | Franz Kafka's
> Kafkaesque | HG Wells' The War of the Worlds | still life and
> protest photography | etc.

? [If Monks had Macs interactive art & resistance][3]

> It's hard to define exactly what If Monks Had Macs is. On just one
> CD-ROM, you can enjoy fiction from G.K. Chesterton and Nathaniel
> Hawthorne; read essays about various subjects such as art; learn
> more about the JFK assassination; and play games like Meat &
> Conversation, an adventure game in which you play as a monk whose
> vivid imagination defies reality and questions the human soul.
> Though its hard to define as a game, all of this content makes If
> Monks Had Macs a truly mind opening experience that is hard to
> forget and even harder to pull away from. The software was later
> released as freeware in 2009 and included new content not seen in
> the original CD-ROM release.

? Adventure Legends/If Monks had Macs

See also:
Developer's page [Rivertext.com][4] who made this freeware in 2009.

[Original version on Amazon.com (used)][5]

Compatibility
Architecture: 68k PPC

Original (in HyperCard)
ifmonkscd.cdr_.sit is a Mac-only CD-ROM.

System 6.0.7 or higher
Any color Macintosh
3.5MB RAM free
HyperCard 2.1 or later
13" (640x480) monitor
Single Speed (1X) CD-ROM Drive

Note: Despite what the manual and official system requirements state,
the majority of this disc will work quite well on a monochrome Mac.
You must copy the Monks Fonts briefcase from the CD-ROM to your System
Fonts Folder on your hard drive. Then you must select each individual
stack directly with HyperCard 2.1 or above. You can also copy
individual stacks from the CD onto your hard drive. There are only a
handful of stacks that will not display correctly because they are
hard coded for color, like The Tower of Babel.

Remake (in Runtime Revolution)
MonksCD.dmg (OS X) ? not compatible with 10.7 "Lion"
MonksSystem9install.zip (Mac OS 9)

??? No other specs on publisher's site ???

[1]: http://macintoshgarden.org/games/killing-time-without-injuring-eternity
[2]: http://www.rivertext.com/
[3]: http://www.rivertext.com/monks.html
[4]: http://www.rivertext.com/index.html
[5]: https://www.amazon.com/If-Monks-Had-Macs/dp/B000KAGHBG