I'd like to share some e-mail I got recently. First, from seanmc30: Are you aware of any old games (some as old as a Commodore. 64) that has no visual effects, only text. It gives you a situation and you must type in an action, and you move on from there. If you get it wrong you must try again. Do you have nay idea what kind of game this is or where to find one?

I think you mean Interactive Fiction. A good place for these games is www.the-underdogs.org. Click on the "special" button at the top on the home page. I have some of these games on my site, and more to come soon.

From Jumpa49: Best game you will ever have, lots of entertainment. Very educational. Helps your tolerance, and patience. Never the same, always keeps you guessing. And of course, very frustrating. And when is version two coming? LOL
p.s. played B1 bomber on my C-64 for hours and hours. Only made it back to Alaska once. Those Ruskies are tough, lol

Sounds like a fun game. I wonder what game he's referring to? The subject line read Congratulations!!!!!!!! Perhaps he's referring to B1 Nuclear Bomber if the post script is actually the script.

NFL Challenge issue resolved

Shrunken screen capture of NFL Challenge (to prove that I did it):


The exact error message is: Can't open a:pbp.nfl
Before this message, we learn that the computer is looking for a team disk and a program disk. So, let's make a disk that will act as both the team and program disk! Here's how:

The nfl.zip file that you downloaded from Text-mode.com contained a single folder inside it called NFL. Inside the NFL folder are three team/program folders to choose from: 84, 89, and Greats. To make a floppy with the team and program files, you must select all of the files in one of these three folders (depending on which season/scenario you want to use) and copy them to the root of your floppy, meaning A:\pbp.nfl, etc. NFL Challenge is looking for some files on the root of the drive, which means you can't just copy the Greats folder to your floppy, for example. You must copy the contents inside the Greats folder over to your floppy. Or, alternatively, you can copy the contents to the root of your C: drive (hard drive), but that's kind of messy and I prefer the floppy option, especially because you can have three floppies, one for each season.

There is a one-time configuration thing that runs through the first time you run NFL Challenge, and one of the questions it asks is the drive on which to look for the team and program files. If you selected the A: drive but now you want to use the C: drive, or vice versa, just delete the whole NFL folder, download and unzip the NFL.zip file, which contains the NFL folder, place the NFL folder where it used to be, and then run the program again.

An important note: if you are running the game through DOSBox (and I'd recommend it because of the frameskip/slowdown ability), you must mount the A: drive if you are using a program floppy. Do this by typing:

mount a a:[backslash]

at the DOSBox prompt. Apparently the real backslash is an escape character in blogs.

I've received several e-mails regarding NFL Challenge. I am going to download the game and see what's up. I'll let you know my findings ASAP. Apparently the game runs fine but can't find a file it needs.

A lot going on. I had a baby (well, ok, my wife did). That's reason enough for taking some time off, eh? Another girl. I like baby girls. They're fun and cute. But this blog isn't about domestic affairs and such.

There are about 30 or so, I'm guesstimating, Interactive Fiction games I'll be posting, one by one, as I have the chance. I'm afraid you'll either have to be patient or brave the pop-up thickets of the-underdogs.org to get them now.