Nerd Alert! A Walk down Infocom Memory Lane

First Geek Posting
A clever group is challenging musicians to join the "50/90" club, and write 50 songs in 90 days.  One such lyricist-composer pair took as inspiration the exact "walkthrough" -- the commands an expert player would enter, in order -- to solve (or win) Zork.  Zork, if you didn't know, is the first official Infocom text adventure, and begins,

West of House

You are standing in an open field west of a white house, with a boarded front door.

There is a small mailbox here.

The first puzzle is to figure out how to get into the house (go around the side, by typing "Go South", then "East" or "Go East" and then open a window which has been described as being before you).  More background on Zork here.

I can't upload the song directly to the blog, but you can listen to it here.  It's not a bad song (I've downloaded it to iTunes, and it should be good for working out to). If you have a modicum of zorkish geekery in you, it is worth at least checking out.

Second Geek Posting
A friend forwarded me a link to an article by game writer Emily Short, about the "romance problem" in interactive fiction (i.e., in a second-person-narrated story where the player supposedly controls the protagonist's thoughts and actions, how does the real author fabricate the emotions of a real, steamy romance, a love affair?).  An image of the cover of Plundered Hearts gets top billing, and the author is kind enough to mention the words "wonderful and underappreciated" in reference to it. The only significant mention of my game is:

Plundered Hearts manages by inserting faintly parodic cut scenes between the protagonist and her hero, in which the player is powerless to resist -- a neat trick that equates the non-interactivity of these events with the traditionally irresistible force of sexuality. At a gameplay level it works, but it works at the cost of slightly distancing player from protagonist.  (from Analysis: The Romance Problem by Emily Short)

I do remember trying for a balance between parody and homage in the game (which I think I achieved), but I didn't realize it was in order to engender a feeling of the irresistible force of sexuality.  I was merely trying to figure out how to have my 15-year-old male fan base approach something of the effect of experiencing a bodice-ripper romance, positively.

Third Geek Posting

This actually has been around for awhile, and I might even have posted it before (but I don't think so).  It's a video of a rap song about Interactive Fiction games, not specifically Infocom's but certainly not excluding them.  There's a cameo by Steve Meretzky towards the end, and if you listen carefully, several Infocom titles are mentioned (I haven't caught mine yet -- I don't like the song that much to listen that many times -- but I've heard reference to Nord and Bert [Couldn't Make Heads or Tails of It] and A Mind Forever Voyaging.  Fun.