I remembered a comic panel that I'd seen in the New Zork Times back in the day, and I just found it...page 7 of this:

https://infodoc.plover.net/nzt/NZT4.4.pdf

The comic pokes fun at the ridiculously cruel babelfish puzzle. Which, I'm proud to say, I solved back in the day without assistance, after a full day's worth of effort, and requiring at one point to completely restart the game because of an apparently useless item I didn't pick up at the very beginning of the game (if you've solved it, you'll know the item I'm referring to).

But...while that was a nice achievement, I still got stuck later in the game, trying to fix the Nutrimatic.

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qmr 8 hours ago | parent [-]

I solved it as well.

... but I'm pretty sure my game copy had "Invisiclues" or whatever installed.

I'm curious why some of the games in the 90s re-releases had this and some did not.

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ghaff 7 hours ago | parent [-]

I'm not aware of Invisiclues ever having been "installed." I'm only familiar with them as booklets with "invisible" ink. And, at least initially, they were created at least quasi-independently of Infocom by someone who later joined Infocom.

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qmr 7 hours ago | parent [-]

Oh yea! There was something in the manual, or in the installed hints about that invisible ink thing. Before my time.

The re releases I played they were under "hint" or "hints" or "help" or something.

There was an are you sure / really sure admonishment, then breadcrumb bit by bit hints towards solution.

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ghaff 6 hours ago | parent [-]

May have been re-releases. I had a lot of the original games with feelies and (effectively) anti-pirating code wheels and the like. I think I have one of the CD re-releases and I play for a bit now and then with a Z interpreter.

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qmr 6 hours ago | parent [-]

Yes rereleases as I stated above. ( or meant to ) I recall my father being quite excited when he saw them. Not sure what games he played first on the Commodore, if any.

They amused me for a time at 9-10, then later at maybe 14-15 or so I got into them again playing on a Palm VIIx with a folding Stowaway keyboard. I also read through HHGTTG on that same device.

https://archive.org/details/sci-fi-collection-the-usa/ and the like.

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3036e4 5 hours ago | parent [-]

I have fond memories of some z-machine interpreter on the Palm that I found easier to play with than anything on my desktop computer. There were lots of shortcut buttons and thanks to the stylus it was still easy to use those (vs a touchscreen using ony fingers where you need huge buttons to hit). You could also tap any word in the output to bring up a context menu of actions (e.g. to examine or pick up objects mentioned in room descriptions) and that list of actions was a combination of a configurable global list and a game-specific list you could add actions to. Could play through entire games and barely ever have to type anything. Had a folding keyboard, but no memory of using that for interactive fiction.

	▲	kqr 33 minutes ago \| parent [-]
		That sounds like an amazing interface. Would love that on my touchscreen device.