[oilbagz]

I am a retro-computing fanboy and recently have been reliving the world of text adventure games on one of my most favoured "failed" computers of the 80's, the Oric-1/Atmos range of UK 8-bit machines.

https://www.oric.org/index.php?page=software

(Search for i.e. 'adventure')

The aesthetic is so pure, and in the context of oric.org, the titles are a testament to the spirit of an entirely different form of walled-garden/app-store.

I favour the Oric, and many of the great old architectures like it (Amstrad CPC6128!!) not for much more salient reason than it was my first 'real' computer, on which I first gained an immense amount of arcane knowledge that led me to an even more immense amount of arcana.

The adventure has been text since the very first day. A coders adventure game never STOP's.

*bonus edit: everything old is new again, and it is awesome:

https://defence-force.org/index.php?page=games&game=blakes7

[nickt]

I’m sure getting an Oric and Blake’s 7 reference in a single post qualifies for a special upvote around here! Thanks for sharing, both great sites. I’ll dig out that Atmos I have in the basement!

[oilbagz]

You most certainly will get a kick out of that Atmos if you get it booted up and functioning.

The Oric world didn't get much love in 1982/83/84, before the company fell apart completely - so there are many of us who would've felt particularly left-out, in terms of what 'could have been done', back then, with very little software. An Oric OG user had to write their own programs, while all the other machines got great stuff on the market.

Well, this is now resolved in the 21st Century, with 21st Century releases - titles still being produced by fans - which really, seriously push the limits of what you might've thought the Oric can do.

Get loaded up with some blakes7, space1999, pulsoids, l33t, or check out some of the new stuff being discussed on defence-force.org like a Wolfenstein-like mazerunner [1], or maybe a proper Loderunner [2] - if you're an Oric guy, this is going to be FUN for you. Finally.

:)

[1] - https://forum.defence-force.org/viewtopic.php?f=20&t=2264 [2] - https://forum.defence-force.org/viewtopic.php?f=20&t=2282