overdrive's Leather Goddesses of Phobos review

I enjoyed this review, and it reminded me of the good times in Infocom adventures. But if I'm real with myself, those were minority times for me. I adored the ideas of the Infocom games but I barely got anywhere with any of them. Was I too young? Was it because I lacked the manuals in most cases? Even now, the need to chase and read the manuals irks me some. Though I consider the ultimate badness of manual-reliance to be Sierra games like Police Quest.

In spite of their relative bluntness, I preferred Scott Adams 2-word adventures, 'cos I could get through some of them. The only Infocom game I ever finished for real was Wishbringer - which was rated Easy! But I still only did that in my late teens, I think!

I know what you mean about the reliance on manuals. At the time, it was a great idea to protect against piracy. For retro gamers like myself, it's a real hindrance. About 10-12 years ago, I bought virtually all of Infocom's games online. It was like $10-15 for a download of them. I was ecstatic......until realizing that there was no scans or anything of the printed material included in the download.....meaning I'd have to search online to find any way to get past the inevitable section in most games where you'd HAVE to refer to the packaged contest to get past something. With some games, it's not that tough......with others, it is.

As for the difficulty, yeah, it can get off the charts. A couple of the ones I've beaten have been mainly due to the very liberal use of "infoclues", since they'd be packaged on the floppy and whenever I was stuck, I could just look up the answer to my problem. I remember being really frustrated with Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy, just because of how its quirky sense of humor was near game-breaking at points (like the part where you're told there's an exit to port on the spaceship.....only to find the exit was in some other direction and they were just joking about it being to port).