Renga in Blue   Interactive fiction and the All the Adventures project

Those of you keeping track of “new” games may note that Arthur seems to have sources for a new variant…

Hey, that’s progress. ;) “If you GET TREASURE and it picks the thing up you know it’s worth points” —…

took a lot of fussing around before I could get the shamrock over (including an interruption from the pirate and…

>I remember (from 501) this is because the stone is radioactive and needed to be stored in a special container.…

I think a comment on a previous entry revealed an important thing: gur sabeq ebpx vf n funz ebpx, fb…

One of my five theories on the sham rock is taking the four leaf clover (see next post) over there,…

The “dull passage” with its clover image and “ersatz” rock must be making some kind of dull wordplay on shamrock…

[…] which claims the max score is 500 yet typing SCORE says outright the max score is 501. Also, the…

Despite it describing “cakes”, “eat cake” will always eat all of them, sadly

What happens if you eat *another* tiny cake once you’re already normal-sized?

Haven’t decoded Arthur’s ROT13 above yet (in case it actually is a puzzle spoiler), but I’ve had lots of time…

It would be interesting to do a comparison between this game and Polyadventure 701+ v3.21a ported by David Baggett, Dave…

looks like I put ’84 to give it a try could theoretically end up being placed earlier once I’ve gone…

weird error that time, just some random numbers anyway, it is fixed

[…] (Continued from my previous post.) […]

The link at the top that should go to the previous post goes nowhere.

Just checked to confirm on passing the section in my own run; the game in fact does not understand the…

Lrf, ohg V erzrzorerq nsgre cbfgvat guvf gung vg’f abg dhvgr nf fvzcyr nf V znqr vg fbhaq. Pnyy gur…

“The Wumpus was my favorite puzzle from 501 and I didn’t even put the solution when I wrote about the…

Is one of those puzzles that can be progressed the use of the [pybgu ont] (ROT13)? Because I managed to…

Since I’m sure the comment section will notice soon: I have just posted to my GitHub the complete ADVDAT file…

No idea if this helps, but FNORD is a joke word in the Discordian satirical religion that is taken, I…

Okay, it looks like you might actually be ahead of me now, given I still have plenty of 501 content…

IIRC, the dog puzzle was bugged or something in the Roberts version when I first played through it. You could…

This all made me think of something: Has anyone ever really tried to find the original Zork prototype game (“bandbox,…

Answering my own question: Yeah, it’s in there.

Actually, I recently ran through a translation (into a modern Z-machine file) of a very early version of Zork (completely…

Although “Witt” has always been there in Adventure as mentioned by bananathoroughly, Long was also directly influenced by Zork (see…

“Witt Construction Company” has always been a thing in Colossal Cave. See for instance, the anteroom with the magazines. Wait,…

“D.M. Witt” is presumably meant to be pronounced like “dimwit” and I’m wondering if it’s a deliberate reference to Dimwit…

According to the official guide the Golden Key does nothing. Not sure if it was ever meant to do something…

[…] Comments…Read More […]

I just tried it at the desktop and lo and behold I didn’t stay logged in either. And no, I…

[…] Read the full retrospective at Blue Renga. […]

[…] The Long-Lost Earliest Version of Crowther/Woods … […]

[…] Adventure 751 (1980) […]

Just from reading the description I get that “up” = top path but not that “down” = path among the…

A calumny, because the IKEA sideboard was surely assembled solely with an Allen wrench.

Oh yeah, I’ll agree the Wumpus randomization is rather unfair. But actually, recall that WOOD0350 has several randomized exits. There’s…

Yeah, the description (quoted in the post so won’t repost it here) clearly reads to me that both UP and…

the other one that nailed me pretty hard was the random exit to the Wumpus when mapping it today, I…

Yes, EXAMINE is rather annoying because it works on *some* items but on most it just falls back (as in…

Just in the same way you would blame your screwdriver after your carefully assembled Ikea sideboard collapses into a heap…

It’s all good – for ’87 in particular I’d also point to the politicking around currency that was happening at…

Mix of Safari on iPhone and Firefox on Linux

No, I only know what I’ve read on the net.

There’s an entire hour-long documentary called Trillion Dollar Bet about it (“this solved the ancient problem of risk and return…

The other thing that kinda bugs me is that I can’t stay logged in to any site built on WordPress…

DId my initial runs (both above ground and underground) and this posts is all things I know. Top score for…

Awesome work here Lanhawk! Coincidentally, I’ve been working on finding and extracting the commercial Compuserve version of this game, and…

Hey Gunther, just pinging you here to let you know I’ve sent you the email about those files we discussed.…

Best of luck! I have a feeling this one is not for the faint of heart if trying to get…

Played this game since I was 9 (xmas 1983) – we would sit a bunch of us, varying ages and…

It’s great that this has finally been found. I spent the last days of 2025 trying to get the Russian…

Wow! What a great way to end 2025! Thank you!!!

Thank you, Rob!This is incredible information! I’m very happy a known copy of the original Hobbit program is out there.…

I reiceive your blog posts via mail and usually read them on an Android tablet with Opera. On Windows I…

I’ve really enjoyed reading your blog this year! I normally read on my Android phone, with a cup of tea…

I also got The PDP-10 Adventure 448 working if anyone needs that.

RSS Subscriber via Newsblur, read on Chrome for Linux. (The comments feed comes out malformed in newsblur due to wordpress…

RSS subscriber via theoldreader.com, read on a laptop in Chrome browser.

Good news: After much trying (and some tech support assistance!) I’ve gotten Adv751 working. I’ve just opened the game and…

Reading on Vivaldi on PC. Happy New Year!

I have some big news here! Email incoming…

Awesome work this year, Jason. I look forward to the next! I pretty much always use Chrome on Android, as…

That last comment about Hobbit was meant as a reply to Karl, but for some reason ended up as a…

Hi Karl, I have some info on this that you might be interested in: There is one surviving copy of…

Maaaaaaybe Do you know anyone who took a whack at it back in the day?

“the treasure is still out there” Three treasures in different locations, if this game is what I think it is.…

Probably my first post will be jan 2? I already linked you on my social media and reception seemed positive

This is a crazy coincidence! I rediscovered the DOS version of Hobbit this year and by pure chance played Wizards…

Looking forward to another gigantic game in the scope of Ferret, which I’m sure won’t end up being another year-long…

Random survey question: how do people read my blog anyway? I read it on feedly.com with Chrome!

I use Firefox on Windows desktop and Safari on an iPad. Usually the time of day you post means I’ll…

i use chrome both on windows desktop and android phone. Also just have to say thanks for writing this little…

(Random survey question: how do people read my blog anyway? I test any new posts on both computer and on…

[…] I’ve already done a review roughly mid-year because I “finished” 1982; you can read about that at All the…

Geez, can’t get anything past you. :) Well, as of last night I’ve posted a “more official” blog post, too:…

roger roger

“Mastadon” should be Mastodon.

Hey Rob, please do – it’s my username here at gmail. I seem to recall someone had the printed out…

Hey Gunther, it looks like Jason was able to get it running too, so everything should be OK. By the…

Hi Lance, this is awesome news! We (Arthur, Jason and myself) have an email thread going about this and other…

Wow, that’s great to hear! I’ve actually been working on trying to preserve the only known copy of Supersoft’s Weird…

Hi Andrew! That’d be great to have. if-archive should work out ok: https://upload.ifarchive.org/cgi-bin/upload.py

Now that Arthur has let the cat half out of the bag….. Yes, LONG0751 has been found and gotten to…

That puzzle was everything you promised and brings to mind some other meta stuff like Simon the Sorcerer 3D and…

I’ve been unsuccessful so far in finding a pdp10-sl that doesn’t crash during boot, unfortunately.

Actually you always needed some software to do something with the function keys, otherwise they were useless. F2, F4, F6…

I just brought you in on an email to Arthur regarding this and some other stuff. Hopefully it went through,…

[…] up: a “holy grail” lost game that just got posted a few hours ago, if I can wrangle past…

[…] (Continued from my previous post.) […]

WHAT looks like it comes with directions, too https://github.com/Quuxplusone/Advent/blob/master/LONG0751/LONG0751.zip (this is the long-lost 751-point version of Adventure that was on…

Hey, I hate to interruptthe other things going on, but… Check the Quuxplusone Advent repository. NOW. Something rather surprising (to…

This is my experience with the TRS-80 CoCo version as well. There does not seem to be any way past…

Well, turns out that I wasn’t quite done… In Jeux & Stratégie No. 20 (4/83), Michel Brassinne, who was one…

One last thing for now: In Casus Belli No. 19 (early ’84), Olivier Tubach published a follow-up article to his…

Regarding the dating of Casus Belli issues: No. 10 was the last early issue specifically listed as bimonthly, and is…

Sorry, I made a mistake: The co-author I was talking about was Olivier Tubach, not Boulot. It should also say…

These are great finds! I’ve skimmed through Cassus and it’s sister mag J&S before, but obviously not enough. I did…